When you bounce around the web as much
as I do, following as randomly as possible, all sorts of minimally,
as well as primarily, connected things (via tech sites, artistic
sites, political commentary sites, as well as YouTube, Digg, and
ordinary News sites), you bump into the damnedest linkage threads.
What often happens, as a result of this, are connections, and/or
juxtapositions, of common, as well as disparate, themes and ideas.
A case in point is the TedxMidwest talk
(published on Aug, 30, 2012, on YouTube) given by Pablos Holman on
utilizing the hacker mind set to solve perplexing new problems. It is
a good presentation and I recommend you give it a view.
As most of you already know, similar
talk of turning what has mostly been a private, and all too often, a
self serving, mode of occupation, into something positive, has spread
far and wide on the Net. Which, in and of itself, is most probably a
good thing. My concern here, however, is to illustrate what might be
one area of concern for such well intended social thrusts.
I should hasten to point out that this
concern didn't surface in my mind right away, after listening to Mr.
Holman. My first impression was that, on the whole, it seemed like a
good mesh. After all, who wouldn't be attracted to the idea of
getting people who see beyond ordinary limits and boundaries; who
relish taking the things we take for granted, pulling them apart and
seeing what better ways to do things might become apparent. And
whether one believes zapping mosquitoes with lasers is truly
practical or not, the notion that the hacker mind set, as the
ultimate boundary breaker, can be used for positive social change is
an attractive idea.
Weeks later, however, I happened to
bump into another Ted Talk and, surprisingly enough, it too was on a
laser based, mosquitoe zapping system; only this talk took place on
Feb 2010, and was presented by Nathan Myhrvold, former Microsoft
technology officer and now CEO of Intellectual Ventures. And in case
you haven't been keeping up on the controversial role of “Patent
Trolls” in the last few years, I.V. is the current poster child for
heavy handed tactics in the world of patent control, and enforcement.
You need only read the first few pages of the Stanford Technical Law
Review article “The Giants Among us” to see just how prominent
I.V. has become as a source of worry in the patents world.
I point all of this out because I want
to re-emphasize just how insidious, and pervasive, is the process of
how Big Money works to co-opt everything that starts out as a means
to thwart their over-arching interests of control. Even though this
is certainly a complex issue, and that those who create ought to get
something in return for what they create, we need to be very careful
on how far we take the ownership, and control of ideas, and
processes, not to mention the myriad flow of metrics that all of our
endeavors propagate. As the S.T.L review article points out, the
secrecy that Intellectual Ventures employs (using over a thousand
shell companies to acquire patents, and never divulging, or allowing
others to divulge, who has invested what) is astonishing. And despite
the few high profile patent fights that have taken place so far, we
are only beginning to understand the balance of positive to negative
effects of so few controlling so many patents.
The bottom line for me here is that you
have to wonder just how benevolent a company like Intellectual
Ventures is, touting loudly as they do their creative fertilization
of the ground for needful social development, and yet being so
unwilling to actually document the precise numbers of what their
investment income nets; both for the few investors, the inventors, as
well as for the rest of us. After all, it's been nearly six years
since the first Ted Talk on the mosquito zapper. Have they seen to
the low cost introduction of this innovation yet? Has much more than
reasonably priced mosquito netting been provided? I do seem to recall
mention of a possible malaria vaccine, but how much is, or will be,
spent on providing it? At what profit margin? And who will actually
end up paying for it?
Just a few more things to think about
in the new world of absolute absurdity.
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