Thursday, March 10, 2011

Big brother really is watching you

if you own a Kindle™, that is:

...I'm reading a new book I downloaded on my Kindle and I noticed an underlined passage. It is surely a mistake, I think. This is a new book. I don't know about you, but I always hated underlined passages in used books. They derail my private enjoyment.

When somebody offers perception of what's important, something moronic, usually, which is why I always prefer buying books new so I could make my own moronic marks. But moronic or not, it was all between me and my new book.

And this thing on my Kindle is supposed to be new. And then I discovered that the horror doesn't stop with the unwelcomed presence of another reader who's defaced my new book. But it deepens with something called view popular highlights, which will tell you how many morons have underlined before so that not only you do not own the new book you paid for, the entire experience of reading is shattered by the presence of a mob that agitates inside your text like strangers in a train station.

<idle musing>
Isn't that nice? You get the privilege of having them get access to all your notes and thoughts. Just think of the advertising information they can sell! And, think of the future court subpoenas for access to that data! Such a deal! I suspect you can hardly wait to be the victim—oops, I mean, consumer—of a Kindle™!
</idle musing>

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kindle: E-book reader and social media hub in one!

Ick!

Chuck Grantham

Tim Bulkeley said...

Big brother aside, I can think of people with whom I'd be interested to read a book. And I imagine that there are lots of people I haven't met with whom it would be interesting to read...

Maybe we ought not to ridicule the technology of social reading before it is mature. After all the codex has served us well for some time after initial ridicule!