Tag Archives: Taiwan

The ‘Queen’s Head” in Yehliu Geopark (Taiwan) and nanotechnology

http://focustaiwan.tw/news/asoc/201505250028.aspx

http://focustaiwan.tw/news/asoc/201505250028.aspx

As you can see, the Queen’s Head rests on a thin (and getting thinner) neck. This thinning is cause for consternation in Taiwan as a May 25, 2015 news item on the focustaiwan.tv website notes,

The “Queen’s Head,” the most famous rock formation in Yehliu Geopark, faces an uncertain fate despite an all-out effort to prevent its thinning neck from snapping, the North Coast & Guanyinshan National Scenic Area said Monday.

Kuo Chen-ling (郭振陵), the secretary-general of the scenic area administration, said Monday that experiments done on four mushroom rocks near the Queen’s Head have found that nanotechnology can prevent erosion, but it still has some drawbacks that have yet to be overcome.

In the experiments done over the past nine months, nanotechnology has proven that it could reinforce the queen’s neck and delay the weathering process, Kuo said.

But it has also caused the rocks to whiten and slivers of the rocks’ surfaces to break off amid the dramatic changes in temperature, moisture and sunshine on the North Coast, he said.

An August 29, 2014 news item on the China Post website gives a description of the attempted remedy,

The Tourism Bureau began preparations Thursday for repairs on the iconic Queen’s Head rock formation at Yehliu Geopark in New Taipei, in a bid to protect the popular tourist attraction from further erosion.

Capitalizing on the sunny weather, which is essential to an experiment on how best to preserve the rock, a group of specialists led by Hsieh Kuo huang, a professor at National Taiwan University’s Institute of Polymer Science and Engineering, injected various nano-sealants into four less-popular rock formations with a similar structure to the Queen’s Head.

The team has coded the rocks A, B, C and D and applied different treatments to them to compare the results.

Comprised of nano-sealant mixed with gravel, the remedy can help resist winds up to 250 kilometers per hour and magnitude-7.0 earthquakes, according to the Tourism Bureau.

I’m sorry the first tests were not more successful and I hope they will be able to find a solution in time.

This project reminded me of a European Union (EU) project where they too were attempting to save important stone structures, from my Oct. 21, 2014 posting,

… an Oct. 20, 2014 news item on Nanowerk,

Castles and cathedrals, statues and spires… Europe’s built environment would not be the same without these witnesses of centuries past. But, eventually, even the hardest stone will crumble. EU-funded researchers have developed innovative nanomaterials to improve the preservation of our architectural heritage.

“Our objective,” says Professor Gerald Ziegenbalg of IBZ Salzchemie, “was to find new possibilities to consolidate stone and mortar, especially in historical buildings.” The products available at the time, he adds, didn’t meet the full range of requirements, and some could actually damage the artefacts they were meant to preserve. Alternatives compatible with the original materials were needed.

For those interested in more, there are details about the EU project the product, CaLoSil, that the scientists devised, and links to more resources in my post.

Are you sure my artificial muscles don’t smell like onions?

A May 5, 2015 news item on ScienceDaily highlights some research on artificial muscles from the National Taiwan University,

Just one well-placed slice into a particularly pungent onion can send even the most seasoned chef running for a box of tissues. Now, this humble root vegetable is proving its strength outside the culinary world as well — in an artificial muscle created from onion cells. Unlike previous artificial muscles, this one, created by a group of researchers from National Taiwan University, can either expand or contract to bend in different directions depending on the driving voltage applied.

A May 5, 2015 American Institute of Physics (AIP) news release by Laurel Hamers,  which originated the news item, describes the research goals,

“The initial goal was to develop an engineered microstructure in artificial muscles for increasing the actuation deformation [the amount the muscle can bend or stretch when triggered],” said lead researcher Wen-Pin Shih. “One day, we found that the onion’s cell structure and its dimensions were similar to what we had been making.” Shih lead the study along with graduate student Chien-Chun Chen and their colleagues.

The onion epidermis — the fragile skin found just beneath the onion’s surface — is a thin, translucent layer of blocky cells arranged in a tightly-packed lattice. Shih and his colleagues thought that onion epidermal cells might be a viable candidate for the tricky task of creating a more versatile muscle that could expand or contract while bending. To date, Shih said, artificial muscles can either bend or contract, but not at the same time.

The researchers treated the cells with acid to remove the hemicellulose, a protein that makes the cell walls rigid. Then, they coated both sides of the onion layer with gold. When current flowed through the gold electrodes, the onion cells bent and stretched much like a muscle.

