why reality matters

Via David Pogue’s NYT blog, this is a shocking story about Amazon.com’s Kindle business.  Confronted with a publisher which wished to remove certain ‘books’ (files, really) from Kindle, Amazon.com not only removed these ‘books’ from their list of files available for download, but actually removed already downloaded files from consumers’ Kindle devices.  And, yes, the books happened to be Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm.  This is just one reason why actual physical objects are far more important than the shape of our society now often implies.  Also, the very name ‘kindle’ should make one nervous as far as books are concerned.  Two Minutes Hate, anyone?

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