Destroy all e-readers

There are over 10,000 books in our house. And I am proud to own them. I am a collector. What value does a piece of plastic have? It that what I'm to bequeath to my children? "And to my son, the English professor, my collection of ROM chips."
There is something about reading a book you know your father held in his hands that can never be replaced by a piece of silicon and plastic.
Q: And, how long will your Kindle last? Everything today is built to be replaced.
A: Just outside the warranty.
How many of you are buying Blu-rays to replace your DVDd's? Which replaced your VHS tapes? Don't bother. Media boxes have already made Blu-rays obsolete.
"Take the Money and Run" is not just a Woody Allen film. It's THE business plan of corporations.

Originally posted by divegeester
One day in an undetermined distant future there will be no books, as they will have been banned due to some new-age pinko tree-hugging warlord declaring them environmentally unsound. Everyone will be ingesting the New World fascist pulp which has been sanitised, edited and 'authorised' for public use - the daily download of propaganda straight to your K ...[text shortened]... mankind will be under way.

e-readers are the first step in our abdication of free thought.

Says the guy who is currently exercising freedom of thought (if you can call it that) and expression utilizing electronic pixels.

Originally posted by divegeester
Try to look past my tongue-in-cheek Ray Bradburyish OP and consider a future where we have embraced technology to the point where we are trapped and controlled by it - is it such a stretch of your imagination? Do you think the establishment doesn't try to control information now? Imagine a society where there are no books because everything is online ...[text shortened]... ewspapers, no magazines, no local libraries - just e-readers and what is available to download.

If anything the electronic age has increased freedom of expression, not decreased it.

Originally posted by DanTriola
What value does a piece of plastic have? It that what I'm to bequeath to my children? "And to my son, the English professor, my collection of ROM chips."
.

Lols, there's a sort of comedic irony in that statement...'I bet someone has done that already !???' I was thinking to myself.
Absolutely entirely true and one that is brought up each time I see him ( not often !! ) but around 15yrs ago my oldest friend was left, amongst other things admittedly, 'my complete Percy Thrower collection' by his grandfather. Thrower was an old English gardener \ publisher and more than merely popular with maybe 75% of over 60's, in the 1950's through 70's and possibly beyond. This constituted all manner of magazines, books and even a couple of autographs. They sat for over 6mths in his garage whilst he came to grips with the fact that he was contemplating throwing the vast majority and just keeping a 'few' for sentimental reasons. Another 6mths later he'd made up his mind and started to transfer from the 'good wooden boxes,' as he stated, to the cardboard sort that you'd leave out for the rubbish ( trash ) men to come pick up each week. After the first group were transferred, he found an article in one that took his eye...totally gardening unrelated I might add, it was about cars lol. Anyway, he flicked through this magazine when he;d read the article and BOOOM, there were two Bank of Scotland £100 pounds notes stapled into one page alone...there were more, lots more, many were old and out of circulation, they had to be exchanged at the bank.. I never did find out the final sum, he just wouldn't say..I'm sure there is a moral in this tale somewhere but come what may I'd never staple notes into tatty old magazines, not unless I'd left 'clues' as their true worth !! If anyone will know such a moral, it'll be you 😀

Originally posted by DanTriola
There is something about reading a book you know your father held in his hands that can never be replaced by a piece of silicon and plastic.

I disagree. Why would there be less sentimental value in using your fathers Kindle than reading your fathers book?
Or is durability perhaps your real concern?
Is the sentimental value really worth the enormously greater cost?
Do you keep all your cars so that your children can have the sentimental joy of driving them after you are gone? Why not?

Originally posted by twhitehead
...Is the sentimental value really worth the enormously greater cost?
Do you keep all your cars so that your children can have the sentimental joy of driving them after you are gone? Why not?

Rust.
It's funny you should say that, as I do keep my car quite a long time. Still wish i had kept the Sprite that i sold in 1973. Had to let my 2000 Explorer go last month as it was rusted to the point of immobility. But, but son did like to drive it. The Mini I've had for the last 4 years is much more suited to the price of gasoline these days anyway.
And yes: cost is best ignored when it comes to fighting consumerism. That trend of our society is taking us on the road to ruin. Planned obsolescence is the business blueprint for today's corporations; it started with automobiles and now extends to almost everything. I try to fight it as best i can. Even this computer I'm using is basically the same one I started with in 1982; parts being replaced as they wore out. In the long run the expense is actually less.
Your argument is apples and oranges, however. Books are not expensive, and will last long after the electricity is gone, not too far in our future. Although gasoline will be virtually unobtainable before that happens, within the next 20 years. And that statement is not an opinion. It's even optimistic.

Originally posted by DanTriola
There are over 10,000 books in our house. And I am proud to own them. I am a collector. What value does a piece of plastic have? It that what I'm to bequeath to my children? "And to my son, the English professor, my collection of ROM chips."
There is something about reading a book you know your father held in his hands that can never be replaced by a pi ...[text shortened]... e Money and Run" is not just a Woody Allen film. It's THE business plan of corporations.

Two out of my four adult children share my passion for books and the top part of my house is a library. One of my delights is simply to browse. I have additional shelves adjacent to my bed (on my side - being married) with my current collection of books waiting to be read. I lose half an hour many mornings while I consider them.

Most of my collection has been purchased second hand and life for me is linked up over the years by journeys to my favourite second hand shops. A special treat is to visit Hay-on-Wye, a town in a rural setting which has been given over entirely to second hand and new books, with an annual book festival.

