Dear f-w friends
I had two thoughts over the weekend.
One concerns the Privatisation of Knowledge Agenda (the other I'm
puzzled to recall - so here's the first ! )
The question as to who has any right to (financially) profit from a piece of
knowledge prompts two thoughts:
� Firstly, all knowledge pre-exists our discovery of it, and, so, any
individual or group claim upon it, is theft from the commonweal.
(Issac Newton, for example, didn't invent gravity nor the various
descriptions of it - they were all there to be found.)
� Secondly comes the question, 'How do you divide out the benefits of a
piece of discovered knowledge?
(Newton, again, pointed out (I paraphrase) that:
"We can only see futher than our parents because we are priviledged to
be able to stand on their shoulders."
The empahasis seems reasonably placed upon the words 'priviledged' and
'able'. )
I've experience of doing academic research, where experience shows that, the
dark motors of selfishness (the searches for fame and/or-ish fortune) quite
clearly corrode our existence (and - ! - both serve to slow our discovery of
'truth' ! )
O, yes !
And that second, related, thought.
At a meeting on Saturday, the matters of power relationships arose.
Yesterday, walking out of Ely Cathedral - what a place ! - Ken Galbraith's
book 'The Anatomy of Power' popped into my thoughts.
That great (great, despite his, nor any? others of the US great minds having
the balls to challenge usury) man, there gives a definition of power (again
my paraphrases) as:
"The ability to get another to do what (the more powerful) wants done."
His taxonomy (?) of power is:
��Condign power - "Do it or I'll hurt you."
��Compensatory power - "Do it and I'll give you X, Y or Z."
(I actually see this as the same as the first, since access to resources is
the route away from the pains and fears of hunger, homelessness, loneliness
and boredom. However . . . )
And:
��Conditioned power - where the power-less acts in the interest of the
power-full, without giving the power-reinforcing action the slightest
thought.
In this taxonomy, the first relates to the power relatioships of feudalism,
the second, those of capitalism, and the third, the power relationship of
Toffler ( and etc)'s 'Third Age.'
Since the first phases drew their possibility for action from theft from the
common weal of tangible resources (land etc.), the theft of knowledge from
the intellectual commonweal is equally that - theft.
(And its use for private gain, the use of stolen goods ! )
HTH
Hugs to all
j
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