Dare to Think

The use of clips from the movie Downfall (which is an excellent film about Hitlers last days in the bunker) never gets old. But this one probably takes the proverbial cake. I have had one of the best laughs in a while with this.

So a friend forward me a link to the Huffington Post Alan Kaufman’s piece called “Google Books And Kindles: A Concentration Camp Of Ideas.” And while my friend warned me that this was the stupidest thing he had heard in months, I chose to ignore him and read on.

To my dismay Mr. Kaufman’s piece not only supported my friends statement, it confirmed to me that in the last 10 years, when intellectuals come short in an argument, they will lace their attacks with Nazi references. I don’t know if this is a sign of intellectual wanna-be’s or of lazy intellectuals making a go at something for kicks. Either way dishonesty is at the root of such arguments.

Kaufman argues that technology was used by the Nazis to exterminate a people. Yet technology has always been used to bring harm to one people or another. This fact is not exclusive to the Nazis. He goes on to say:

The instruments of so-called progress, placed in the hands of the modern state, disappeared six million Jewish men, women and children, into a void from which they will never return and in which a majority of them remain forever unidentified. This was done in the name of progress by means of technology for the creation of a better world.

From this Kaufman extrapolates that the current trend in technology of moving to eBooks and the digitization of all written content is another holocaust.

Kaufman insults the memory of every man, woman, and child that died at the hands of the Nazis and mocks their suffering with such comparisons.

Kaufman does all of this hyperbolic grandstanding via the very medium that is killing newspapers, from the internet based Huffington Post. How convenient that he did not mention the newspaper “holocaust” taking place.

I wonder if Mr. Kaufman ever took a walk into an inner city library to see what is available to those less fortunate than he? Digitization of books will make research a tool for all, not just those with PHDs. It will make access to books to all around the globe and take power away from people like Mr. Kaufman. And that is really what the argument is and should be about.

The issue with eBooks and digitization is that if we are not careful a few can end up having control over all of the information out there. But as I just did, one can make such a statement without invoking Hitler or the Nazis.

We need to start dismissing people, from the left and right, who can only provide support for their thesis or positions by calling the other side Nazis. Every time I hear such hysterics, it reminds me of the song by Fun Boy Three, The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum, in this argument, Kaufman now has the keys.