The joy of finding a speical edition of a favourite poet is matched by the delight of encountering a book on an unexpected topic that would never normally enter my awareness but turns out to be a page turner. Maybe my favourite purchase in the past year was expensive, found in an antiquarian shop in Dartmoor, and published in 1935 (approx). It was a history of Japanese religion and what I found most enticing was that it was published before WWII (but during Japan's 15 year war) and set out very cogently not only the role of religion in past politics, but its role in both supporting and opposing Japanese militarism in the thirties. The author - based in Okinawa - was treading a dangerous line at the risk of the Japanese thought police, protected (I later found) by the Japanese Navy who preferred a realistic appraisal of their world. But that made more sense after reading a different book on the Okinawa philosophers, which I picked up in Ross on Wye in another second hand dealers. Why am I so into this topic? Mainly because by chance I found good books about it - no practical reason. I do have a son now living in Tokyo though he is more into football I have to say!

Oh and I recently got Vol 2 of Kasparov's Great Predecessors for a tenth of its price new. So I've started reading it! Had to buy Vol 1 new then. 🙁

I have tried an e-reader and maybe it works ok if you just work through a book a page at a time to the end. I don't find the books I want easily available as e-books and I don't find e-books cheaper. Fact is though that I fail to see how anyone could browse an e-reader in the same delighted way, pull out favourite passages at a flick (far easier than digital searching in reality for me at any rate) , lend it to daughter or her partner and get it back three months later, and I rarely if ever read a book page by page in the right order to the end. Also how do you scan with an e-book? I can shoot through several chapters in a few minutes if I am just looking to get a flavour of the argument. Literacy you know is partly the art of talking with authority about a book you have not read and many books deserve no better.

Originally posted by divegeester
What did you perceive from the OP as my reasons for society being flawed, and what are your views?

E-readers should be shunned, not because they will enable fascism per se, but because they represent one more capitulation before the rampant technological determinism that is undermining all human culture and subjugating humanity to the processes and demands of technology itself.

Every increase in technology represents a proportional decrease in personal freedom and autonomy. The more technologically advanced a society becomes, the more socially stratified and hierarchical it will likewise become. People become locked into an increasingly alienated productionist mode of life where they exist solely to service the technological Frankenstein they've created. As Thoreau opined, we have become the tools of our tools, and e-readers are just one more link in that chain of our technological slavery.

finnegan and rwingett have expressed two good points. Better than I could have.
Whitney's cotton gin led to the Civil War, and now all our clothes are made in China anyway! (I did find a few from Vietnam in the store today though.)

Originally posted by DanTriola
There are over 10,000 books in our house. And I am proud to own them. I am a collector. What value does a piece of plastic have? It that what I'm to bequeath to my children? "And to my son, the English professor, my collection of ROM chips."
There is something about reading a book you know your father held in his hands that can never be replaced by a pi ...[text shortened]... e Money and Run" is not just a Woody Allen film. It's THE business plan of corporations.

10,000 books? That's just ridiculous. Even if you read one book per day, it would take you 27 years to read them all. You're not a collector, you're a hoarder.

Originally posted by DanTriola
finnegan and rwingett have expressed two good points. Better than I could have.
Whitney's cotton gin led to the Civil War, and now all our clothes are made in China anyway! (I did find a few from Vietnam in the store today though.)

Not all your clothes have to be from China (or Vietnam). You could shop at American Apparel, for example:

http://store.americanapparel.net/

Originally posted by rwingett
Not all your clothes have to be from China (or Vietnam). You could shop at American Apparel, for example:

http://store.americanapparel.net/

I shop at the local stores in our area. The economy needs it.

Originally posted by rwingett
10,000 books? That's just ridiculous. Even if you read one book per day, it would take you 27 years to read them all. You're not a collector, you're a hoarder.

Actually have taken over 27 years. More like 55, as the first independent book I read was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea when I was 8. Still have that book, true, but hoarder is such a pejorative term these days, thanks to cable TV, and i feel betrayed in that I gave you applause just one post ago! Also, a lot of those books are my wife's. She likes to read as well. Better than watching TV. And we do have a large house. Plenty of room.
Besides, I did not count my Marvel comic book collection in that number!
At least I do not collect automobiles.
Would you like a list of my top 10 books?

Originally posted by DanTriola
Actually have taken over 27 years. More like 55, as the first independent book I read was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea when I was 8. Still have that book, true, but hoarder is such a pejorative term these days, thanks to cable TV, and i feel betrayed in that I gave you applause just one post ago! Also, a lot of those books are my wife's. She likes to read ...[text shortened]... that number!
At least I do not collect automobiles.
Would you like a list of my top 10 books?

I wondered how you would react to that 😉

My wife and I have a lot of books, but not nearly that many. Not enough room. I try to check them out of the library whenever possible these days, rather than buy them.

Let's see your list.

Originally posted by DanTriola
Actually have taken over 27 years. More like 55, as the first independent book I read was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea when I was 8. Still have that book, true, but hoarder is such a pejorative term these days,.......

Would you like a list of my top 10 books?

Just don't let Amazon see the list. If you have enjoyed Joyce's Finnegans Wake, then you might like Kasparov's My Great Predecessors Volume 4. If you liked Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies Volume 2, then you might like The King James Bible (special edition). People who bought Roger Penrose "What Came Before the Big Bang" also bought Don Quixote (battered copy together with a Don Quixote themed chess set). 😛