Digital Marxism? Book says we have surrendered too much of our lives to our screens

[taglines]

Get ready for a potentially controversial book, coming mid-2010.

Back in 2006, William Powers, a national media critic who lives on Cape Cod in eastern Massachusetts, wrote a 75-page paper titled "Hamlet's BlackBerry: Why Paper Is Eternal" that was published by a Harvard think tank, and it still available online as free pdf read. In fact, it available at the link below if you go to the extra icon.

Powers' longform essay caught the attention of publishers in New York, and with a major change in emphasis, a book will be published in July and titled "Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age."

Note the new subtitle. According to Powers, the book will bear no resemblance to the long journalism piece that led to the book deal, and is not even about paper. According to Powers, "The book is about managing life in our connected world, and the need for a new philosophy."

Here's the link to the publisher's web page:
http://www.harpercollinscatalogs.com/harper/527_1300_313837383333.htm

The HarperCollins pre-publication publicity says of the book: "A crisp, passionately argued polemic that challenges the sacred dogma of the digital age -- the more we connect through technology, the happier we are -- and offers a new, practical philosophy for life in a world of screens."

More from the PR department: "At a time when everyone, from big businesses to ordinary individuals, is trying to make sense of their connected lives, 'Hamlet's Blackberry' presents a bold new paradigm for understanding the devices that now demand so much of our time and attention. Written in a lively, engaging style, 'Hamlet's BlackBerry' shows how our computers and mobile devices are changing the way we think, feel, and relate to others. While these technologies are tremendously helpful, they are also becoming our greatest burden, making it harder for us to focus and think clearly, do our best work and achieve the depth and fulfillment we crave."

And this: "'Hamlet's BlackBerry' argues that we've surrendered too much of our lives to our screens, by following a philosophy the author calls Digital Maximalism. He offers an alternative approach that any individual or organization can use to manage their connectedness more wisely. Drawing on the ideas of some of the most brilliant thinkers in the history of human connectedness, from Socrates to Shakespeare and Ben Franklin to Marshall McLuhan, this new philosophy proceeds from the simple notion that connectedness serves us best when it'ss offset by its opposite, disconnectedness. There are ways to strike a healthy balance between the two, and Hamlet's BlackBerry shows how, using concrete examples from everyday life."

[taglines]

LINK for original 75 page paper in pdf version, free:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3562724/Ha...per-Is-Eternal

[Kali Yuga]

Well, I'm getting started on the essay. So far it's written reasonably well, and it may have some good points.

But I must say, that reading an essay subtitled "Why Paper is Eternal" in PDF format on a laptop strikes me as rather amusingly ironic...

[Not_A_Crook]

This is getting out of hand more then the whole videogames violence debacle, I never wanted to say this.

[taglines]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

But I must say, that reading an essay subtitled "Why Paper is Eternal" in PDF format on a laptop strikes me as rather amusingly ironic...

Ha, yes. But wait, later in the essay he comes out and says he likes digital life too. He is not anti-digitial. Just talks about the early history of paper, codex, scrolls, manuscripts etc.....but he also sees the light!

And the book is very different from the essay. Essay mirrored 2006 ideas and culture; the book will mirror 2010 ideas and culture....

[boydcarts]

so which is it? Digital Marxism . . . or Digital Maximalism?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by boydcarts

so which is it? Digital Marxism . . . or Digital Maximalism?

Thank you for asking - I was about to ask the same question myself .

[Donnageddon]

Dan, Dan seems to read digital marxism into the author's Digital Maximalism.

Why? Because it is more likely to make his single issue horse appear alive.

[taglines]

i didn't write this book...... William Powers did.....he used the phrase....i never heard of it before......... what horse?.....which color?.....a horse of different color? ...but okay, sure change the subject...... [smile]

[Donnageddon]

Dan Dan, you titled your post "Digital Marxism". The HarperCollins PR department blurbs you posted refer to the authors use of the term "digital maximalism".

You are trying to get attention by using the more outrageous term "digital marxism".

Since a moderator decided to place your post on the front page, I guess you succeeded.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by taglines

i didn't write this book...... William Powers did.....he used the phrase....i never heard of it before......... what horse?.....which color?.....a horse of different color? ...but okay, sure change the subject...... [smile]

No, that wasn't the question. The article you link to uses the phrase "Digital Maximalism". What we are asking is why you have chosen to change it to "Digital Marxism" - a very different thing.

[Ea]

I think it's a typo.

[zerospinboson]

...making it harder for us to focus and think clearly, do our best work and achieve the depth and fulfillment we crave.

Mankind must really be masochistic.
"The Depth we crave?" Our best work, which we really want to do but can't because we cannot focus our desires on what we want to do? There seems to be some linguistic confusion here. Either we want something or we don't. We might want to want something, but that's a different matter. What the blurb seems to be saying is that we have a first-order desire to want to work, whereas it's really arguing that we should want this, which is an entirely different point. (A lot more preachy, too.) Sigh.

PS. I suspect that this is where the typo came from

[orwell2k]

Sounds interesting, but I couldn't be bothered with signing up for scribd and all the other hoops I had to jump through to download the original PDF, so I googled for a link - here it is, I hope there's no problem with sharing it here:

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/...d39_powers.pdf

You can also search for it here:

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/publications/

[zerospinboson]

To quote a bit from The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind

Originally Posted by James Boyle

Out of this pattern of habit and influence, and out of much deeper notions about authorship and invention that I have explored elsewhere, developed an ideology, a worldview. Call it maximalism. Its proponents sincerely believed in it and pursued it even when it did not make economic sense. (Think how lucky the movie industry is that it lost the Sony case.) It has been the subject of this book. Its tenets are that intellectual property is just like physical property, that rights need to increase proportionately as copying costs decrease, and that, in general, increasing levels of intellectual property protection will yield increasing levels of innovation. Despite its defense of ever-increasing government-granted monopolies, this ideology cloaks itself in the rhetoric of free markets. The bumbling state, whose interventions in the economy normally spell disaster, turns into a scalpel-wielding genius when its monopolies and subsidies are provided through intellectual property rights rather than regulatory fiat. Above all, this way of seeing the world minimizes the importance of creativity, expression, and distribution that takes place outside its framework and ignores or plays down the importance of the input side of the equation—the need to focus on the material from which culture and science are made, as well as the protected expression and inventions made from that raw material.