Re: Amazon, 1984, "I, Robot"

Here's my understanding; let's assume for the sake of argument it's  
correct. Amazon's managing tens of thousands of titles. An oldish but  
famous book with complex copyright status was made available for sale  
via a channel that hadn't secured proper rights. Probably because the  
book was famous and of real commercial value, it got noticed. Amazon  
cancelled the sale, and due to the electronic characteristics of the  
sale was able to pull the book back, removing it from purchaser's  
Kindles. Amazon promptly refunded the money, so purchasers are not  
financially hurt. A small number of purchasers suffered a small  
amount of annoyance and inconvenience.

This is a sort of Rorschach test.

If you view it as a pure consumer business issue, it's a molehill.  
Amazon didn't do anything terrible.

What arouses indignation is that we're frogs sitting in a slowly- 
heating cooking pot, and we've suddenly felt the twinge of pain.

The biggest effect of cheap digital networked electronics is not a  
thousand HD channels or the ability to play games on our iPhones. It  
has been a fundamental change in the power relationship between us  
and the machines we "own." Electronics are so cheap that every device  
in our world is now a robot. Even my 9-month-old's grandchild's toys  
have music-playing, light-flashing chips in them. And who controls  
these robots?

The science fiction writers, from Capek to Asimov anyway, got it  
wrong. The robots in the classic stories were always either acting in  
their own interests--projection of the universal master's fear of  
what the servants might do. Or, in Asimov's case, they were acting in  
rabbinically subtle understandings--or misunderstandings--of the  
master's interests.

In reality, we increasingly live in a world of robots whose loyalty  
is neither to us nor to themselves, but to outside interests. The  
machine on my desk feels less and less like "my" computer, and more  
and more like a rented terminal controlled by the modern-day  
equivalent of "the telephone company."

The ultimate line in a score of magazine article on the future of  
intelligent machines was always "of course, you can always unplug  
them." Look how far from true that is today! I can do it, but in a  
thousand little ways they train me psychologically not to.

a) When I turn them off, they always carp in a surly way and ask me  
again if I really mean it. HAL asking Dave, "Are you sure?"

b) If I just push the power button, they don't turn off, they just  
"go to sleep." I have to stand there holding that button for some  
annoyingly long and undefined length of time to turn them off.

c) When I try to turn my PC off, it often insists on installing a  
bunch of updates first. "Shut down." "Yes, yes, yes, I will when I  
get around to it in a few minutes, but I have to do this first." At  
work the power went out, and a colleague whose machine was on a UPS  
tried to shut it down. It started installing updates, and was still  
at it five minutes later when the battery on his UPS pooped out!

d) If my Mac is turned off, it turns itself on again in time to  
record my favorite radio programs. (Yes, _of course_ I told it to do  
that, but still!)

e) If I physically unplug the machine and everything isn't just  
absolutely right, when I start it up again it will give me a stern  
little lecture and a ten-minute "timeout." Yes, it pretends it is  
checking the disk drive, but I'm convinced that it's just shaping my  
behavior and teaching me never, never, never to unplug it.

Who controls our machines?

The phenomenon of "pulling back" stuff we thought we had has now had  
numerous examples. DVRs constantly change their capabilities. Amazon  
exercises remote control over Kindles. Many years ago GEMStar eBook  
owners trying to download books over the phone line received a  
firmware update which disabled the device's ability to accept  
unprotected content.

We're boiled frogs because the companies who, more and more, control  
the robots in our lives are smart enough not to abuse the privilege.  
It passes largely unnoticed, or as a minor nuisance.

Even the botnets that are run by the really bad guys are like a good  
parasite that doesn't kill the host. Our machines may be working on  
behalf of overseas credit-card thieves, but it bothers us less than  
the slowdown caused by the latest legitimate software update!

Meanwhile, us nerdy types who see what's going on can't effectively  
raise the alarm, because the actual harm that's being done now is so  
tiny and trivial that complaining about it makes us look like  
obsessive jerks.

The question is not whether Amazon did something terribly injurious  
to a few disappointed customers who thought they'd bought a bargain  
book. It's not even comparable to (say) the injury suffered when an  
online store cancels an order made at an erroneously-low price.

The question is the nature of a "sale" in the digital age, and  
whether companies should be allowed to build devices with the sort of  
ex-post-facto power the Kindle has to undo what, according the common  
understanding of centuries, should have been irrevocable.






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