“We intentionally made the top and bottom electrodes a different thickness so that the cell stiffness becomes asymmetric from top to bottom,” said Shih. The asymmetry gave the researchers control over the muscle’s response: a low voltage made them expand and flex downwards, towards the thicker bottom layer. A high voltage, on the other hand, caused the cells to contract and flex upwards, towards the thinner top layer.

“We found that the single-layer lattice structure can generate unique actuation modes that engineered artificial muscle has never achieved before,” said Shih.

To demonstrate their device’s utility, the researchers combined two onion muscles into a pair of tweezers, which they used to pick up a cotton ball. In the future, they hope to increase the lifting power of their artificial muscles. “Our next step is to reduce the driving voltage and the actuating force,” said Shih.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Onion artificial muscles by Chien-Chun Chen, Wen-Pin Shih, Pei-Zen Chang, Hsi-Mei Lai, Shing-Yun Chang, Pin-Chun Huang and Huai-An Jeng. Appl. Phys. Lett. 106, 183702 (2015); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4917498

This appears to be open access.

The science behind a firefly’s glow

A Dec. 17, 2014 news item on Nanotechnology Now describes research into the phenomenon of bioluminescence and fireflies,

 Fireflies used rapid light flashes to communicate. This “bioluminescence” is an intriguing phenomenon that has many potential applications, from drug testing and monitoring water contamination, and even lighting up streets using glow-in-dark trees and plants. Fireflies emit light when a compound called luciferin breaks down. We know that this reaction needs oxygen, but what we don’t know is how fireflies actually supply oxygen to their light-emitting cells. Using state-of-the-art imaging techniques, scientists from Switzerland and Taiwan have determined how fireflies control oxygen distribution to light up their cells. The work is published in Physical Review Letters.

A Dec. 17, 2014 EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) news release on EurekAlert provides more description of the work,

The firefly’s light-producing organ is called the “lantern”, and it is located in the insect’s abdomen. It looks like a series of tubes progressing into smaller ones and so one, like a tree’s branches growing into twigs. The function of these tubes, called, is to supply oxygen to the cells of the lantern, which contain luciferase and can produce light. However, the complexity of the firefly’s lantern has made it difficult to study this mechanism in depth, and reproduce it for technological applications.

Giorgio Margaritondo at EPFL, Yeukuang Hwu at the Academia Sinica and their colleagues at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan have successfully used two sophisticated imaging techniques to overcome the complexity of the firefly lantern and map out how oxygen is supplied to light-emitting cells. The techniques are called synchrotron phase contrast microtomography and transmission x-ray microscopy. They can scan down to the level of a single cell, even allowing researchers to look inside it.

By applying these techniques on live fireflies, the scientists were able to see the entire structure of the lantern for the first time, and to also make quantitative evaluations of oxygen distribution.

The imaging showed that the firefly diverts oxygen from other cellular functions and puts it into the reaction that breaks up luciferin. Specifically, the researchers found that oxygen consumption in the cell decreased, slowing down energy production. At the same time, oxygen supply switched to light-emission.

The study is the first to ever show the firefly’s lantern in such detail, while also providing clear evidence that it is optimized for light emission thanks to the state-of-the-art techniques used by the scientists. But Margaritondo points out another innovation: “The techniques we used have an advantage over, say, conventional x-ray techniques, which cannot easily distinguish between soft tissues. By using an approach based on changes in light intensity (phase-contrast) as opposed to light absorption (x-rays), we were able to achieve high-resolution imaging of the delicate firefly lantern.”

Here’s an image illustrating the work,

Tomographic Reconstruction of Part of the Firefly Lantern;  This detailed microimage shows larger channels branching into smaller ones, supplying oxygen for the firefly's light emission. The smallest channels are ten thousand times smaller than a millimeter and therefore invisible to other experimental probes: this has prevented scientists so far to unlock the mystery of firefly light flashes. Credit: Giorgio Margaritondo/EPFL

Tomographic Reconstruction of Part of the Firefly Lantern; This detailed microimage shows larger channels branching into smaller ones, supplying oxygen for the firefly’s light emission. The smallest channels are ten thousand times smaller than a millimeter and therefore invisible to other experimental probes: this has prevented scientists so far to unlock the mystery of firefly light flashes. Credit: Giorgio Margaritondo/EPFL

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Firefly Light Flashing: Oxygen Supply Mechanism by Yueh-Lin Tsai, Chia-Wei Li, Tzay-Ming Hong, Jen-Zon Ho, En-Cheng Yang, Wen-Yen Wu, G. Margaritondo, Su-Ting Hsu, Edwin B. L. Ong, and Y. Hwu. Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 258103 – Published 17 December 2014 DOI:  http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.258103

This paper is behind a paywall.

