nuance

There was a flap in too few blogs earlier this week over an announcement that Amazon had acquired a patent on a "Method and apparatus for programmatically substituting synonyms into distributed text content". In an attempt to mark e-books to track where illegal copies come from, Amazon will randomly substitute synonyms for the original words in eBooks. Each eBook sold could have slightly different substitutions so that the specific substituted words in illegal copies would point directly to who bought the version the copies were made from. The flap was from a few writers claiming any altering of text was wrong: texts were crafted artifacts with nuance of the art turning on exact phraseology. Why is it that anyone would need to explain this? Maybe they'll be able to subtly alter harmonics as a way of branding music downloads, too? Most people don't read on the level that the author wrote and few listen on the level that musicians play, so who would notice, right?

I'll freely admit that nuance sometimes doesn't make a difference. Store brands often work just fine. But we aren't talking about toilet paper here. We're talking about the vestiges of deeply felt and deeply expressed human sensibilities that have evolved right along with our erect stance and large brain pan. Nuance is important. Maybe everyone won't notice, but they have a right, more, an obligation, to try.

Perhaps someone will realize that this sort of system might be used to change high volumes of potentially sellable student papers enough to pass through Turnitin? Perhaps that will rally some indignation? Well. Something should.