Digital Barbarism by Mark Helprin (bookreader .TXT) 📗

responsibilities, and the illusion embraced by modern man that he controls both the world and his fate. The clash over copyright is a perfect armature for a critique of digital barbarism, as it is a case study central not only to the subject but to the passions it engenders and the consequences as they are felt or yet to be felt. Should the foes of copyright prevail, civilization, though it will survive, will, even if they don’t know it, change radically and not for the better. And even if as is likely the bulk of them don’t know it, their movement—and it is a movement, replete with foundations, interest groups, and funding—is merely part of a much larger offensive of ancient pedigree. It is a perfectly representative and unsurprising manifestation of the collective versus the individual, of central direction versus local decision, of concentrated powers versus dispersed powers, of the large corporation versus the sole proprietor, of the combine versus the artist, of the industrialist versus the smallholder. They may think not, but you cannot claim to protect the little man while simultaneously liquidating the few rights by which he protects himself against the whiplash of the mass. They claim Jefferson because his passions made him a radical, but his passions made him a radical in defense of the yeoman, the small farmer, the individual. I claim Jefferson because his passions and ultimately his reason were natural and humane—and he wrote like an angel.

Although there is hardly a shortage of anecdote in the pages below, there is a design. We survey the broad prospect ahead, and then enter a bloody and ongoing battle—mole against mole, tooth against tooth, all in darkness and mud—and then rise to float progressively higher and higher, in clear air over a brightly colored landscape, looking out over the forces arrayed in mutual opposition. There we calmly observe, assess, and comment, and then, at the end, descend once again to the fray. For although we may have risen, we are still obligated and responsible to the battle as it is now being fought, for this is our time, and we have no other.

CHAPTER 1

THE ACCELERATION OF TRANQUILITY

Civilization and Velocity

History is in motion as never before, and those moving with it are so caught up that they do not always see its broad outlines. Like soldiers in a rout, they seek objectives that will ruin them rather than the principles that may save them. Who are these soldiers? They are all of us. And what are the principles? If you search the past, hindsight makes them easy to see, but in the brightness of the present they are almost invisible. Still, it is possible to catch a fleeting glimpse of them, even if only as alterations in contrast.

In that spirit, consider the two paradigms that follow, not as you would two debaters, but rather two paintings hanging at opposite ends of a gallery. You are in the middle, bathed in natural light, forced by circumstance to judge their color and attraction.

I.

AUGUST 2028, CALIFORNIA

You are a director of a small firm that supplies algorithms for the detection of damage in and the restoration of molecular memories in organic computation. Previously, you specialized in repairing the cosmic ray degradation of atomic lattices in gallium arsenide nanorobotics, but the greater promise of organic replication and the lure of photon interlinking led you in a new direction.

You raised $2 billion, most of which was devoted to the purchase of computers and laser armature looms for the growth and manipulation of organic compounds. Though your entire company is housed in a single 40,000-square-foot facility and has only ninety employees, it records assets of $9 billion and annual revenues of $32 billion.

All transactions are accomplished through data links—licensing, sales, billing, remittances, collections, investments. A customer can make a purchase, receive your product, and pay you as fast as he can speak orders to his computer. As the algorithms begin immediately to work for him, the money you’ve earned begins immediately to work for you, in, perhaps, Czech dormitory bonds that compound interest hourly. You go to your headquarters mainly for picnics, and otherwise work at home, as does your wife, who is a partner in a law firm in Chicago, where she has never been. In her study and in yours are floor-to-ceiling screens that produce three-dimensional images so vivid they appear real. Your best friend has grown rich writing the software that serves as your secretary. The preparation of documents is done by voice in another program, and the secretary concentrates instead on planning, accounting, arranging your schedule, and screening what used to be called calls but are now more or less apparitions.

You instruct the secretary to allow your wife’s apparition to override all others. She is at a beach in Alaska (it is a bit warmer now), where you will shortly join her. Recently, you and she have quarreled. In virtual sex, in which you both wear corneal lenses that create a perfect illusion of whomever you might want, she discovered that you were entertaining not a commercial prostitutional apparition but an old girlfriend. Hence her early departure for the Aleutians.

But this is August, the season of vacations, and you and she are bound to make up. You will take a twenty-minute suborbital flight to Alaska, where you will spend several days at the beach in a primitive resort with no screens. Still, you have a backup of e-mail despite a recent tightening of your rejection protocols and a new investment in automated-reply software, the chief disadvantage of which is that, when in conversation with other automated-reply software, it tends to get overly enthusiastic. You were dismayed lately when you discovered that it and another ARS were building a golf course in Zimbabwe, but there is software for controlling it, and software for controlling the software that controls this, and so on and so forth.

Though seventy-five messages