Taiwan and its nanotechnology patents

In an Oct. 2, 2013 news item by Chung Jung-feng and Y.L. Kao for the Focus Taiwan [online] News Channel, an unnamed industry expert claimed Taiwan is ranked fourth-top in the world in terms of the number and share of granted nanotechnology patents in 2012,

With the opening of the 2013 Taiwan Nano Week and Exhibition at the Taipei World Trade Center Wednesday, an industry expert said Taiwan is ranked fourth-top in the world in terms of the number and share of granted nanotechnology patents in 2012.

Wu Chung-yu, head of the National Program on Nanotechnology (NPNT), said that nanotechnology is expected to be a main driver for the technology industry.

Wu said that currently, the European Union, the United States, Germany, Japan and South Korea are mapping out plans for the development of nanotechnology by 2020.

According to the news item, Taiwan’s NPNT currently holds 1500 patents. The government has invested almost NT$14.5B since 2009 in 860 nanotechnology transfer projects in the NPNT’s second phase (1st phase was 2003-2008).

I was not able to find any statistics that directly supported the contention that Taiwan is the fourth largest holder of patents worldwide but there was an intriguing paper, Nanotechnology Patent Survey: Who Will Be the Leaders in the Fifth Technology Revolution? by Carey C. Jordan, Iona N. Kaiser, and Valerie C. Moore,, which puts Taiwan in 5th place for patents (tied with Canada and Great Britain at 3%) in a 2011 list featuring countries only (p. 3 PDF, p. 124 print)). Also in 2011, a Taiwanese company, Hon Hai Precision Industry (computers and electronics), placed 3rd in a list of 25 top assignees in nanotechnology patent literature (p. 4 PDF; p. 125 print).

Electronic paper from Taiwan

I have Taiwan and its Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) on my radar this week. After announcing the results of their Global Nano contest, they announced a breakthrough for electronic paper technology. From the Oct. 10, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute), Taiwan’s largest and one of the world’s leading high-tech research and development institutions, introduces i2R e-Paper™, the first electronic paper technology to provide a re-writable, re-usable and environmentally friendly recyclable print medium — an “electronic paper” — to reduce traditional paper consumption. ITRI will receive a “2011 R&D 100 Award” from R&D Magazine next week for this breakthrough technology.

i2R e-Paper™ can be manufactured in a variety of sizes. It will limit waste on short-lived business initiatives such as advertising banners, corporate visitor ID badges, transit passes, and museum or parking lot tickets. In the future, the technology may be used for producing digital books and pictorials without restriction on length, wall banners, large size electronic bulletin boards and other innovative applications. It is highly flexible and bendable.

Here’s a little more information about the technology,

i2R e-Paper™, whether note card or banner roll size, does not consume electricity to maintain an image. To print and change content, users simply need a thermal printer fitted with a thermal head. Heat generated from the thermal head uses minimal power consumption and interacts with the environmentally friendly composition of the e-Paper to capture an image. Re-using the i2R e-Paper™ is as easy as putting it back into any thermal printer device. The old image is removed and replaced with a new one — no ink, no toner and no paper are consumed.

ITRI’s patented cholesteric liquid crystal technology is not the same cholesterol generally referred to in the biomedical industry, but rather has a structure similar to cholesterol molecules. Cholesteric liquid crystal is a reflective display technology. It utilizes ambient light sources from the external environment to display images, does not require any backlighting and doesn’t consume power in maintaining the display of content or diagrams. The cholesteric liquid crystal can produce red, green and blue colors by adding different pitch spherical composite ion-exchangers to produce different colors. It is also one of the future display materials for color e-books.

It’ll be interesting to see if businesses and consumers accept this new technology. ITRI is licensing i2R e-Paper™ in Taiwan and is in talks with interested US companies, according to the news item.

I first wrote about electronic paper in my May 1, 2009 posting where, inevitably, Neal Stephenson’s book Diamond Age is mentioned along with one of that year’s breakthroughs.

University of Waterloo wins 2nd prize in Global Nano Innovation Contest

Cameron Chai’s Oct. 11, 2011 news article about a Global Nano Innovation contest mentions the University of Waterloo (located in Ontario, Canada),

The second prize has gone to the University of Waterloo for its work titled ‘Nanosensors for X-ray Radiation Dosimetry in a Wireless Network’ and NASA received the third prize for its work titled ’A Nano Chemical Sensor in a Cell Phone’.

