Bruce Sterling's 1998 political thriller, Distraction, is set in the year 2044, and roving bands of land-based pirates have taken over the American hinterlands, swamps and roadways, armed with smoke bombs, high-frequency magnets (for scrambling computers) and superglue. The army is bankrupt, and the police force is disabled by corruption and general ineptitude. So - much like the 17th-century high seas - America's highways are, de facto, beyond the law. It's hard to distinguish between the homeless nomad 'prole' pirates and the military officers who set up road blocks and demand payoff to feed the starving troops. What has bankrupted the US economy is a different form of piracy. Several decades earlier, an intellectual property Cold War broke out, and the Chinese (who had never liked the idea of intellectual property) won. They put all books, music, movies, scientific formulae, pharmaceutical recipes and computer software up on their satellite networks, where they became freely accessible. The age of intellectual property was over. Makers of ideas would henceforth have to live on prestige alone.

LRB 4 November 2010 | PDF Download