According to this blog post that is......
When I hear the term Kindle I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit. And when I hear the term "hi-tech" I think not of helpful androids efficiently performing household chores or light-speed rockets gliding seamlessly through space but of the fact that between 1933-45, modern technology was used to perform in ever more efficient ways the mass murder of six million of my people. The instruments of so-called progress, placed in the hands of the modern state, disappeared six million Jewish men, women and children, into a void from which they will never return and in which a majority of them remain forever unidentified. This was done in the name of progress by means of technology for the creation of a better world.
The Nazis often were, by their own lights, well-intentioned idealists working for a better tomorrow. And their instrument was modern technology, aspects of philosophical and aesthetic modernism and the old religious concept of supercession implicit in the Christian notion of progress. Jews were outmoded, useless, they said. Most high level Nazis, like Himmler or Heydrich or Eichmann, did not feel visceral hatred towards the Jew. Rather, they looked upon them coldly as something that simply needed to disappear so that the new life could get on its way. And the means by which they sought to do so was first through a propaganda campaign that portrayed Jews, in Wagnerian terms, as a drag on the visionary energies and bursting vigor of the new Aryan man, and then by the implementation of this decision to eliminate Jews through ever more sophisticated state corporate and scientific technological means. And yet, during the war crime trials at Nuremberg, while Nazi Jurisprudence was tried and hanged, Nazi technological attitudes were not put on trial.
The victorious Allies did not mandate that technology, which had been turned to such murderous ends, must pass an ethical standard review from an international body, like a UN of technology. No such body of decision came about. To the contrary, even while the war crime trials of Nazi chieftains were in session, American and Soviet governments were recruiting high-level Nazis to their intelligence services, military armaments industries, and space programs. So that, while in jurisprudence terms Nazi social and political values were delivered a blow, the Nazi fascination with technology merged seamlessly with that of their conquerors: us.
That is why today we drive Volkswagens, which were invented by Hitler, and use space heaters from companies that may once have manufactured crematoria and why Werner Von Braun, the Nazi father of the V-2 rocket became an American space pioneer hero studied in public schools. Nazi Technology and corporate methodology was folded handily into American feel-good Capitalist culture. That is the very point of the brilliant satire, "Dr. Strangelove".
So that now, sixty four years after the Holocaust, the Nazi disdain for the book has become the feel-good Hi-Tech campaign to rid the world of books in place of massive easily controlled centralized repositories of book texts downloadable on little hand-held devices and from which a text can be dissapeared with the click of a mouse: in Nazi terms, a dream come true.
How grave was Nazi contempt for books? As response to the book burnings in Germany, in the May 11, 1933 issue of Chicago's Daily Worker, (and years before the first fully operational death camps opened their furnace doors), a grim cartoon entitled "Altars of the Nazis" portrayed two smoking crematoria of equal size, placed side by side, one marked "Nazi Victims" and the other "Condemned Books". The link between contempt for books and mass murder could not be more clear.
President Roosevelt, recognizing the threat of Nazi attitudes to the book, launched a full-scale government campaign, and declaring it part of the national war effort, said: "...books...embody man's eternal fight against tyranny. In this war, we know, books are weapons."
In World War II, people died to produce and protect books. Anti-Fascist organizations, American Jewish Groups and writers, editors and journalists launched massive demonstrations in defense of the book, including, on March 10, 1933, the largest march, to that date, in the history of New York City: 100,000 people turned out to express outrage at the burning of books and other events in Germany. In its coverage of the Berlin book burnings, Newsweek used "Holocaust" as its headline.
Today's hi-tech propagandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form that society would be better off without. In its place, they want us to carry around the Uber-Kindle.
The hi-tech campaign to relocate books to Google and replace books with Kindles is, in its essence, a deportation of the literary culture to a kind of easily monitored concentration camp of ideas, where every examination of a text leaves behind a trail, a record, so that curiosity is also tinged with a sense of disquieting fear that some day someone in authority will know that one had read a particular book or essay. This death of intellectual privacy was also a dream of the Nazis. And when I hear the term Kindle, I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit.
Forgive me for finding this rather wtfish...... but seriously?! Google books being compared to the Holocaust? Uh......