1st prize went to IBM for its entry, Graphene Nanoelectronics: Wafer Scale Single Atomic Layer Carbon RF Devices and Circuits.

The contest was initiated by Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute and coordinated by their POP (Prototype On Prototype) division. From the POP website describing the contest,

Overview

The 2011 Global Nano Innovation Contest–Prototype on Prototype was initiated by Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). In addition to the support from a number of institutions in different countries, both National Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Program (NNP), and Taiwan Nanotechnology Industry Development Association (TANIDA) are severed [sic] as the co-organizers.

The organizers will provide 3-minute videos demonstrating the process of creating a prototype from the concept to final manufacturing based on nanotechnology. The videos are provided as templates for the contestants, but mainly as points of reference.

In the upcoming Global Nano Innovation Contest, participants can submit their own ideas based on concepts from the video to create and design their own products. You may integrate any of the prototypes into a more sophisticated system or application with potential commercial value, which is the spirit of prototype on prototype (POP).

Goals

  • Develop nanotechnology prototyping capability for practical applications with universal appeal.
  • Emphasize higher, system-level integration of prototypes, to spur the creation of a wider diversity of high-value nanotechnology applications.
  • Establish an international platform promoting collaboration on nanotechnology.

Organizers

Initiating organizer:

  • Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI)

Co-organizers:

  • Taiwan National Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Program office (NNP)
  • Taiwan Nanotechnology Industry Development Association (TANIDA)
  • National Chiao Tung University (NCTU)
  • National Chung Cheng University (CCU)
  • National Nanotechnology Center, NSTDA,Thailand (NANOTEC)

Congratulations to all the winners!

From the bleeding edge to the cutting edge to ubiquitous? The PaperPhone, an innovation case study in progress

This story has it all: military, patents, international competition and cooperation, sex (well, not according to the academics but I think it’s possible), and a bizarre device – the PaperPhone (last mentioned in my May 6, 2011 posting on Human-Computer Interfaces).

“If you want to know what technologies people will be using 10 years in the future, talk to the people who’ve been working on a lab project for 10 years,” said Dr. Roel Vertegaal, Director of the Human Media Lab at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. By the way, 10 years is roughly the length of time Vertegaal and his team have been working on a flexible/bendable phone/computer and he believes that it will be another five to 10 years before the device is available commercially.

Image from Human Media Lab press kit

As you can see in the image, the prototype device looks like a thin piece of plastic that displays a menu. In real life that black bit to the left of the image is the head of a cable with many wires connecting it to a computer. Here’s a physical description of the device copied from the paper (PaperPhone: Understanding the Use of Bend Gestures in Mobile Devices with Flexible Electronic Paper Displays) written by Byron Lahey, Audrey Girouard, Winslow Burleson and Vertegaal,

PaperPhone consists of an Arizona State University Flexible Display Center 3.7” Bloodhound flexible electrophoretic display, augmented with a layer of 5 Flexpoint 2” bidirectional bend sensors. The prototype is driven by an E Ink Broadsheet AM 300 Kit featuring a Gumstix processor. The prototype has a refresh rate of 780 ms for a typical full screen gray scale image.

An Arduino microcontroller obtains data from the Flexpoint bend sensors at a frequency of 20 Hz. Figure 2 shows the back of the display, with the bend sensor configuration mounted on a flexible printed circuit (FPC) of our own design. We built the FPC by printing its design on DuPont Pyralux flexible circuit material with a solid ink printer, then etching the result to obtain a fully functional flexible circuit substrate. PaperPhone is not fully wireless. This is because of the supporting rigid electronics that are required to drive the display. A single, thin cable bundle connects the AM300 and Arduino hardware to the display and sensors. This design maximizes the flexibility and mobility of the display, while keeping its weight to a minimum. The AM300 and Arduino are connected to a laptop running a Max 5 patch that processes sensor data, performs bend gesture recognition and sends images to the display. p. 3

It may look ungainly but it represents a significant step forward for the technology as this team (composed of researchers from Queen’s University, Arizona State University, and E Ink Corporation) appears to have produced the only working prototype in the world for a personal portable flexible device that will let you make phone calls, play music, read a book, and more by bending it. As they continue to develop the product, the device will become wireless.

