Digital barbarism

I'm 40 percent done reading the new book by Mark Helprin, "Digital Barbarism" (Kindle Edition). Reading is probably not the right word for it, as the activity here is the mental equivalent of forcing my way through a very thick and prickly underbrush in a swampy forest. It is mostly due to his writing style: dense, convoluted, opaque. I find myself having to frequently re-read his meandering sentences to get at the point he is trying to make. It is quite ironic that at the origin of this book lies a New York Times editorial by Mr. Helprin , in which he proposed extending the term of copyright considerably, and for which he was viciously attacked in comments and blogs. He complains of having been grossly misunderstood, and never having advocated extending the period of copyright protection to infinity, as implied by his attackers. Yet what he wrote in the original article was this: "Congress is free to extend at will the term of copyright. It last did so in 1998, and should do so again, as far as it can throw."  When read extremely carefully (probably more than once), there is nothing in these sentences that explicitly says "forever", and really nobody, not even US Congress, can throw anything into infinity. But can you blame scores of people for reading into these sentences  a desire for infinite extension? Yes, it may be a leap of logic, but a tiny one. And that's the problem with Mr. Helprin: his writing lacks precision, is embellished by his wordsmithing to a point of ambiguity. Some people will claim that he writes beautifully; I'd say, yes, inasmuch as rococo architecture can be considered beautiful.

Aside from my frustration with its language,  there is also the fact that this book is a long, tiresome tirade against the modern world. Mr. Helprin gives a tip of his hat to a few good things modern technology has brought, like improvements in medicine, but this is barely noticeable in the thicket of his million complaints, including things as trivial (OK, silly) as the substitution of pen and paper with the computer as the writer's primary tool. (I am fully cognizant of the irony of my reading his book on Kindle, the latest incarnation of the "machine" he seems to despise...). 

All in all, this book has been a huge disappointment so far, all the more that I basically agree with many of his points, and share his fear  that the support beams of our culture are being turned into dust by swarms of vicious, insatiable termites, whose damaging power is amplified by technology. There are several species of these termites, with different names, including: the Open Source "movement", music "sharing" networks, Creative Commons, etc, but with the same endgame in mind: replacing our property-based society with one based on the old, utopian ideal of "contribute what you can, take what you need". (Given our imperfect nature, this ideal very quickly degenerates into "contribute as little as possible, grab as much as you can get away with", resulting in economical and societal deterioration. XX century has given us plenty of examples of that pathway, but some people still think they can do it better "next time".) 

We're very much in need of powerful, precise critics of all that is wrong with the new, "digital" culture, and by golly, there is plenty: from the above mentioned termites, to the sense of entitlement with no bounds ("I want, therefore I am. I am, therefore I shall have"); to the worship of mob rule hidden behind oxymorons like "wisdom of the crowds" or "smart mobs"; to the maniacal tearing down of livelihoods and entire industries, of which newspapers are the latest victim. This criticism, however, cannot be just a temper tantrum, but has to be able to see this unfolding transformation from more than one angle; after all, neither the music industry, nor the newspaper business are entirely blameless in bringing their own demise. Unfortunately, Mr. Helprin is not that kind of critic, and  that's OK, as long as his failure on this front does not discourage others.