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Category: Internet
How the monkey got to Mars
Last year I was asked to contribute to a book by XS4All (PDF) about the history and future of the Internet. I decided to make some broad brush points on page 102. My colleague Menso also contributed (page 36), or here on his blog.
Long ago there were some monkeys on the African savannah. It was difficult for them as they hunted other animals that were stronger and faster. Other animals could digest the dry grass and live with little water. The monkeys could do none of these things. You would think they would never survive, let alone go on to play an important role in the evolution of the Earth. That they did so is through a unique combination of two things that led to everything else: an opposable thumb and big brains.
Separately, each of these makes little difference. Dolphins have large brains and are certainly intelligent. But without hands to apply that intelligence they cannot build complex civilizations. Chimpanzees have thumbs but lack the brains to make hand axes and build terabit optical routers. So dolphins and chimpanzees are in our zoos instead of vice versa.
Mankind dominates the planet by intelligence, not by running faster, breathing deeper or chewing through the hide of an elephant. Intelligence, the ability to create new solutions to new problems, is the key to all that we have and all that we are. First we use the thigh bone of an antelope as hand axes or javelins, and not long after (in evolutionary terms) we have the improved spear we call the “intercontinental ballistic missile”.
At the same time people tend to associate intelligence with book learning and unworldly academics. "You need more than intelligence to make it in this world" is often said, as if charisma and emotional sensitivity come from the kidneys instead of the brains. When you say the word “intelligence”, think not of a crazed professor but rather of the difference between humans and chimpanzees.
Technology comes from intelligence and has a fundamental influence on who we are and how we live. Fire, agriculture, bronze, the wheel, the domestication of animals and irrigation systems fundamentally changed our position in respect to all other animals. But with writing came a technology that improved on our most valuable feature. For the first time it was possible to record knowledge outside our brains, and save it over long distances in time and geography. This had enormous implications for the scale at which we could organize and the speed with which we could develop new ideas by building on the ideas of others.
Around 1440, the modern printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg. The effects of this invention pulled Europe out of the middle ages and into the renaissance, the scientific/industrial revolution and on the path to democracy. Suddenly books were affordable for an emerging middle class. There were books about issues, history, politics, science, and culture. For the Vatican this free dissemination of knowledge and ideas was a threat and it therefore hired troops to destroy all the printing presses across Europe. Fortunately the citizens objected and a few tough fights over the right to freedom of thought were the result. Currently, this fight is being repeated all over again by Scientology and the music and movie industry, with an equal lack of success.
Now that knowledge could not only be written down and shared but also cheaply reproduced on a mass scale, our civilization developed rapidly. Science brought new technology and soon the smoke stacks of the industrial revolution existed throughout Europe and then the rest of the world.
Then things really accelerated. The complex societies existing over a century ago needed counting machines and from this came all the computers we use today. The logical next step was for these computers to talk to each other, so the researchers who used them could work smarter together. Forty years later it is impossible to imagine our daily lives without the InterWeb. Now we all have a printing press with a global reach.
Access for all is the next step in the development of our civilization. It is a step that is as fundamental as ensuring everyone can read and write. It makes us smarter as we get more information, knowledge and ideas more quickly and cheaply and we have more people to share with. The Internet and cheap computers in everyone’s pocket create as much change the printing press 550 years ago. Only this time those changes will develop ten times as fast.
But it may be that the effects of networked computers obediently following Moore’s law are more fundamental. As computers make us smarter or even smart, they can be used to make more sophisticated systems even faster, which will in turn create more sophisticated systems, etc…. If the difference between us and chimpanzees ensures that we walk on the moon and the chimps are our pets, what are the implications of a system (artifical intelligence or human-machine combo) that is fundamentally smarter than the smartest man who ever existed? And if that cleverness is deployed to always smarter successors, a self-perpetuating process begins. This would reduce the entire information revolution of the past millennia to a very minor precursor of the real landslide that is about to happen.
How did the monkey get to Mars? By using his big brains, opposable thumbs and some technical tools. And the Internet is one of the most important of those to come along in the last 500 years.
A reasonable discussion
In recent weeks a number of leaked documents has made it crystal clear how a cluster of companies (hereafter referred to as the "copyright industry") warns off any threat to its commercial interests. The copyright industry consists of all those companies whose business models are based on the most extreme neo-liberal interpretation of copyright. In this interpretation, the ability to make money by endlessly re-selling the same piece of intellectual property is considered more important not only than democratic control over the creation of laws, but also than basic civil rights such as the principle of innocent until proven guilty.
Where copyright once began in the 18th century with a period of 14 years, in the 19th and 20th centuries it extended to 70 years after the date of death of the author. It is not entirely clear how copyright 70 years after the death of a creative person can encourage more creativity (the original purpose of copyright). There is no evidence that more culture is created by endless renewal and reinforcement of copyright; indeed, there are many indications that it actively blocks both new creativity and the preservation of existing culture.
