The Digitalisation of Books

Hi All.

Weird topic isn't it? I didn't really expect to write an entire post about books but here we are.

I find books to be very interesting, they're a bit like a window into another human's mind in a way. This includes fiction books as well as the non-fiction ones, fiction allows a person to see the kind of plots that another person can construct in their own heads. As for the non-fiction books, excluding books like dictionaries and encyclopaedias, people get to see an explanation to another person's life, which I find fascinating. If you find books fascinating as well, great! This is the post for you.

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Link: artsboston.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Open-Book.jpg

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When we look at books, and we read through them, they act like a reference that we can constantly refer back to, they are unalterable sources of information. And so it should be. Can you imagine waking up tomorrow and your copy of your psychology textbook or your copy of "Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone" having pages of information altered? It would be a confusing thing to see. The idea of books is that they are a bit like a snapshot of time, a book is written by someone from their perspective in a certain period of time, and then in the future, the people born later can see the mindset of someone from the past.

And that, is my introduction to books ladies and gentleman.

Now that I've given a long explanation of books and why I think they are very significant, I'm going to finally discuss the title of this post. That being the digitalisation of books.

And to anyone reading, the digitalisation of books is actually a much bigger idea to think about than you may have ever previously thought.

If there's anyone reading who has read the book 1984, you will be familiar with the ministry that Winston works in. If you don't, no worries, I'll fill you in. In short, Winston the main character worked in a ministry called the Ministry of Truth which concerned itself with the destruction of old newspapers, old information that disagreed with the party's current information. They basically altered history.

And that's the thing.

I believe that the digitalisation of books is actually a step towards this reality.

A digital version of a book can be altered. It can be changed. It can be edited to be more politically correct perhaps, or edit out information inside that disagrees with the current narrative of the establishment.

As an example of this I want to point to, not a book, but a TV show. I'm sure many would recall when Bill Nye's show cut out a segment on gender in the reruns of the show. Not an accident, but intentionally done to fit with the current narrative.

It's a bit of a stretch, sure. But what if this started happening with books? What if the information written inside books than have been published are available as an ebook, but some things are cut out?

Maybe this is a far fetched silly idea of mine, and I'll realise how silly this sounds. But maybe it might happen. And I fear for the future when any book that's written can just be edited to fit with current standards of society.

An idea like that would be Orwellian in nature, and would be a terrifying thought.