I love books; I love reading them, writing them, and having them.
In the Taiwanese school system, we had to memorize Chinese classics of history, philosophy, and poetry. When children inevitably complained, teachers and parents would admonish us to remember the purges of the Qin dynasty (秦, ca. 200 BCE, not to be confused with the 清 dynasty, romanized 'Qing'; I will leave the angry Pin-Yin rant for another day).
Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of the Qin dynasty, accomplished many great deeds--'great' as in 'large', not as in 'good'. He unified China, standardized the Chinese script, and connected fortifications built by various warlords into what we know as the Great Wall. Like many 'great' rulers, he was also a mass-murdering, megalomaniacal tyrant.
Aside from killing pretty much anyone suspected of disagreeing with him, Qin Shi Huang also ordered books that might be used to question his regime burned, and those who studied them buried alive. Scholars risked their lives protecting the proscribed texts--carrying them into exile, hiding them, or committing them to memory.
Thus, our elders argued, we should cherish the freedom of our time, but always remember that tyrants exist in every age. If we studied hard, we could, make it impossible for the next tyrant to destroy the knowledge of our ancestors. As a child, I took their words at face value and dutifully memorized the classics. The idea of becoming a sort of living library appealed to my young imagination.
As soon as I had any disposable income, I became a hoarder of books. From the very start, I knew this would cause problems. I never seemed to have enough shelf space or money to feed my hunger for books. I made concerted efforts to avoid book stores, to little avail.
Discovering the intersection of ebooks and the public domain saved both my wallet and the sanity of my housemates. I got the original Amazon Kindle, and used it constantly despite all of its flaws. Since the Kindle went the way of all hardware, I do a great deal of reading on my Android phone, and avoid paper books unless I have no digital recourse.
I have forgotten much of what I memorized in primary school, but not the lessons on censorship I learned from Qin Shi Huang. Moreover, I know now that digitization and open distribution of books has far greater potential for protecting knowledge than storing information 'in the meat'.
Over the next few months, I intend to clean up some novels and short stories I have written and put them in the public domain. I could wax philosophical about intellectual property and all that, but in the end this was largely an emotional decision.
I love books; I love reading them, writing them, and sharing them.
In the Taiwanese school system, we had to memorize Chinese classics of history, philosophy, and poetry. When children inevitably complained, teachers and parents would admonish us to remember the purges of the Qin dynasty (秦, ca. 200 BCE, not to be confused with the 清 dynasty, romanized 'Qing'; I will leave the angry Pin-Yin rant for another day).
Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of the Qin dynasty, accomplished many great deeds--'great' as in 'large', not as in 'good'. He unified China, standardized the Chinese script, and connected fortifications built by various warlords into what we know as the Great Wall. Like many 'great' rulers, he was also a mass-murdering, megalomaniacal tyrant.
Aside from killing pretty much anyone suspected of disagreeing with him, Qin Shi Huang also ordered books that might be used to question his regime burned, and those who studied them buried alive. Scholars risked their lives protecting the proscribed texts--carrying them into exile, hiding them, or committing them to memory.
Thus, our elders argued, we should cherish the freedom of our time, but always remember that tyrants exist in every age. If we studied hard, we could, make it impossible for the next tyrant to destroy the knowledge of our ancestors. As a child, I took their words at face value and dutifully memorized the classics. The idea of becoming a sort of living library appealed to my young imagination.
As soon as I had any disposable income, I became a hoarder of books. From the very start, I knew this would cause problems. I never seemed to have enough shelf space or money to feed my hunger for books. I made concerted efforts to avoid book stores, to little avail.
Discovering the intersection of ebooks and the public domain saved both my wallet and the sanity of my housemates. I got the original Amazon Kindle, and used it constantly despite all of its flaws. Since the Kindle went the way of all hardware, I do a great deal of reading on my Android phone, and avoid paper books unless I have no digital recourse.
I have forgotten much of what I memorized in primary school, but not the lessons on censorship I learned from Qin Shi Huang. Moreover, I know now that digitization and open distribution of books has far greater potential for protecting knowledge than storing information 'in the meat'.
Over the next few months, I intend to clean up some novels and short stories I have written and put them in the public domain. I could wax philosophical about intellectual property and all that, but in the end this was largely an emotional decision.
I love books; I love reading them, writing them, and sharing them.
No comments:
Post a Comment