All I got from this is:
Nazi's used technology
Geeks like technology
Geeks = Nazi's OMG
Also, this little gem of a quote.....
Alan Kaufman
To those who have invoked Godwin's Law as refutation of my essay, I offer you Kaufman's' Law:KAUFMAN'S LAW: "Efforts such as Godwin's Law to thwart the finding of contemporary relevance in the Holocaust is a form of Holocaust denial."
So.... disagreeing with the blog means you're a Nazi?
I swear there should be some kind of intelligence test you're required to take before you make any kind of allusion to the Holocaust.
Your thoughts?
KAUFMAN'S LAW: "Efforts such as Godwin's Law to thwart the finding of contemporary relevance in the Holocaust is a form of Holocaust denial."
Bulls**t. That's the same retarded kind of logic which implicitly states that anti-semitism is simply whenever you disagree with anything a Jew says.
WTF? ^
No it isn't Rishi, that doesn't even make the most remote amount of sense.
Calls of Godwin are stupid, and a form of denial in that it suggests no lesson can be learned from history. What you said is just out of nowhere.
Blog writer has a point, but it's convoluted and overwritten. A reading history or centralized source are both potentially very dangerous to freedom and ideas.
Calls of Godwin are stupid, and a form of denial in that it suggests no lesson can be learned from history. What you said is just out of nowhere.
Dude, WTF? Calls of Godwin are MEANT to be stupid and ANYONE who takes them seriously is also stupid. They're not meant to be taken literally. Whenever I've invoked Godwin's law, I've never once suggested that no lesson can be learned from history nor have I denied the Holocaust. Believe me, I'm NOT a Holocaust denier or even a Holocaust doubter. But invoking Godwin's law is NOT inherently a form of Holocaust denial. This is a prime example of meaningless noise.
WTF? ^
No it isn't Rishi, that doesn't even make the most remote amount of sense.
Calls of Godwin are stupid, and a form of denial in that it suggests no lesson can be learned from history. What you said is just out of nowhere.
Blog writer has a point, but it's convoluted and overwritten. A reading history or centralized source are both potentially very dangerous to freedom and ideas.
Wait, so you agree that using Godwin's law makes one a Nazi?
His entire blog post seemed to be little more than "Nazi's used technology! So it must be evil!"
Does he have a few points? Sure. But I can't take him seriously in the slightest considering he openly declares technological progress to be evil.
first off, if anyone wanted to read that article but got dizzy i suggest you do like me and read it from end to start (it will be easier to understand 
)
as for the lazy ones, the issue is: when books were being made some germens didn't employe jews to make books because they looked down on their capabilities with the usual racist claims. it went so bad, there were even protests where some germens burned books to prove their point. so in sense, some of those who are racists against jews are aidding online newsletters and the decrease in using books for that past argument.
as for my opinion:
when someone is a minority, a lot of people will bad mouth them. being called stupid (as mentioned in the article) and not capable of working equally with others just because of their race is something minorities all tasted first hand. they will make sure they never get ahead in life, and they will push them into the odd dangerous jobs. and their numbers will decrease as result. they will make them isolate themselves and start communities far from others to escape harsh unjust judgement.
not just with the jews but with others. i face the same thing, so i know what they went through.
it is ugly and insulting to live like that, but no matter how tough it is or was, people shouldn't try to link everything together. the internet is a good invention it gives pleasure and knowledge. i dont agree on some germens having gotten their way with making people abondon books.
cause it's not true, books are always special and will remain for all time.
<Does he have a few points? Sure. But I can't take him seriously in the slightest considering he openly declares technological progress to be evil>
he's probably bitter for tasting racisim himself. it does fog ones better judgement at times.
first off, if anyone wanted to read that article but got dizzy i suggest you do like me and read it from end to start (it will be easier to understand
as for the lazy ones, the issue is: when books were being made some germens didn't employe jews to make books because they looked down on their capabilities with the usual racist claims. it went so bad, there were even protests where some germens burned books to prove their point. so in sense, some of those who are racists against jews are aidding online newsletters and the decrease in using books for that past argument.
