*I blame Cory Doctorow for the collapse of Western literature! Yes, at last, names are named, credit where credit is due!
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/19/fiction-2043-digital-revolution-china
"The complex cultural peace that followed the end of the digital revolution in 2032 mirrors the economic reconstruction of Europe after the second world war. Just as the United Nations was created in 1945 to "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war", culture is now safeguarded by international law, born out of a multilateral commitment to ensure that "this must never happen again". In 2043 the world is rediscovering and rebuilding the art of "fiction" – the production of "new texts" – which had ceased in the "lost decade" of the 2020s.
"You might think the digital revolution ended with a rising of the masses, with demonstrations against those who had allowed the west to become culturally bankrupt, with a noble struggle on the barricades in the name of saving fiction, but sadly this was not the case. The masses could not have cared less that they were now consuming billions of bite-sized chunks of derivative user-generated content, machine-made mass-culture manufactured by media conglomerates. Consumers in the west continued to do what they had been taught to do – accumulate as much content as they could for as little money as possible and to hell with the consequences.
"The masses did not rise to rescue culture from the end days of free-market capitalism, and neither did the leftist intelligentsia or the free-speech liberals. Instead it emerged that these western intellectuals had been exploited as useful idiots to infiltrate, demoralise and demonetise the west – the culmination of a KGB plan that had been in effect since the cold war. Stalinists and Khruschevists encouraged writers such as Doris Lessing, George Bernard Shaw and HG Wells to subvert western culture with disruptive propaganda and recruited hippie/Maoist students to infiltrate American campuses and demoralise the west through sexual liberation and anti-establishment protests.
"Looking back from 2043 a clear line can be drawn from the 60s revolutionaries of cultural Marxism to the creators of the digital revolution, the filesharers, hackers and dot.communists who saw themselves as "revolutionaries" fighting capitalism.
"Was Cory Doctorow furthering the aims of the Chinese government during the digital revolution? ... the writer Cory Doctorow. Photograph: Peter Dejong / Associated Press (((even has a pic! And his parents were leftist Canadians!)))
"These useful idiots who proliferated in the decade after 2013 – among them many activists promoting unlimited file-sharing and the end of copyright – had unwittingly pushed the west into economic decline, leaving it vulnerable to economic takeover by an aggressive, authoritarian, communist state – one which would abolish "internet freedom" forever. By 2032, a destitute west accepted the terms and conditions of the post-digital peace as proposed by the new world leader: China. The joke really was on the dot.communists, whose "manifesto" had been intended somewhat ironically, and on creative-commons evangelists such as Cory Doctorow who felt they were determining the "future of the future" by giving their books away for free.
"Such "visionaries" had, without realising it, been working (without pay) for the Chinese ministry of state security...."
