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BEN BRYNMOR FOWLER
Currently living in Ebisu, Tokyo. A lover of city living & city walking, cinema, music, fiction, currently writing a PhD on contemporary theatre in Britain and Germany, and developing an intense relationship with apple gadgets.

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Jonathan Franzen warns ebooks are corroding values | Books | guardian.co.uk

“Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.”

For serious readers, Franzen said, “a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience”. “Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change,” he continued. “Will there still be readers 50 years from now who feel that way? Who have that hunger for something permanent and unalterable? I don’t have a crystal ball. But I do fear that it’s going to be very hard to make the world work if there’s no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government.”

“If you go to Europe, politicians don’t matter. The people making the decisions in Europe are bankers,” he said. “The technicians of finance are making the decisions there. It has very little to do with democracy or the will of the people. And we are hostage to that because we like our iPhones.”

- I can’t agree. Yet more misdirected liberal rhetoric. Instead of positing the Kindl as the ultimate source of all evil (or at least political apathy and the failures of democracy) why not turn attention towards how we better educate people to think for themselves, to become interested, empowering them to manage their own use of technology. I know that devices like these actually make me better informed, more knowledgeable, they aren’t merely malignant tools of mindless distraction. 
I will always love books. Their smell, their weight, feeling the thickness of how many pages you’ve got left. But I actually love them more for their FRAGILITY. They accrue scars over time, bent out of shape, warped, folded, scribbled on, watermarked, burnt. In contrast, you actually can’t cut and paste, delete things or otherwise manipulate e-books. In a way, they are more permanent - existing independent to the ravages of time or the destructive impulses of a reader. But with e-books you can highlight, annotate, even find definitions of words without leaving the page - something that’s definitely expanded my world. 
Technology has already become one of the tools of a new generation to create permanent, lasting change in the world. As well as being one of the platforms for people to engage with Franzen’s ideas in the first place. And I am a serious reader!
fiction e-books
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