as for my opinion:
when someone is a minority, a lot of people will bad mouth them. being called stupid (as mentioned in the article) and not capable of working equally with others just because of their race is something minorities all tasted first hand. they will make sure they never get ahead in life, and they will push them into the odd dangerous jobs. and their numbers will decrease as result. they will make them isolate themselves and start communities far from others to escape harsh unjust judgement.not just with the jews but with others. i face the same thing, so i know what they went through.
it is ugly and insulting to live like that, but no matter how tough it is or was, people shouldn't try to link everything together. the internet is a good invention it gives pleasure and knowledge. i dont agree on some germens having gotten their way with making people abondon books.
cause it's not true, books are always special and will remain for all time.<Does he have a few points? Sure. But I can't take him seriously in the slightest considering he openly declares technological progress to be evil>
he's probably bitter for tasting racisim himself. it does fog ones better judgement at times.
Well, the thing is that my major beef was that there was ABSOLUTELY no reason to bring race into his argument. If he wanted to make a case against technology making society worse off, so be it. Want to argue that books should always remain books? Be my guest. To compare something like electronically cataloged literature to the Holocaust of all things speaks very ill of his own good taste and little more than shock value. (And I listen to death metal so obviously my taste is awful 
)
(And I listen to death metal so obviously my taste is awful
Gotta quote this! 
Eh, people are gonna believe the stereotypes, might as well let them be happy in thinking that they are right.
Eh, people are gonna believe the stereotypes, might as well let them be happy in thinking that they are right.
Yeah, good point. But I'd rather challenge and defy most stereotypes in the popular imagination today rather than reinforce them.
Convincing people that growling vocals over extremely loud metal is good music isn't exactly the easiest task in the world!
Or even convincing people that its music at all is a quite arduous task in of itself....
Eh, people are gonna believe the stereotypes, might as well let them be happy in thinking that they are right.
i was agreeing with you.
i was just stating his view and how he linked very bad things to a normal issue out of bitterness for the past.
Yeah. Its a shame that people don't let things go at all. I also loved his little "Hitler invented the Volkswagen". Obviously, anyone that drives one MUST be a Nazi!
The Holocaust was indeed a tragedy, and that's why referencing it every time something comes out that you don't like is extremely silly and rather pathetic indeed. I also can't help but feel the unnecessary referencing of the event helps fuel negative feelings towards past events, to people on all sides.
well about the volkswagan, no surprise didn't you know there was talk about it's symbol being a ... you know what just watch this
as for why they repeat mentioning the holocaust, cause it's not really over yet. and it does hurt, and still effects the lives of people.
there's so many people that face the same monsterous treatment as was done with the holocaust. so it musn't be forgetting till it's over for all.
The hi-tech campaign to relocate books to Google and replace books with Kindles is, in its essence, a deportation of the literary culture to a kind of easily monitored concentration camp of ideas, where every examination of a text leaves behind a trail, a record, so that curiosity is also tinged with a sense of disquieting fear that some day someone in authority will know that one had read a particular book or essay. This death of intellectual privacy was also a dream of the Nazis. And when I hear the term Kindle, I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit.
This particular paragraph really bugs me, more specifically where the author states that curiosity is met with a sense of fear that someone somewhere may find out what you've read.
Pointless argument, anyone? I dare say that any information that is held regarding what books someone has read is likely kept private--no, I know it is, or should be - Data Protection Act and all that. That applies here in the UK at least anyway, I'm uncertain whether such law was made international but I'm pretty sure it at least has its analogues in other parts of the world.
Also, I don't see it as being very likely that the world's books will be burnt in favour of having them all in one centralised place. For one thing the very idea is absurd, not to mention highly impracticable and literally impossible. The author of the blog post seems to be of the opinion that it is the dream of Google and Amazon to completely abolish paper books altogether in favour of everyone having a Kindle. From a market standpoint that may well be what they'd like to see happen, but I'd like to think there are enough sensible people working for them to realise that it's simply never going to happen. The only way you'd ever manage to completely abolish books and stop new paper ones being made would be to stop making paper altogether. I certainly don't see that happening any time soon.
