Imagine a world where we can all live together in peace and spend our time in leisure however we want. Where we can live in plenty without toil or scarcity. Where no one is selfish, and everyone is friends. It's an ancient dream that still calls to us just like it called to people long ago.
Doctorow's world didn't strike me as very utopian. I have books that I love and reread repeatedly, some of which are out of print and could not easily be replaced. I have framed original art on my walls. One of the incidents in Doctorow's story makes it clear that there is no reliable security of possession in walkaway society, and that there is simply Nothing To Be Done when things are taken away, because walkaway society does not value "things." That strikes me as an inhumanity that I would be desperately eager to avoid. There is no peace in a society where I am not permitted to have my own personal treasures.
That's one possible case, yes, but it's not the one I was thinking of. I was more concerned with objects which, if the originals were lost, taken, or destroyed, would not be available from replicators, because their patterns were never input into the relevant databases. For example, I have three copies of Donald M. Kingsbury's Courtship Rite---one in French translation, two in English---but I bought all of them used; it has been allowed to go out of print and no ebook version has been released (ebooks being our time's analog of a book's having been scanned into a replicator). That's part of my reason for owning more than one copy! This isn't what I would call a "sentimental" concern; it's a concern for copies being available at all.
In Doctorow's world, on one hand, if I have a copy of Courtship Rite, I can print another copy, or so it seems. But on the other hand, if someone walks off with my copy, or takes it and rips it up, there's no assurance that I can find the file to print it from. And there doesn't seem to be any assurance that people won't take away my copy, or even take away all my copies, because walkaway society doesn't recognize a right of secure possession.
Rather than take up space here, let me mention that the review site Black Gate has my review of Courtship Rite in their queue for publication sometime this month; that will tell you a lot of what I think about it.
In brief, though, Courtship Rite is my favorite science fiction novel, and one of my favorite novels of any genre or era. It was one of those books I just fell into at first reading. After my review comes out, I'm quite willing to discuss it if you care to.
Insightful point about why it works with open source software but not in the world of materials. (Duplicability)
"This might sound like Marx's claim that human nature is completely malleable."
Marx never made any such claim. I have addressed this here:
https://marxbro1917.substack.com/p/scott-alexander-is-very-wrong-about
Scott Alexander seems to bear a lot of responsibility for spreading this falsehood about Marx.
If you're going to claim something about Marx's views you should use a primary source. Not a blogger who skimmed a book by Peter Singer.
Doctorow's world didn't strike me as very utopian. I have books that I love and reread repeatedly, some of which are out of print and could not easily be replaced. I have framed original art on my walls. One of the incidents in Doctorow's story makes it clear that there is no reliable security of possession in walkaway society, and that there is simply Nothing To Be Done when things are taken away, because walkaway society does not value "things." That strikes me as an inhumanity that I would be desperately eager to avoid. There is no peace in a society where I am not permitted to have my own personal treasures.
That's one possible case, yes, but it's not the one I was thinking of. I was more concerned with objects which, if the originals were lost, taken, or destroyed, would not be available from replicators, because their patterns were never input into the relevant databases. For example, I have three copies of Donald M. Kingsbury's Courtship Rite---one in French translation, two in English---but I bought all of them used; it has been allowed to go out of print and no ebook version has been released (ebooks being our time's analog of a book's having been scanned into a replicator). That's part of my reason for owning more than one copy! This isn't what I would call a "sentimental" concern; it's a concern for copies being available at all.
In Doctorow's world, on one hand, if I have a copy of Courtship Rite, I can print another copy, or so it seems. But on the other hand, if someone walks off with my copy, or takes it and rips it up, there's no assurance that I can find the file to print it from. And there doesn't seem to be any assurance that people won't take away my copy, or even take away all my copies, because walkaway society doesn't recognize a right of secure possession.
Well, that would be kind of a long answer.
Rather than take up space here, let me mention that the review site Black Gate has my review of Courtship Rite in their queue for publication sometime this month; that will tell you a lot of what I think about it.
In brief, though, Courtship Rite is my favorite science fiction novel, and one of my favorite novels of any genre or era. It was one of those books I just fell into at first reading. After my review comes out, I'm quite willing to discuss it if you care to.