"The books stopped working" is a fantastic writing prompt for a dystopian novel.
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I’ll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you."
"I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt."
- Ubik, Philip K Dick, 1969
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7444685-the-door-refused-to...
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/presenting-shoetool-happ...
It pains me because he's just so utterly correct on the things he writes and wrote about.
> Dan would eventually find out about the free kernels, even entire free operating systems, that had existed around the turn of the century. But not only were they illegal, like debuggers—you could not install one if you had one, without knowing your computer's root password. And neither the FBI nor Microsoft Support would tell you that.
Shoutouts to the UEFI secure boot fiasco.
Little did we know that they'd just use the same game over and over for years. Look at GTA 5.
In fact [blank] is a fantastic writing prompt for a dystopian novel, seems like a fun little game to play with friends.
Weird to think a book burning could happen right under our noses (literally!) without us even realizing.
Oh and it is already happening with adverts in some streaming movies.
There are several more cases of books being remotely disabled and I see this being used for censorship before long.
...Noted
From [Libertarian Police Department](https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...)