Tech It Slow
“The online retailer Amazon.com has introduced a feature that lets users search for specific words or phrases in a database of the texts of 120,000 books, drawing skepticism from an authors' group. The feature, called Search Inside the Book, lets anyone see a few pages of each book in which the phrase appears. Registered users can see up to 20 pages of a book at a time.”
--New York Times, Oct. 27, 2003
One of the most difficult issues for Americans to grapple with, besides abortion, euthanasia and just what is real about reality TV, is the premise that because something can be invented, it should be.
The current administration has overthrown more environmental protection laws than any other in U.S. history so that business can flourish. Let the free market dictate what should exist and what should not! Which is why Amazon.com has invented Search Inside the Book, a search feature on their Web site which enables the consumer, according to the Authors Guild, to download and print out up to 100 pages of text.
Thus, many nonfiction authors will find that people may search, not buy their books. Why is Amazon.com risking a loss in book sales? Search me. It may have to do with the fact that Amazon now sells everything from music to electronics to apparel. So, why not print out that section of a textbook, biography, cookbook or travel guide, screw the author in a publishing industry increasingly paying them less money and then assuage your guilty conscience by buying some Amazon.com edible underwear for a loved one?
The prevailing attitude is sell or be killed. The movie studios trying to stop sending out screeners to Academy members and critics is a bold move to enhance the profits of studios with weak classics divisions, at the cost of independent film companies which have so small a market share, the only thing they can count on is getting award nominations and hoping for the best.
I’m disgustedly amused that, for example, the Navy can invent and use directed energy weapons which harm whales underwater, without any ethical review, but when there is talk about cloning humans, people see double and start frothing like they have rabies.
This nation, which professes to be not only freedom loving but the most humanitarian in its governance, needs to create a Technology Ethics Review Board, to explore the ramifications of building gas guzzling behemoths that tip over and prevent you from seeing around them, or new weapons for the police or military using microwave technology to turn your eyeballs to glue.
“Anything we think of we should be able to market.” Not if it’s lead in paint. Tris in pajamas. Carcinogens in food. And depleted uranium on shells causing disease in those in the American military lucky enough to survive the uncertainties of battle.
I’m not anti-progress. You have no idea how pleased I am to note all the new flavors of Pop-Tarts. But if the free market is about money and not responsibility, not those inalienable rights we’re supposed to have, find another phrase for it. Call it the Super Market. And admit, as a lot of Americans are finding out right now, your health and well-being are your problem, not America’s.
(Originally published in Entertainment Today)
