In George Orwell/s "1984," the three slogans of the ruling party are "War is Peace," "Freedom is Slavery" and "Ignorance is Strength." Amazon.com might as well change its slogan to "Downloading is Deletion" after this weekend.
Copies of Orwell/s "1984" and "Animal Farm" disappeared from e-books across the country after Amazon.com officials realized they didn/t own the rights required to put the novels on Kindle, its e-book service. People who paid for the books are angry about the sudden electronic evaporation of their property.
More important than Amazon.com/s customer service issues, however, is this: What happens when all of our information exists in bits and bytes? The fact that this involves those specific books is ironic, but the realization that companies could one day have the ability to "delete" information from our personal libraries, mirroring the idea of Orwell/s dystopian vision, is nothing less than harrowing.
OK, so, we recognize that the invention of Kindle didn/t cause the Library of Congress to go up in flames. Books don/t seem to be going anywhere, even if they may be "obsolete," technically. But then again, is imagining a world in which people rely on e-readers to access their literature any different than imagining a world in which most people get their news from electronic newspapers and blogs?
Besides the fact that Amazon.com isn/t doing a good job of convincing people to jump on the Kindle bandwagon, they are not assuring us that our information and property will remain, well, ours, as we move toward an increasingly electronic future. And that is downright Orwellian.
