A Nation Of Copiers?

That is what John Leland asks if we are in this NYTimes article.

“The quintessential American company was Enron, which made nothing,” said Neal Gabler, author of “Life the Movie.” In today’s culture, he added, “the product is almost immaterial; it’s the consciousness about it.”

“What the Internet does is, it pries everything out of moral context and lets people feel knowing about it,” he said, because the skills used to cut and paste something with a computer are more valued than those used to manufacture it.

“In a sense, Internet technology is a metaphor for the new morality. As long as you can get it, it doesn’t matter how.”