Life's not read only

(Addendum)

updated July 25th, 2007

– Somewhere in this, there is a point... but where is it?
– Are you legitimizing illegal downloading?
– Moaning on a web page won't change anything
– So much dramatization for so little...

I have gratefully received all kinds of ideas, in return for those on the first page of this site. Perhaps the above are the most important.

I do not pretend to answer meaningfully the "So what?" interrogations. The answer lies in you, just as well as me. My purpose is merely to trigger thoughts... my own and yours altogether.

As to how important this really is, I can't help but pull that tortuous string of ideas further... a deliberate mix of naive thoughts so each of us can decide.

Ten-fold faster thinking

For how many thousands of years have we been trading and moving objects?

Software simply is surprising. You assemble a few ideas, a set of logical relations, and suddenly you empower almost anyone with it. It's nothing but thoughts compiled.

Being devoid of the limitations of physical objects, software proves extraordinarily useful. We quickly found ourselves exchanging thoughts with it, ideas transiting on top of more ideas at an amazing speed. I call it "ten-fold faster thinking", or "math proving useful".

It proves so useful that we use it everywhere we can. We have taken it so far that now almost none of what we say, information, pictures, sounds, hasn't been copied at some point: transiting atop of software.
My car is merely re-reproducible, while my computer and the music I hear exist only thanks to copying, the single characteristic of this immaterial world.

Full brakes

Not everybody likes it that way.
We are often led to believe that a piece software is a material object, with an owner and a label. There is a strong popular belief that a CD (containing software or music) is an original... forgetting it is nothing but a big number. The same number as on ten thousand identical CDs: a mere copy.

This is damn right frightening. Our whole legal system (think of the word copyright) and our media industries, take their roots on the idea that copyable work is the same as material object.
We are a quarter century late. Rock stars earn their living through a system similar to the manuscript business, putting full brakes on the rise of mechanical printing.

We are able to get any image, sound, speech, piece of writing, any thought, any culture, from one place to any computer on the planet. Is this a chance, or a disaster to come?

Some perspective?

The truth is, it's not a really happy world we're living in. I'm sure no one seriously wants to trash the planet, suffocate ourselves, starve entire countries or even participate in a genocide. Yet, as a collective, we seem to be shockingly good at it. Our history is littered with such accounts and there's no sign we're changing the heading.

Why? How are we – differently-thinking, but well-meaning people – give shape to these collective criminals ?
Possibly a reason is that we never take the time to

We all simply need practice.

I believe it just takes practice, in handling ideas, thoughts, by ourselves. A way to ensure each of us recovers a sense of creativity and individuality so that the process of making images, music, writing, speaking, {and ultimately thinking} might not remain strictly the domain of specialized professionals.

I believe that this amazing copying nature of computing is a chance, an opportunity for us to get out of this one-way, read-only culture.

Closer to something?

Copying happening all around us is captivating – like a new language: tools to develop, undertake, express things. It brings us closer to the nature of ideas, concepts, knowledge, culture. If I can copy it indefinitely and it still doesn't lose its true value, then what is it?

What I find truly fascinating is that a common answer to this question sounds strikingly similar to a common answer to... the value and meaning of life. Enjoying the moment, expressing things, simplicity, maybe spirituality, relations with others, all seem important. Something we as kids seem to know – look at a child with crayons – but work on forgetting when we grow up.

So I have two wishes.

The first is that we stop worrying about how we can keep our traditional gramophone music and media industries alive. They shouldn't be both feeding on copying, and pretending to be selling material, tangible products.

And my second, also a very dear personal endeavor, is that we remember a little more often what we believe to be essential about life – so that we experience much more out of it than what a faster car or a disposable gizmo may offer. Bluntly said, the not-read-only stuff.