Have you heard of "Intellectual Sustainability?"
Every one of us grew up in a world run by commercialism. The competative natur eof commercialism drove us to achieve many great things. However, it also drove us to exploit a wide variety of natural resources. Many of us now believe that our futures may be threatened by the exploitation of certain natural resouces. It’s easy to identify problems with natural resources such as water, air, and food. It is a little more difficult to identify problems with our collective pool of knowledge.
Can you own an idea? To cut to the chase, I would say that you can not and should not. In the US, we developed copyright laws after much debate. When we created them, they were never meant to be used the way they are being used today. To quote Thomas Jefferson:
"Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
I find these words to be inspiring. In the industry of software engineering, I’ve witnessed the halt of innovation directly to the commercial enforcement of "intellectual property" laws. The very Web browser you’re using now is an excellent example. In 1992, we were given the Mosaic Web Browser. Later, we saw drastic improvements in how we interface with the World Wide Web when we were given Netscape. If you followed that last link, you’ll notice there is a section dedicated to "The Fall of Netscape." When Microsoft finally suceeded in killing the only remaining significant competitor to it’s own Internet Explorer browser, we suddenly stopped seeing any innovation in how we use the Internet.
This site, Intent.com, is a huge social site. There are many sites appealing to different type sof demographics all over the Internet. These sites started to grow and develop during a time when folk started to speak of Web 2.0. It was a bit of an online revolution. Suddenly, innovation was alive and well again. But why? The answer lies in an piece of open source software called Firefox. This free Web browser was created and is being evolved by an open community where anyone can contribute. With the birth of Firefox, Microsoft once again had competition and was forced to upgrade their stagnant Internet Explorer product.
The notion behind open source software is huge. Maybe you know about open source software, maybe you’ve heard about it but don’t understand it, or maybe you aren’t familiar with it at all. What you should know is that it is growing. More people are choosing open source software today than ever before.
Open source software supports a culture of intellectual sustainability. Instead of using "intellectual property" for commercial gain, open source software shares ideas an knowledge in such a way that allows us to achieve more. Instead of ideas being removed from the public pool of knowledge, they are put back in with an invitation that says "help me grow this."
This way of thinking can be applied to many other aspects of our culture. It’s already happening right now. One such example is the Free Culture movement.
We’ve grown so far down this path of commercialism, it’s hard to remember a time when people wrote songs for no more reason than passion. Now it is illegal ot sing the happy birthday tune at someone’s party.
If we want to evolve, we will have to become mindful of intellectual sustainability.
Comments are closed.