[Avodah] People of the E-Book? Observant Jews Struggle With Sabbath in a Digita (from Areivim)

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 11:05:22AM -0500, Hankman wrote:
:                                     (I do not think the refresh cycle of the 
: computer screen makes it any less permanent as the image persists in the 
: phosphors (crt) or lcd and is seen as a persistent, continuous image by the 
: eye).

I would agree that a letter that is repeatedly refreshed faster than
the eye can see is persisting.

(BTW, CRTs have a flicker between refreshes. The dots of the phosphors
are fading by the time they're redrawn. LCDs do not flicker, so the
letters really persist.)

However, the image on a Kindle doesn't need refreshing altogether. It
will stay on screen until something else is drawn on the screen. If you
shut off screen saver, it might even last longer than pencil on paper.
A CRT or normal LCD needs power to stay on.

Would hitting "next page" on a Kindle be assur derabbanan, and only
assur deOraisa if you shut off the screen saver?

About the whole issur derabbanan thing... One isn't actually drawing
osios. Shades of the discussion of writing the Torah by stencil. Add
that to the basic issue being temporary writing and thus derabbanan,
and would that reduce the problem of kesivah to being shevus dishvus?

(Keeping in mind that all of the above is hypothetical until some future
Sanhedrin points out that many electronic devices, including an ebook
reader that does not generate light and isn't plugged in to the wall,
do not fit the earlier discussions of the topic.)

Running off on a tangent:
: OTOH, the response by RYS is equally problematic to me. I do not think that 
: the permanence of the (sequential) bits in RAM will turn this into an image 
: to which mechika can apply. These bits do not for form an image, nor is the 
: physical location of these bits on the RAM relevant to forming the image as 
: would be the case for pixels on a screen or bits of ink on a page, nor are 
: they themselves visible...

Assuming the bits were visibly large, I started wondering about defining
tzuras ha'os.

Is a sheim written in Kesav Ivri qadosh? Two letters in Ivri is kesivah
in terms of melakhah, because two letters in Latin are. If someone draws
two random shapes and then makes up an alphabet in which those two shapes
are letters, was he oveir? (And if so when -- when he drew them, or when
he elevated them to osios?)

What about two letters encoded in "zebra stripes" (bar coding) or some
other visual record of bits? Does it make a difference if the person
actually knows the digital encoding of the letters, or if they just look
like random stripes?

Etc...

Bottom line issue: I'm not clear on the envelope of the concept of "os"
in general, and in particular how it would relate to bit sequences.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Rescue me from the desire to win every
micha at aishdas.org        argument and to always be right.
http://www.aishdas.org              - Rav Nassan of Breslav
Fax: (270) 514-1507                   Likutei Tefilos 94:964