{"id":107,"date":"2003-06-06T00:33:44","date_gmt":"2003-06-06T04:33:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/?p=107"},"modified":"2003-06-06T00:33:44","modified_gmt":"2003-06-06T04:33:44","slug":"down-and-out-in-the-magic-kingdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/?p=107","title":{"rendered":"Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Cory Doctorow<\/a>‘s SF novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom<\/i><\/a> (also downloadable for free<\/a>), death, scarcity, and mandatory work have been eliminated. The network is direct-wired into your brain, and mortality is averted by backing up your brain, and downloading it as needed into a new clone body. People spontaneously cooperate–well, most of the time–and wealth isn’t measured by money, but by your reputation among your peers. Doctorow imagines a society in which many of the last decade’s utopian fantasies about new technology are actually given flesh. Among other consequences, this means a society in which Disney World is seen as the absolute pinnacle of aesthetic achievement, the highest accomplishment of the human species. Doctorow doesn’t limn this situation with cheap irony, but takes it pretty much on its own terms. There’s something slightly creepy about the dampened affect, the sincerity and desire to please, the embrace of warmth without a hint of tragedy, the way unhappiness is pathologized and therefore not taken seriously; but the novel works because Doctorow doesn’t belabor this creepiness, and indeed seduces us into accepting it, as a reasonable price to pay for conquering mortality. So you might say that what I found disturbing about this novel was precisely its refusal to be disturbing; but I cannot really say that without falling into an infinite regress, a self-reflexive loop. For in fact, as I read the book I didn’t<\/i> find it disturbing; and if I find this lack of disturbingness disturbing, it is only because what I find disturbing is that I didn’t<\/i> find this lack of disturbingness disturbing; and so on, ad infinitum<\/i>. I think this means that Cory Doctorow is far more postmodern than I am, or than Baudrillard is, or than Dave Eggars and the whole McSweeney’s gang could ever hope to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Cory Doctorow<\/a>‘s SF novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom<\/i><\/a> (also downloadable for free<\/a>), death, scarcity, and mandatory work have been eliminated. The network is direct-wired into your brain, and mortality is averted by backing up your brain, and downloading it as needed into a new clone body. People spontaneously cooperate–well, most of the time–and wealth isn’t measured by money, but by your reputation among your peers. Doctorow imagines a society in which many of the last decade’s utopian fantasies about new technology are actually given flesh. Among other consequences, this means a society in which Disney World is seen as the absolute pinnacle of aesthetic achievement, the highest accomplishment of the human species. Doctorow doesn’t limn this situation with cheap irony, but takes it pretty much on its own terms. There’s something slightly creepy about the dampened affect, the sincerity and desire to please, the embrace of warmth without a hint of tragedy, the way unhappiness is pathologized and therefore not taken seriously; but the novel works because Doctorow doesn’t belabor this creepiness, and indeed seduces us into accepting it, as a reasonable price to pay for conquering mortality. So you might say that what I found disturbing about this novel was precisely its refusal to be disturbing; but I cannot really say that without falling into an infinite regress, a self-reflexive loop. For in fact, as I read the book I didn’t<\/i> find it disturbing; and if I find this lack of disturbingness disturbing, it is only because what I find disturbing is that I didn’t<\/i> find this lack of disturbingness disturbing; and so on, ad infinitum<\/i>. I think this means that Cory Doctorow is far more postmodern than I am, or than Baudrillard is, or than Dave Eggars and the whole McSweeney’s gang could ever hope to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}