Plus let's also not forget the fact that even if that did occur, there is no way that they would ever manage to have a catalogue of every single one of the world's books. Again, this would be both impracticable and impossible - there is no way you'd manage to convince every single author in the world to only release their material electronically. The only possible means of doing that would be through legislation, and any politician with their head screwed on right (I know, few and far between nowadays) would vehemently oppose such a notion. Not to mention the fact that there are books and texts out there that Google doesn't know about - and in fact a lot of the world doesn't know about.
So in conclusion, I think the blog's author needs to remove his or her head from the sand, take a reality check, and then stop looking for ways to compare things they don't like to the Nazis.
<This particular paragraph really bugs me, more specifically where the author states that curiosity is met with a sense of fear that someone somewhere may find out what you've read>
i can imagine teenagers getting busted by their parents "no! i swear i'm not into that!" 
<Pointless argument, anyone? I dare say that any information that is held regarding what books someone has read is likely kept private--no, I know it is, or should be - Data Protection Act and all that. That applies here in the UK at least anyway, I'm uncertain whether such law was made international but I'm pretty sure it at least has its analogues in other parts of the world>
you put up good points silvershadow 
but what does it matter? let them know what every person reads, it doesn't do anything, it's not harmful. although if kindles are used in schools teachers will know if their students read the subjects or not...... in end it just builds an honest future.
and i honestly hope kindles are going to be used more in the future, instead of financially struggled countries or indivisuals buying millions of expensive books and going through all the difficulties and expenses that come with it, people would own these electronic books and simply download all the knowledge. this invention will not only be good for the econemy but help children world wide to get good education.
also it will be very intersting if books can be updated, if we discover a new planet shouldn't we be able to update that information to all school ebooks world wide?
I hear a lot of conspiracy theory and fear regarding the whole "Internet media = censorship" thing, due to the idea that as words on a screen are not a physical format they can be editted and changed and removed without hastle or paper trial. It's supposedly a wise way of thinking, especially when you consider how easy it is to delete and change things on a PC.
HOWEVER.
These people do not realize that the internet leaves a very heavy paper trial and data is always kept and backed up. Like--- the majority of the mundane bullcrap of the internet is kept in prestine condition for anon to drag up whenever they feel like reminding you THE INTERNET NEVER FORGETS. Add this to the idea that getting your hands on banned materials online is far easier than in the physical format, making things move to an open source market is the way of moving AWAY from that worst case scenario future everyone dreads.
As for the OMG THEY ARE TRACKING ME!!! thing.
Yeah. No matter how you purchase something, there is a record of it. Whether it a store, internet receipt, library card, CCTV catching you stealing it from Borders... it's recorded. I fail to see how the existance of a Kindle is any more terrifying than a cell phone which tracks your location and who you're calling and when, a search engine which tracks every users computer location, account and search terms (and has leaked said search terms onto the public internet before) or an Oyster card which tracks what public transportation you are using, just incase you don't have a GPS unit in your car which pinpoints where your car is at any time.
Point of the matter. We are being tracked and monitored all the time, but it's mostly for sales statistics. No one gives a crap about a single individual's romance novel reading habit, you are as important to the evil corporation of THEM as the 47,228th line of text in one of your Kindle books. Get over it, the world isn't rising up to get anyone. It's a god damned notebook with Windows Word installed, nothing to freak out about.
no surprise didn't you know there was talk about it's symbol being a ... you know what
It's not a dirty word, you know.
It's called a swastika, and before the Nazis appropriated them (as the Christians in general had before - Hitler being a rather religious guy), they were regarded as symbols of good luck. Did you know that?
In many areas of Europe, they still are - and whilst they're not as common as they used to be, people aren't ashamed to work them into designs..
The point: Google has the potential to moniter YOUR knowledge. At least it will. When it controls all books.
Thusly: If they ever want to wipe out some information, they could potentially identify not only every bit of written material that contains the information but also identify the humans who have read it.
What I'm having trouble understanding is "how is this worse than your internet service provider having more detailed information on what you read--- and have a similar power to (if they chose) enforce what you can and cannot view".
