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Copy, Paste, Apocalypse

Posted 06-Apr-2009 by Robby Slaughter (@robbyslaughter)

Across the unimaginably vast stretches of the public Internet, a tentacled, grotesque being is destabilizing every layer of creation from core routers to half-finished Myspace pages. It’s not a malicious virus. It is not a nefarious plan hatched by a cackling mastermind. The greatest threat to the entire continent of information technology is available on every computer with a few swipes and clicks of the mouse. The ubiquitous, self-replicating destructive force which might usher in the end of everything is the tragically thoughtless copy-and-paste.

The Duplicitous Wrecking Ball

Explaining to the reader how copy and paste works is like teaching kids how to use a trampoline. Of course you know how to select text or pictures and propagate them elsewhere. You employ this technique daily, without heavy contemplation, an acquired behavior as natural as flipping a turn signal or signing your name. Advanced computer users have even memorized the handy keyboard shortcuts (Control+C and Control+V) or discovered the right-click context menu available on most systems. Copy and paste is braindead easy.

Likewise, no one is immune to the exhaustively repeated reminder that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Normally, one assumes such warnings apply primarily to playground bullies who might inflict emotional scars or five-star generals ordering soldiers off to die. Similarly, opportunities to copy and paste are literally limitless. We can scatter and archive information faster than any rumor. We can grow obnoxious quantities of data more quickly than any colony of rabbits or forest of bamboo. This command is the most powerful duplicative force in human history. We use it to create—usually without thinking.

Theft by Leverage

Before the advent of word processing, computer networking and the information economy, plagiarism was hard work. If you wanted to repurpose someone else’s effort for an assignment in English class, you would have to manually reproduce each word letter-by-letter. With all of that mental acuity wasted in a boring, mechanistic process, the would-be information criminal might as well start to reword, paraphrase and even synthesize new ideas. However, if your research occurs in an environment where a casual click-and-drag can save you the effort of thought, actually producing your own original essay requires a tremendous commitment to learning.

It’s no challenge to find cases where copy and paste was undoubtedly the weapon of choice. The almost-published manuscript How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life by new author Kaavya Viswanathan contained exact quotes from Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries as well as Sophie Kinsella’s Can You Keep a Secret? Current Vice President Joe Biden lost his chance to become president after lifting phrases from a British politician. Journalists spent much of 2003 brow beating themselves about the Jayson Blair scandal. Wanton duplications crush dreams and often end careers. We may shun those who do so illicitly, yet we all understand the inescapable allure of copy and paste.

Destruction by Duplication

Copy and paste might wreck the lives of those foolish enough to pass off the work of others as their own, but what risk exists for those who respect the concept of attribution? The danger appears when the masses duplicate information. What is the point of penning a brilliant article, producing a fantastic movie or writing a catchy tune if others will redistribute that work without your knowledge or approval? Many believe that without control over content, inventive people will lose the incentive to create. If everyone copies indiscriminately, why make anything?

The dying screams from the newspaper business are an outgrowth of copy and paste. Last month, the Seattle Post-Intellegencer ceased publishing of their print version. The New York Times may be next. If anyone can access interesting content via the Internet, then through the awesome power of mouse clicks eventually everyone can read that content. Efforts to curtail distribution and defamation (as I have noted before) are comically futile. When duplication is free, no one will pay for the details.

Destruction by Disinformation

Whether or not every bit of humor, art, insight or drivel becomes massively replicated, the basic infrastructure of the net will survive. Unless, of course, copy and paste becomes the primary method of construction and repair. If computer programmers, system architects, network administrators and integration engineers produce solutions through a quick Google session followed by a hasty insertion, there is little incentive to actually understand. Broken configuration files, buggy code fragments and incomplete implementations fill the web, and those that can be shoved into place the most quickly will bubble to the top of the search engine results page. We should expect more and more people who know less and less about what they are doing to gain more responsibility solely through their proficiency with messieurs Control+C and Control+V. This is a serious problem.

Every other field of expertise, from heart surgery to automotive repair to landscaping requires hands-on experience and usually extensive training. An aching back cannot be soothed by copying-and-pasting from the body of a relaxed individual. A healthy meal requires skillful preparation and usually a working knowledge of nutrition, not a press of a large green button on a food Xerox machine. However, you can configure a mail server, tweak software installation, set up web address forwarding rules, program a validation service or install a database without having really any idea what you are doing. Copy and paste gives anyone the ability to build a mission critical system without understanding anything about how that system actually works.

Alarmism, Incorporated

Spouting predictions about the end of everything as we know it makes for provocative writing but not actionable ideas. In truth, the Internet will probably not completely collapse due to mindless duplication. Rather, copy and paste will only slow the maturation of technology. We might chip away at this anchor by vetting so-called experts through rigorous evaluations, but most duplication engineers will unknowingly erode their corner of the world for a respectable paycheck. Ask your techies to demonstrate their knowledge without the aid of Google. If they flounder, search for duct tape and chewing gum in the guts of your systems.

The delay of innovation, however, will go largely unnoticed. Like a fish net weighing down a rocket ship, those on board will be mostly unaffected even if those guiding from mission control rub foreheads in frustration. Maybe the world would be better if everyone understood the awful devastation unleashed by copy and paste. Maybe, though, everything else is changing too fast for unchecked duplication to actually matter.

Further Reading:

• 17,800,000 hits on Google for “copy and paste” code
• Simplify and Reduce Duplication of Information to Avoid Errors

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