The PaperPhone and the research about ‘bending’, i.e., the kinds of bending gestures people would find easiest and most intuitive to use when activating the device, were presented in Vancouver in an early session at the CHI 2011 Conference where I got a chance to speak to Dr. Vertegaal and his team.

Amongst other nuggets, I found out the US Department of Defense (not DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] oddly enough) has provided funding for the project. Military interest is focused on the device’s low energy requirements, lowlight screen, and light weight in addition to its potential ability to be folded up and carried like a piece of paper (i. e., it could mould itself to fit a number of tight spaces) as opposed to the rigid, ungiving borders of a standard mobile device. Of course, all of these factors are quite attractive to consumers too.

As is imperative these days, the ‘bends’ that activate the device have been patented and Vertegaal is in the process of developing a startup company that will bring this device and others to market. Queen’s University has an ‘industrial transfer’ office (they probably call it something else) which is assisting him with the startup.

There is international interest in the PaperPhone that is collaborative and competitive. Vertegaal’s team at Queen’s is partnered with a team at Arizona State University led by Dr. Winslow Burleson, professor in the Computer Systems Engineering and the Arts, Media, and Engineering graduate program and with Michael McCreary, Vice President Research & Development of E Ink Corporation representing an industry partner.

On the competitive side of things, the UK’s University of Cambridge and the Finnish Nokia Research Centre have been working on the Morph which as I noted in my May 6, 2011 posting still seems to be more concept than project.

Vertegaal noted that the idea of a flexible screen is not new and that North American companies have gone bankrupt trying to bring the screens to market. These days, you have to go to Taiwan for industrial production of flexible screens such as the PaperPhone’s.

One of my last questions to the team was about pornography. (In the early days of the Internet [which had its origins in military research], there were only two industries that made money online, pornography and gambling. The gambling opportunities seem pretty similar to what we already enjoy.) After an amused response, the consensus was that like gambling it’s highly unlikely a flexible phone could lend itself to anything new in the field of pornography. Personally, I’m not convinced about that one.

So there you have a case study for innovation. Work considered bleeding edge 10 years ago is now cutting edge and, in the next five to 10 years, that work will be become a consumer product. Along the way you have military investment, international collaboration and competition, failure and success, and, possibly, sex.

E-readers: musings on publishing and the word (part 2 of 3)

While the debates rage on about tablets versus e-readers and about e-ink vs LCD readers and about Kindle vs Nook and other e-reader contenders, there are other more fundamental debates taking place as per articles like E-reading: Revolution in the making or fading fad? by Annie Huang on physorg.com,

Four years ago Cambridge, Mass.-based E Ink Corporation and Taiwan’s Prime View International Co. hooked up to create an e-paper display that now supplies 90 percent of the fast growing e-reader market.

The Taiwanese involvement has led some observers to compare e-reading to the Chinese technological revolution 2,000 years ago in which newly invented paper replaced the bulky wooden blocks and bamboo slats on which Chinese characters were written.

But questions still hang over the Taiwanese-American venture, including the readiness of the marketplace to dispense with paper-based reading, in favor of relatively unfamiliar e-readers.

“It’s cockamamie to think a product like that is going to revolutionize the way most people read,” analyst Michael Norris of Rockville, Maryland research firm Simba Information Co. said in an e-mail. Americans use e-books at a rate “much, much slower than it looks.”

I don’t know that this constitutes proof that Micheal Norris is right (ETA Sept. 21, 2010, this Techdirt article Don’t Be Confused By Amazon’s Ebook Sales Claims by Mike Masnick cites research that supports Norris’ claim) but the essay E-reader revolt: I’m leaving youth culture behind by Emma Silvers certainly suggests that not all of the younger (Millenial) generation is necessarily as enamoured of e-readers and associated techno gadgets as is commonly touted,

At 26, I’m part of a generation raised on gadgets, but actual books are something I just refuse to give up

One recent story in the New York Times went so far as to claim that iPads and Kindles and Nooks are making the very act of reading better by — of course — making it social. As one user explained, “We are in a high-tech era and the sleekness and portability of the iPad erases any negative notions or stigmas associated with reading alone.” Hear that? There’s a stigma about reading alone. (How does everyone else read before bed — in pre-organized groups?) Regardless, it turns out that, for the last two decades, I’ve been Doing It Wrong. And funny enough, up until e-books came along, reading was one of the few things I felt confident I was doing exactly right.