First there are the now infamous Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations. ACTA is an international treaty designed to combat the counterfeiting of branded products and other forms of copyright infringement. Although citizens of participating countries must adhere to this treaty on pain of subsequent fines or worse, they had no say in or even oversight of the treaty’s creation. Companies from the copyright industry appear to have had a free hand in developing the content of ACTA. Citizens and their elected representatives were excluded and nobody will say why. That hardly creates trust.
Now, in a report to the US government, it appears that the overarching pro-copyright lobbying organization, the International Intellectual Property Association (IIPA), wants to place a number of countries on a special watch list, because the governments of these countries actively promote the use of open source software. The deployment of open source is apparently comparable to copyright infringement, protectionism and terrorism because it threatens the ability of proprietary software companies to make money. The logic of this is so distorted that you have to read it three times to believe that someone in his/her mind could write this in 2010. How nice that a Dutch caretaker government promoting open source can simultaneously be in the ‘coalition of the willing’ and the ‘axis of evil’.
The whole course of events raises the question of whether we, as citizens, can still have any rational discussion with these interest groups in the hope of reaching a reasonable consensus. A workable balance between different interests requires that both parties follow certain basic rules eg to respect the democratic state. If, as in this case, lobby groups are so crude as to operate outside the normal frameworks, they leave the other party in the debate no choice but to do the same. That other party is we, the citizens, and we are many. And because we are many, we can innovate more quickly to circumvent any technical or legal barrier. In every public debate on copyright, the burden of proof is always put on citizens who believe that things should be a little less extreme. The copyright industry and its lobbyists have never been to able demonstrate the social utility of the endless tightening of copyright. An industry that desires legal protection for it’s businessmodel, is it not reasonable that it shows society that this protection is of value to society? And if it will not or cannot… why should citizens give credence to the industry and its unilaterally-asserted ‘rights’?
The copyright industry seems headed for a total war against its own clients, with centuries-old civil rights simply set aside in secret negotiations. Obviously honest citizens will first try to change unreasonable laws through the usual democratic channels. However, if these paths are obviously and actively blocked, then they will fall back to civil disobedience. If that does not help, stronger measures may follow. Fortunately in this case civil disobedience is extremely fun to do; download, upload, copy, share, crack, jailbreak and remix, until to all members of the IIPA either wake up to new realities or go bankrupt.
And then we hold a huge party. With great music of course.
Hamburg Declaration, newspapers can’t network
Last month, a group of European news outlets drew up the ‘Hamburg Declaration‘. It demands that the European authorities take measures to prevent the re-use (they call it theft) of ‘their’ content. They want to demand money for ‘their’ news, as they get with printed editions.
Of course, publishers are free to hide their articles and other content behind a wall, available only to subscribers. They can also prevent search engines from indexing (and saving) their content. They can even choose to have no website at all, and reach only a shrinking and aging audience. You do not have to be a twitter-using iPhone owner to predict what happens to a news organisation that starts a subscriber-only website or exists completely offline. For the growing number of readers of online news does not focus on individual outlets and there are many, many others which are eager to feed for free this readership’s insatiable hunger for information 24/7.
The publishers claim that their model is unsustainable if they unable to pay editors to maintain standards, and thus their role as the watchdog of democracy is at stake. This thesis contains two parts, both doubtful:
1. The need for a classic, paid editorial as the only possible way to make news and information accessible. Very touching in a month where the traditional media are dependent on the twitter- and youtube-savvy citizens in Iran. CNN calls on its viewers every 30 minutes to continue sending in videos (with some interesting results). Nowadays on most newspaper forums, the comments and links posted by readers are often more relevant than the content of the article, which is just a copy/paste of AP or Reuters, and I had those already. Once the subject matter is specialised (and that often occurs in a complex world), the editors may not have the in-depth knowledge to understand an issue, so it is better to go to a specialised site where the authors as well as the responding readers are professionals.
2. The crucial role of the traditional media as a watchdog of democracy. Where shall I begin, in an area so rich with juicy examples? The New York Times that, after more than a year, admits that it failed in just this role in the run-up to the attack on Iraq? The Dutch national newshour and so-called "quality newspaper", which accused Iran of having a nuclear weapons program, while both the CIA and experts such as the International Atomic Energy Agency are confident that this is not the case? The constant failure to ask the truly painful questions, as they might prevent editors from being ‘granted’ the occiasional scoop? Bloggers who report things that should be in the national news? Or how about Mr Broertjes, editor of The Volksrant, who talked about a reducing investigative journalism because it meant taking people "out of production". ‘Production’ in this context means reading the AP/AP or Reuters newsfeeds and other news releases, then quickly writing a short article. Exactly the behaviour newspapers accuse bloggers of.
Based on my experience of the established media in recent years, I just do not trust them as a primary source of information about interesting events; too often they have failed to ask the difficult questions. And whether that is down to incompetence, lack of courage or something else does not matter much. In a Europe where surveillance and censorship have become normal and where we get dragged into wars and occupations, there is plenty for the guardians of democracy to do.
So if the former watchdogs take up that role again I will pay for a subscription, provided I get the information in a way that suits my lifestyle (and not once every 24 hours on a piece of dead tree). From the former office of Mr Broertjes, I hope the editorial staff find both courage and a spine.
