The Flameless Burning of Books

My friend Trog Davis recently posted a blog entitled, The New American Oligarchy in which he worries that Amazon winning the right to operate the U.S. Intelligence Community’s cloud computing system may have unintended consequences. Davis raises questions about firewalls between data Amazon the retailer possesses and data Amazon, the spy-world cloud-computing operator, will have.

Amazon’s technological prowess is great. Its system for selling everything from e-books to shoes is a digital age marvel. The Amazon distribution system is superior to virtually all other retailers including Walmart and they have patented various e-commerce processes such as the one-click purchase. Although it sells many items, Amazon is at heart a technology company and that technical expertise clearly attracted the intelligence community.

So what does Amazon know and what will it learn? Currently, e-books make up approximately 30% of all book sales according to Forbes Magazine. Amazon’s Kindle e-books account for about 65% of those sales. Amazon’s effect on brick and mortar bookstores has been dramatic. Only half as many bookstores exist today than did 20 years ago. Amazon is by far the largest seller of used books in the country and because it tracks all those book purchases, it has more data on reading habits than anyone.

Knowing what books we read is only part of the story. Already some e-books can communicate with their creator, i.e. Amazon and other e-book publishers. They will know where you stopped reading, what portions you re-read, underlined, or highlighted. Kindle e-books even tell Amazon when you read. Some e-book publishers have announced plans to share this data with writers who can then write to the data. You like particular items in a fight scene, re-read it a couple times and you will see a similar scene in other books in the genre. Highlight a kinky sex act in your erotica and it will start the next porno craze.

Authors “writing to the data” is not the end of the world. Democracy will survive bad fiction, but not the limiting of ideas. Ray Bradbury’s classicFahrenheit 451 pondered a world where firemen burned books to keep the population quiescent while the rest of the populations watched vacuous program after program on “the wall”. The wall allowed the powers that be to watch citizens as they watched the wall.

Bradbury’s vision is chillingly close to fulfillment. Ubiquitous cell phones track our movements, while we blithely exchange grumpy cat pictures on Facebook. Our tweets detail our interests 140 characters at a time--all fodder for the “intellicloud” Davis speaks of.

So how easy would it be to burn books in such a world? Well, Amazon already has loner programs that delete your Kindle e-book after 30 days. Bothersome books could disappear with a keystroke.