The Convenience of e-Books a Dual Edged Sword
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Posted On :
Jul-23-2011
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Article Word Count :
748
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Digital readers have appeared on the scene for consumer use. As more e-books become available more readers will be sold and vice-versa. This article discusses the social implications of the change from paper books to e-books and who stands to gain. The retail prices of reading devices have been dropping somewhat by intent to make sure they will become affordable for most people.
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Every new communications medium, no matter how vast the entertainment value, is based on solid and serious technology first designed for industry and military uses. By now all but the most naïve and uninformed have learned that movies, radio and T.V. shows have been used by governments for boosting public morale with sentimental patriotic propaganda in wartime (which seems to be just about all the time these days).
Flogging products requires conditioning the listener or viewer to memorize a slogan or music jingle that will stay there with constant repetition. Sports and news carry messages that update constantly so the end user associates with the medium as the source for updating; as Marshall McLuhan stated, "the medium is the message".
The oddly confounding and worrisome use of the word "programming" is used to describe what the user sees and hears every day; programming implies that there is a controller entering code into a machine. That means that we are being programmed, either to accept more entertainment or for a more sinister purpose; all the large radio and television networks, the movie industry, publishing, and mainstream press are owned by corporate giants who have a common political and social agenda, which broadly speaking means control of the citizenry.
One of the most dramatic changes in media is the sharp increase in popularity of e-books and the devices used to read them. When you download e-books and read them on an iPhone it's not very comfortable so the retail market has become flooded with specialized digital e-book reading devices like the Kindle, Nook, and Sony Reader, and various PDF readers. These provide convenient, easy-on-the-eyes platforms for electronic reading.
One group who stands to gain of course would be publishers and authors. Revolutionary changes like the widespread use of electronic devices for entertainment and artistic purposes opens doors for those writers who have had no success in the established media. The amount of money needed for promotion is small and the rules of acceptance are more relaxed for first-time authors who can post ebooks for sale on private web sites if necessary. They might make money from their books and find a readership; at the very least they will be able to express themselves and make their ideas available to the world.
If making the world a better place is the dream of the artistic element, then control of the world is the dream of industry and the military factions of society. When media carry a free dialogue and message for all to receive, then control is lost in the eyes of government agencies. Propaganda loses some effect after public exposure so the powers that be go to the next step and focus on the hardware of the convenient devices themselves to do the dirty work.
Privacy issues as basic as where you are geographically at any given moment are surrendered when carrying certain devices. Smart phones can be tracked even when they are turned off thanks to homing devices installed by the manufacturers. Something like this could either save your life in an emergency or put you in the crosshairs for an unmanned drone to remove your name, number, and history from the planetary directory.
If you disassemble a fairly new laptop you'll find a small cable running from the keyboard connection underneath a piece of metal that protects the motherboard. The other end is connected to the integrated Ethernet board. There is a tiny circuit board known as a Keyghost hardware key logger that records everything that you do on that computer. Information about these illegal wiretaps is exempt from availability under the US Freedom of Information Act as stated in a letter from Kathy J. Lyerly, Privacy Acts Officer for the Freedom Information and Privacy Acts Branch who refers the matter to the Department of Homeland Security. This can only mean that manufacturers are cooperating with the DHS to make the public subject to involuntary wiretapping.
Whether these circuit boards will be found inside of digital readers remains to be seen. The fact that the technology is in place would make abuse inevitable within a corporate business model based on constant expansion, and where corporations control the government from the shadows. The next step is to consolidate control over the population by implanting RFID chips directly into the subjects to eliminate resistance. Those who dissent will simply have their chip turned off and become unable to survive.
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Article Source :
http://www.articleseen.com/Article_The Convenience of e-Books a Dual Edged Sword_68333.aspx
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Author Resource :
This article about online books is written by author Pat Boardman. This is one of the new books online ideal for Amazon's Kindle 3 and other e-book reader formats. Click for ebooks download from these links.
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Keywords :
online books, books for sale, ebooks online, ebooks for download, books, ebooks, novels, fiction novels, best books, books on,
Category :
Internet Business
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Ebooks
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