Satire

Kindle Sense Crimes

Control your emotions or suffer the Paperwhite Kindle Kata

Photo by Ilya Shishikhin on Unsplash

In the first years of the 21st century…

So begins Equilibrium, the super cool movie that earned Christian Bale the role of Batman. If you haven’t seen it, you should.

The story conflict of Equilibrium centers around what the Grammaton Clerics call “sense crimes” — observing anything that causes you to feel emotion. It was determined that the ability to “feel” is what caused violence among humanity. Take away the capacity to feel, establish world peace.

Easy peasy.

A real-world Equilibrium

While we have physical books, we maintain control of our knowledge — it’s hard to censor what’s on someone’s shelf. But what if we give in to the Digital Age? I mean, completely turn everything over to it.

Wouldn’t that give an oppressive government the ability to change our books without us even knowing? Is it possible that such a thing could eventually lead to suppression of all emotionally engaging content?

Could we be allowing a future where “Kindle Clerics” hunt us down for our “sense offenses”?

I’m ready to enter the Amazon Monastery and learn to use the Paperwhite Tablet Kata. Because when caught in a web, I’d rather be the hunter than the hunted.

What about you? Spider or fly?

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