o is my overly personal, defensive reaction to the e-reader boom nothing more than preemptive fear of the future, of change in general? I’d like to think I’m slightly more mature than that, but at its core my visceral hatred of the computer screen-as-book is at least partially composed of sadness at the thought of kids growing up differently from how I did, of the rituals associated with learning to read — and learning to love to read — ceasing to resemble yours and mine. Nine-year-olds currently exist who will recall, years from now, the first time they read “Charlotte’s Web” on their iPads, and I’m going to have to let that go. For me, there’s just still something universal about ink on paper, the dog-earing of yellowed pages, the loans to friends, the discovery of a relative’s secret universe of interests via the pile on their nightstand. And it’s not really hyperbole to say it makes me feel disconnected from humanity to imagine these rituals funneled into copy/paste functions, annotated files on a screen that could, potentially, crash.

I doubt I’m the only one, even in my supposedly tech-obsessed generation, who thinks this way.

Well, maybe Silvers is a minority but there is at least one market sector, education texts, that e-readers don’t seem to satisfy as Pasco Phronesis (David Bruggeman) in an August 12, 2010 posting notes evidence that e-readers are less efficient than regular books,

Edward Tenner (who you should be following on general principle) at The Atlantic gathers some findings that suggest e-readers are less effective than regular books from an efficiency perspective – something that matters to readers concerned with educational texts. Both in terms of reading speed and the distraction of hypertext links, e-Readers are not the best means to focus on whatever text you’re trying to read.

Those problems may be remedied with a new $46M investment in Kno, Inc. (from the Sept. 8, 2010 news item on physorg.com),

Founded in May 2009 and short for “knowledge,” Kno is developing a two-panel, touchscreen tablet computer that will allow users to read digital textbooks, take notes, access the Web and run educational applications.

“Kno is gearing up to launch the first digital device that we believe will fundamentally improve the way students learn,” said Osman Rashid, Kno’s chief executive and co-founder.

Rashid said the funding will “help us continue to deliver on our product roadmap and ultimately deliver on our vision to bring innovative digital technology to the world of education.”

Still, there’s another downside to e-readers as per this item, Reminder: You Don’t Own Your Ebooks; Amazon Locks Customer Out And Doesn’t Respond To Help Requests by Mike Masnik on Techdirt,

We’ve pointed out in the past that if you’re “buying” ebooks on devices like the Kindle or the iPad, it’s important to remember that you’re not really “buying” the books, and you don’t really own them. We’re seeing that once again with a story on Consumerist about a woman who was locked out of the ebooks on her Kindle for a month:

In fact, they can do a lot more than just lock you out of your account they can delete books that you’ve purchased as Amazon did with books such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and The Virtue of Selfishness, and some of the Harry Potter books. Apparently, these titles were illegally uploaded which is why Amazon removed them. Farhad Manjoo’s Slate essay Why 2024 Will Be Like Nineteen Eighty-Four; How Amazon’s remote deletion of e-books from the Kindle paves the way for book-banning’s digital future on these incidents explores the implications,

The worst thing about this story isn’t Amazon’s conduct; it’s the company’s technical capabilities. Now we know that Amazon can delete anything it wants from your electronic reader. That’s an awesome power, and Amazon’s justification in this instance is beside the point. As our media libraries get converted to 1’s and 0’s, we are at risk of losing what we take for granted today: full ownership of our book and music and movie collections.

Most of the e-books, videos, video games, and mobile apps that we buy these days day aren’t really ours. They come to us with digital strings that stretch back to a single decider—Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, or whomever else. … Now we know what the future of book banning looks like, too.

Consider the legal difference between purchasing a physical book and buying one for your Kindle. When you walk into your local Barnes & Noble to pick up a paperback of Animal Farm, the store doesn’t force you to sign a contract limiting your rights. If the Barnes & Noble later realizes that it accidentally sold you a bootlegged copy, it can’t compel you to give up the book—after all, it’s your property. The rules are completely different online. When you buy a Kindle a  book [sic], you’re implicitly agreeing to Amazon’s Kindle terms of service. The contract gives the company “the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue the Service at any time, and Amazon will not be liable to you should it exercise such right.” In Amazon’s view, the books you buy aren’t your property—they’re part of a “service,” and Amazon maintains complete control of that service at all times. Amazon has similar terms covering downloadable movies and TV shows, as does Apple for stuff you buy from iTunes.

I certainly like owning my books and the idea that some unseen individual might decide to remove access with the click of a few keystrokes certainly gives me pause. As for whether or not people are using e-readers and their ilk, I have more about that along with my thoughts on these debates and what’s happening with ‘the word’ in part 3.