Alessandro Baricco - The Game : A Digital Turning Point

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T en years or so ago, I wrote a book called The Barbarians. At the time, many peoplefrom a whole range of cultural backgroundswere beginning to comment negatively on the disconcerting fact that some of the most noble, significant, and striking advances mankind had made over previous centuries were increasingly devalued, neglected, or oversimplified. Human beings appeared to have forgotten how to do things properly, whether it was eating, studying, traveling, having fun, or making love. That is, with the knowledge, care, and attention to detail that they had acquired through generations. It looked as if they preferred to do things quickly and superficially.

Watching kids go about their daily activities upset parents in particular. They felt their offspring had fallen prey to an inexplicable genetic reversal which meant that, rather than advancing the species, they were quite clearly triggering a mysterious regression. Always attached to a device of some kind, incapable of focusing, disoriented by sterile multitasking, parents felt their kids were skimming the surface of things without any discernible aim, except perhaps to reduce their chances of suffering. In their view, their offsprings incomprehensible way of going about things heralded an imminent crisis: a cultural apocalypse looming on the horizon.

It was all very irritating. Peoples intelligence seemed to have been momentarily reduced to denouncing the demise of this or that feature of old. They spent all their time defending things that, in their view, were degenerating. People who were usually quite sensible suddenly found themselves signing petitions in favor of old-fashioned dairies or the English subjunctive without any sense of the ridiculousness of their actions. Defending something, making sure it was not swept away by the winds of change, gave them a feeling of superiority. Most people legitimately felt no obligation toward the future; saving the past was more urgent.

I must add that a ready-made explanation for civilization caving in in this way was at hand. The picture wasnt entirely clear, but people were pretty sure that two factors in particular were chiefly responsible: the digital revolution (all those computers) and globalization (all those buyers and sellers). In the incubators of these two irresistible forces, they claimed, a type of human being had been hatched whose ambitions they didnt understand, whose language they didnt speak, whose tastes they didnt appreciate, and whose manners they deplored. They called these new human beings barbarians. It was a term that had already been used in our history as dominators of the planet; a useful short-cut to mean annoyingly different people whom we are unable to control or comprehend.

Their instinct was to keep them back. The widely held bias was that barbarians destroyed things. Period.