Dude, WTF? Calls of Godwin are MEANT to be stupid and ANYONE who takes them seriously is also stupid. They're not meant to be taken literally. Whenever I've invoked Godwin's law, I've never once suggested that no lesson can be learned from history nor have I denied the Holocaust. Believe me, I'm NOT a Holocaust denier or even a Holocaust doubter. But invoking Godwin's law is NOT inherently a form of Holocaust denial. This is a prime example of meaningless noise.
The blogger soulds like he is responding to people who invoked the Godwin perversion that says you lose the argument if you talk about Nazis.
Wait, so you agree that using Godwin's law makes one a Nazi?
Nobody said that. I agree with his response. "Efforts such as Godwin's Law to thwart the finding of contemporary relevance in the Holocaust is a form of Holocaust denial."
His entire blog post seemed to be little more than "Nazi's used technology! So it must be evil!"
More like a type of attitude to technology as evolution. It's convoluted and sensationalist but not quite as much as yopu're interpreting.
Well, the thing is that my major beef was that there was ABSOLUTELY no reason to bring race into his argument.
Nobody did. There was a lot more to Nazis than racism, and they killed a lot more than Jews.
I also loved his little "Hitler invented the Volkswagen".
The point is that Nazi culture was imported to the rest of the world, including, in his opinion, attitudes to technology and even some of the war criminals who invented such.
To compare something like electronically cataloged literature to the Holocaust of all things speaks very ill of his own good taste and little more than shock value.
That I agree with, but you and Rishi have interpreted a lot of things from it that were not said, even remotely, such as:
Race
Use Godwin and you are a Nazi (calling it a form of denial is not even close to that)
The kind of logic that you can't disagree with a Jew (I still can't tell where that came from)
Driving Volkswagons is evil
Geeks are a type of Nazi
If saying such words leads to that kind of response then Nazi comparisons need to be invoked a lot more.
Point of the matter. We are being tracked and monitored all the time, but it's mostly for sales statistics. No one gives a crap about a single individual's romance novel reading habit, you are as important to the evil corporation of THEM as the 47,228th line of text in one of your Kindle books. Get over it, the world isn't rising up to get anyone. It's a god damned notebook with Windows Word installed, nothing to freak out about.
You can pay cash to get a book in a way that would take enormous effort to record, and some parts of the world, like say the most populous country in it that is getting increasingly powerful, very much are rising up to get you and will use any such records they can find to do it.
Here's a scenario if you think China isn't a big deal. Let's say they want to get info about any businesspeople who deal with Chinese companies and won't deal with any company that won't do it. Most companies will give to their demands. Even Google let themselves be censored there and China wants to get info about dissidents from ISPs. America used its economy to pursue people like that guy who posted the code to avoid DVD copy protection even though they are not U.S. citizens.
no surprise didn't you know there was talk about it's symbol being a ... you know what
It's not a dirty word, you know.
It's called a swastika, and before the Nazis appropriated them (as the Christians in general had before - Hitler being a rather religious guy), they were regarded as symbols of good luck. Did you know that?
In many areas of Europe, they still are - and whilst they're not as common as they used to be, people aren't ashamed to work them into designs..
sweety i wasnt refering to the swastika as "a you know what" i was saying .. you know what just watch this.
i didn't write swastika for two reasons, one to build up a suspense............ the obvious other reason is cause i didn't know how to spell it 
<We are being tracked and monitored all the time, but it's mostly for sales statistics>
actually these tracking things are like peeping through people's minds and seeing what they're thinking...... it ruins the idea of personal privacy.
i strongly am against them though, cause i think they lead to enforced ideals.
first it's just looking through people's heads... then it's stopping puplishing books or entertainment that might get people thinking.... then before you know it, all we see and read will be one book. 
like the history of religion. anyway that's the general fear over this thing, we might go backwards in civilization and groth.
The internet is a public arena, there is no privacy here. If you want your thoughts and actions to stay private, you shouldn't be posting views on easily accessible forums like this one. Also, seeing what I search on Google would not let you into how I think, it would just let you know that I like Sonic the Hedgehog and Doctor Who, hardly anything shocking.
The internet is a public arena, there is no privacy here. If you want your thoughts and actions to stay private, you shouldn't be posting views on easily accessible forums like this one.
you're right, i apologize.
I guess it's not worse, Craig. That is until I consider how smart I presume Google to be.
