David Weinberger, [ae] James Boyle, Joho the Blog, September 6, 2008. Blog notes on a presentation by James Boyle at A New Cultural Economy (Linz, September 5-6, 2008).
... We have patterns of behavior that economic theory does not predict. We are risk averse. For example, it makes no sense to buy a warranty; we buy them out of an absurd sense that buying the warranty affects the device’s outcome. There is another kind of bias that we wouldn’t predict from economic theory: A systematic bias against openness. We don’t expect openness and collaboration to generate what they do. We overestimate the risks. We underestimate the risks of closed systems and overestimate closed systems’ benefits.
Suppose in 1990 I came to you with two proposals: Build an open system. Or, build something like Minitel, Compuserv or AOL; it’s controlled and permission-based. Which would you pick? If you pick the first, you’ll have piracy, spam, massive amounts of crap, flame wars, massive violations of IP, use for immoral purposes. “I think you’d pick network #2? because those risks are foreseeable, but you couldn’t imagine wikis, blogs, Google maps, etc. It’s hard for us to imagine the benefits of open systems. It’s not intuitive.
Again, in 1990 you are asked to assemble the greatest encyclopedia, in most languages, updated in real time, adopt a neutral point of view. In 1990, you’d say that you need maybe a billion dollars, a hierarchical corporation, lots of editors, vet the writers you’re hiring, peer reviewers, copyright it all to recoup the money we’ve invested, trademark it. And someone else says, “We’ll have a web site, and people will like put stuff up and people will edit it.” How many of us would have picked #2. We don’t understand openness. ...
What conclusions should we draw? Some people are raised in places where they learn how to drive in snow and ice. They learn to turn into the skid, contrary to our impulses. We can train ourselves to overcome our biases. ...
He talks about Putnam’s “Bowling Alone” that talks about the loss of civil organizations in America. But, Putnam noticed that in the early 1900s American intellectuals noticed that the move to cities fragmented the old ties. But they didn’t say that history will just automatically correct itself. Instead, they ... invented institutions to make up for a problem they saw. Eventually, those institutions worked.
... [I]t’s beholden on us to create the institutions of civil society that enable us to get past our biases. Creative Commons is one such. It provides an infrastructure for sharing our work.
Science Commons is another such group. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 9/15/2008 04:29:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
