I recall thinking at the time that we were fortunate that some of the burned books had been translated into other languages and undoubtedly survived in other countries. The memory prompted other thoughts: translation of books today pays a pittance, and few understand the work involved in capturing nuance; the proliferation of electronic books and records actually makes it easier to censor them, simply by over-writing them with an approved updated version; Amazon's de facto monopoly on electronic books grants it censorship capability never before seen.
Every e-book downloaded from Amazon results in a potential Trojan Horse residing in my electronic devices. Amazon tracks who downloaded what books and individual reading progress in those books. Just a year ago it would have struck me to look for tin-foil hats should someone mention backing up all downloads to an inert device such as a thumb drive or DVD to prevent some nebulous group from changing or eliminating content. Now, I'm actually considering it. Amazon has aligned itself with Big Tech supporting censorship. Scary.
I recall thinking at the time that we were fortunate that some of the burned books had been translated into other languages and undoubtedly survived in other countries. The memory prompted other thoughts: translation of books today pays a pittance, and few understand the work involved in capturing nuance; the proliferation of electronic books and records actually makes it easier to censor them, simply by over-writing them with an approved updated version; Amazon's de facto monopoly on electronic books grants it censorship capability never before seen.
Every e-book downloaded from Amazon results in a potential Trojan Horse residing in my electronic devices. Amazon tracks who downloaded what books and individual reading progress in those books. Just a year ago it would have struck me to look for tin-foil hats should someone mention backing up all downloads to an inert device such as a thumb drive or DVD to prevent some nebulous group from changing or eliminating content. Now, I'm actually considering it. Amazon has aligned itself with Big Tech supporting censorship. Scary.