UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion

No surprise here.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology...

I think he's pointing out something that others have been saying for a while, but saying it more clearly.

On one level it might make things easier. You die and your children don't have such a big house clearance problem, they just cancel your Amazon account and everything disappears.
Mind you, if you're dealing with the estates of people who were heavily into streaming books, video, music etc, then the sensible thing might well be to take a first step of emptying and closing ALL their bank accounts, or you might find that the various providers will just continue 'providing' and deducting the money from the accounts.
And whoever is trying to wind up the estate will almost certainly not have a clue as to who the deceased has accounts with.

I think we are seeing signs that the age of collecting is coming to an end. Increasingly the next few generations will own fewer books, music, films. And while that might sound like we are losing something, the good news is that the concept of ownership will be replaced by borrowing or leasing.

The grey-haired amongst us are programmed to collect things and so we feel the loss of our collections particularly hard. But the idea of ordinary folk collecting entertainment is a relatively recent phenomenon - from the 1930s for books, from the 1950s for recorded music, from the 1980s for films.

Before that, unless you were very rich you borrowed your books from the library and you relied on live performances, broadcasts and cinemas for your music and movies.

The future will be more about instant access to media that you don't own but can get at easily. Why own a collection of, say, a couple of thousand books when you can have access to an online collection of millions?

So, yes, the article is right. We are moving away from the idea of keeping permanent collections that we can pass down to our kids. We might be horrified, but our kids might actually prefer the new way of accessing books, films, music.

Of the vast collections of films and books some of us have, or used to have, how many did we watch or read more than once, truthfully? Perhaps a small handful, in my case.

Music is different, I suppose.

The digital age is going to be so very interesting.

Those collections are also worth very little. Apart from any collectibles you might have, most of our books, CDs and DVDs are worth a fraction of what we paid for them.

They are taking up space, they use scarce resources to produce, we usually don't go back to them after we have bought them and they aren't worth much. So why exactly do we have these collections?

I think it's largely because of conditioning and marketing, just as we are conditioned to own property instead of renting. It doesn't have to be like this.

I was delighted when ebooks came along and I could stop cluttering the house with paperbacks! and the evidence of my book-buying habit is now fairly well hidden... However, all available space is now being colonised by my other craft obsessions, mainly fabric. And when I pop my clogs all the craft stuff will be donated to schools and groups - it isn't about monetary value, it's just the sheer pleasure of creating things rather than owning things.

From my perspective (IT sceptic that feeds off it) I am fascinated by the number of corporations that are dependent upon Amazon's survival and largesse.

I'm not talking about books or films here, I'm talking about their Cloud servers. Whilst they are convenient and cheap to acquire and use, if Amazon collapses (Remember: they've never made a profit) those companies will die.

With my disaster recover hat on, I keep telling clients that 50% of companies that suffer a IT disaster do not survive the experience.

The collapse of Amazon would cause a Worldwide recession. Even the rumour of it would do that.

I can imagine that Amazon might end up being nationalised, or taken over by another company under government supervision (probably more than one government)

It isn't just Amazon Geoff. I have concerns about several of my clients who have migrated all their accounting packages into Cloud Servers.

What will happen to them if the server crashes? I keep saying - take local backups, but do people listen?

In my experience, nobody takes backups seriously until they lose some data. I know, I have to clear it up. The stories I could tell.

I know I'm different from my family, all bookworms, but husband and daughter love to re-read and treasure their books and e book reads. I don't, I seldom read a story again, even if I've marvelled at it. I only collect to keep reference books, cookery or gardening etc and those now aren't used as much as I tend to look online for identifying a plant or checking a recipe.

Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "In my experience, nobody takes backups seriously until they lose some data. I know, I have to clear it up. The stories I could tell."

I had a crash four years ago. Now I take it very seriously.

Will wrote: "Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "In my experience, nobody takes backups seriously until they lose some data. I know, I have to clear it up. The stories I could tell."

I had a crash four years ago. Now I take it very seriously."

It's a very focussing moment, without doubt, and something that can be so easily avoided. All my data, everywhere in the house, is in two places, and in most cases mirrored as well. To say I'm paranoid about it, is probably an understatement.

There is something quite pleasant about being able to point to a good bookcase full of weighty tomes, rather than have everything reduced to one's and zeroes.

R.M.F wrote: "There is something quite pleasant about being able to point to a good bookcase full of weighty tomes, rather than have everything reduced to one's and zeroes."

Amen brother :-)

A book is a joy to hold, whilst a Kindle is, at best, just another disposable - and that's how Amazon sees its customers.

Careful Will. All your reviews will disappear if Amazon hears you.

True, though isn't it? Will's point is accurate - Kindle purchases are indeed NOT outright purchases, just licenses to access the material for a specific term and if you upset Amazon and they decide not to maintain your account, everything can be taken away immediately, however much you have spent with them.

Maybe I'm too materialistic?

No, I think you're being absolutely correct Will.
We've seen Amazon make arbitrary decisions before. A mate of mine has just had his Amazon shop frozen because he's not had enough feedback and has been told by Amazon to email every customer to demand that they give him feedback

(Note is isn't he has had bad feedback, it's just people aren't bothering to give any feedback at all)

So I can quite easily see a situation where Amazon's automatic systems decide somebody is a sock puppet and just lock their account and let the person try to prove they're real
Probably to an American court :-(