Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Coming Of (electronic) Age

Finally, former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs, "The Singapore Story" and "From Third World To First", are now available in electronic book format. In the author's note to the eBook edition, Lee wrote, "It is my hope that the experiences of my generation find relevance with a generation that grew up with digital literacy and technology."

Lee once said he will call it a day when the retelling of his experiences and stories can fit into a thumbdrive. Capacities for thumbdrives are now in the order of gigabytes (GB), yet the nonagenarian was last seen leading a team for the Tanjong Pagar Group Representation Constituency (GRC) in the 2011 elections. Maybe they were trying to physically squeeze two hard cover volumes into a tiny solid state device. It may sound ridiculous, but we are dealing with folks like his son who recently declared that the "human society was not designed with the Internet age in mind."

The eBook format takes the wind out of that argument. The 2 volumes of Hitler’s Mein Kampf take up only 1 megabyte (mb), 7 books of the Harry Porter series add up to 6 mb, and the Oxford Complete Works of Shakespeare occupy only 7 mb of disk space. Even “The Untold Story of Mao” by June Chang and Jon Holliday, which includes 1780 pages of text and photographs, require only 6 mb of storage. It is doubtful all of Lee’s books can even fill up a 2 GB thumb drive.

Produced and sold under licence from Singapore Press Holdings (who else?) which owns the publication rights, the memoirs started retailing at $34.99 each from major e-book distributors from Monday 25th August. It's cheaper online. But you can't use it as an expensive door stop.

13 comments:

  1. You have your doubts. You have your suspicions. Now you have the confirmation that the PM, like his father, have eugenic tendencies. We are "designed" for this and for that. Makes a mockery of the latest talk about degrees not being necessary. Just a political gimmick, with the next GE looming?

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  2. Sorry, I will give this e-book a miss, given the advice from the son about the Internet. I don't want to be seduced by all these thoughts, and be deluded that we know everything, and that everything is the truth. Heaven forbid that I may cause the society to fracture and be unable for us to move forward together.

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    1. Lee Hsien Loong: "Satisfied people don't have time to go onto the Internet. Unhappy people often go there."

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    2. Maybe pinkie's quote about unhappy people go to internet for satisfaction can also be: 'only perverts crave for sex with gorgeous partners, satisfied people marry .... intelligence'?

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  3. Just wonder whether he updated his memoirs to say that he never imagined or least expected that the foreign talents we have imported were such talents at shitting all over Singapore ?

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  4. PAPigs selling "koyok" on the internet.

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  5. Oops! How come thumbdrive capacities grew so fast?
    Now he has to find more things to write and that's why he is still in business, I guess.

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    1. LKY should encourage ordinary folks to give him suggestions on what to write before he bites the dust. Other than "what's wrong with collecting more money ?" I propose he can add a few chapters on what's wrong with making only one son the PM ? what's wrong with letting only one daughter-in-law run Temasek ? what's wrong with bankrupting a few political opponents and locking them up? And what's wrong with my staying on to help my son manage the lives of everyone on this island ?

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  6. The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.
    --Benjamin Franklin

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  7. /// Lee once said he will call it a day when the retelling of his experiences and stories can fit into a thumbdrive. ///

    He also once said "over my dead body" when asked whether casinos should be allowed in Singapore.

    The son also said Singapore will abolish the ISA once Malaysia do so. Well, Malaysia has already done so.

    Looks like politicians words are worth their weights in .......

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  8. It does not matter in the end.

    Everyone dies in the end.

    Cannot bring your material wealth over anyway.

    So kinda pointless for oneself in the end...you have one life to make the most of it...to leave something good for the welfare and future of man-kind behind...here we have a bunch of self serving mortal parasites more interested in the short term than the long term.


    Nuts.

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  9. Too bad...This cradle of life is becoming un-liveable at the rate things are going.

    Man is supposed to leave this single cradle of life.

    Man is not born to die on Earth.


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  10. It is certainly bad to be cursed and despised as traitor and known as tyrant was in power.

    It is definitely worse to leave infamy in written forms or be recorded in history as such.

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