Future Imperfect

Urban FactoryA couple of weeks ago Amazon remotely deleted two e-books off of its customers’ Kindle readers—and in one of those too-good-to-be-true moments, the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm” by George Orwell. Ars Technica and the New York Times explain what happened; the Times ran a follow-up story today. Commentary on the incident has ranged from the fervid to the apocalyptic. (An exception is Chicago’s Randy Picker.)  Jack Balkin argues that “Amazon threatens many of the basic freedoms to read we have come to expect in a physical world;” Jonathan Zittrain worries that “tethered appliances” like the Kindle “are gifts to regulators,” who will exercise a “line-item veto” over passages in books they don’t like; Farhad Manjoo at Slate concludes that “Now we know what the future of book banning looks like.”

What I find intriguing about these responses is that they are all based on analogizing Kindle e-books to physical books located in your house.  (more…)

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Reminds Me of Y2K

Wired Magazine's Threat Level Blog is having fun with the apparent false alarm over the Conficker virus. A sample: Threat Level was skeptical last week that Conficker would do anything more than send spam. But since then we've become aware of dramatic new evidence that reporting on a doomsday worm is good for page views. So welcome to our Conficker War Room! We'll track this scourge throughout the day, so check back frequently for the latest updates. . . . 12:15 EDT: Felony conviction against Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens is being thrown out for prosecutorial misconduct. Coincidence? Conficker hates net neutrality. 12:20 EDT: Reader reports, "I just got a message that said, 'Windows has encountered a problem and will need to shut down'. OMG!!" . . . 3:05 p.m. EDT: CBC reports that attackers could be preparing a new version of Conficker that's even worse than this one. Checking with art department about getting deadlier graphic. 3:55 p.m. EDT: You can now pre-order the DVD of 60 Minutes' report on Conficker, The Internet is Infected. It's just $15.99 on Amazon.com. Do it now, while the internet is still alive.

Continue ReadingReminds Me of Y2K