Intellectual squatting, the fallacy of the origin and the slow painful death of IP
I’m thinking I should start every blog post from here on out with a pitiful guilt-laden apologetic opening bemoaning my failure to consistently blog YET AGAIN (notwithstanding yesterday’s post). It can kind of be a theme of sorts. I may have actually found my blog title. The failing blogger…another non-blog…ya…maybe I’ll just raise my head stoically, march on and try to do this first thing in the morning from here on out.
So I’ve been thinking a little about how we are often expected to trace the origin of an idea…especially in academic thinking. This idea seems umm….ridiculous perhaps? insane maybe? Its as if an idea were a pillar of a number of neatly stacked bricks creating a nicely defined, clean cut, very traceable origin where each brick built upon the previous. That seems totally delusional to me. What makes up my ideas? Pieces of conversations, the memory of something I read long ago that shaped my thinking whose origin is now long forgotten, an eavesdropped coffee shop comment by the overly pierced leather wearing dude to my left…and that’s only what I am AWARE of! We are constantly being informed by sources we’re not even consciously aware of that our mental models sift and order. Yet despite all we have this notion of property…intellectual property.
Well…if the origin of an idea truly is as nebulous as what I have suggested, and I have yet to hear a compelling argument to the contrary, then how can we own it? The answer for me is simple…we don’t. It should be called intellectual squatting. There is no such thing as a truly original idea, because we add a small piece onto years of borrowed information, squat on it for awhile and call it our own. Academic procedure states that we should trace that idea to its source…I say impossible/delusional. But beyond that…why? Why do we feel that we need to put our name and claim on what is a synthesis of a hundred different sources?
Industry says that IP is necessary to motivate innovation…I question that. To be brash and to go a little to the extreme (though not really), it motivates innovation in a fragmented world where we believe that ideas are neatly stacked bricks proposed by individuals whose nature is to be self-maximizing greedy ego-driven cogs whose primary (sole?) incentive is recognition and the pursuit of power. That represents a world view that, IMHO, has long outlived any value it once possessed. It reflects a particular assumption of human nature that, IMHO, has sat on the throne of truth for far too long without being questioned. It underlies our societal constructs that, IMHO, are crumbling all around us and tearing at their seams.
I’m not saying there should be no reward or financial incentive that is linked to effort or achievement as there is clearly a place for external incentives. It just seems to me that if our motivation as humans shifted from what amounts to a childish and self-centered one towards a mature recognition that we are part of a unified whole, progress that would previously have been undreamt of would now actually be within reach (e.g. use my idea freely because surely you can build upon it, build something from it/off of it, and we can see progress at an exponential rate…like…ummm…what’s that little experiment they ran…oh ya…opensource). I don’t think this evolution in human motivation is a vain or idealistic hope. I think its the next innevitable (unless we want to commit collective Seppuku) stage in societal development.
IP motivates innovation if the ultimate incentive of the innovators is self-centered much like competition drives progress in an economy of self-centered players. Sure…but if said players evolve (not unlike 13 colonies evolved their collective thinking to form a nation not too long ago), IP and competition become giant restraints.
We put a baby in a crib so that they don’t fall off the bed and training wheels on a bike when the kid is learning to ride, but there comes a point where the cage of the crib and the extra wheels become a constraint instead of a protection. So instead of fighting to keep the training wheels and the cage on our crib…maybe its time for us to grow up…have we reached that point?
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Very cool Todd (you can leave off the paragraph of apologies on all future posts). That is a fabulous notion. If we can transcend relating to ideas as ours and rather relate to them as ideas that the universe has give to us because it wants to see them realized then instead of protecting them we might rather go about giving them away left and right looking for the other people who have the ideas that connect up with ours to solve the puzzle. Then you would really be forwarding the universes intention. Sounds like fun to me.
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admin Reply:
April 4th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Let it be heard here that the we have seen the end of self-deprecating introductions.
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April 4th, 2009 at 12:30 am
yes yes yes! and maybe then science can take one giant leap for mankind instead of one small step for Jones et al.,
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April 4th, 2009 at 1:24 am
we are growing up…we’re in the terrible teens…
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April 4th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Todd,
I bet you stole this idea from someone else. Come on now… fess up… who thought of this first?
As a recovering academic, I can tell you it goes way beyond what Todd has touched on. Entire academic discourses have replaced concepts with the names of the “authors” of those concepts. Many academic books and journal articles now read as a discourse of author-names, each of which have been converted into concept-signifiers, and all of which are woven together into author-referential texts that are impossible to decode for anyone who does not have access to the code that established the rules of correspondence between the concept and its “author”. It’s all very Foucaultian… or is that Derridian… or is that Habermasian… or perhaps Hobbesian? How embarrassing… the code seems to have eluded me at the moment…
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April 4th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
When humanity as a whole realizes that it can catapult forward,progress in all areas of the economic arena,and all arenas infact, whether it be the vender,the buyer,the maker of the product,the inventors of it ,the daydreamer,etc and that we can do this in a harmonious way and we will probably see more wonderful innovations that are better for the whole of humanity not just for a precious few.There would be a readjustment in the economic conditions of humanity so there will not be a huge gap betwenn rich and poor.
Peace~T
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April 4th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Well done! Fortunately, there are also amazingly brilliant people in our midst - and there are quite a few - who understand this and freely share their brilliance with exemplary humility, who express wonder and joy at hearing their ideas echoed and expanded. I have met those true intellectual giants who are always in touch with their own relative lack of knowledge. I have learned from them and am awed by them. Knowing that they are around, talking with us, encouraging us, and nurturing this expanded consciousness makes the self-centered IP-attached territorial counterparts bearable.
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April 6th, 2009 at 1:03 am
“Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge” Plato ( 428 BC-348 BC)
…and although it was assumed back then, I would like to add what in my opinion is the sum total of those three sources, Spirituality in which ever form it may take in present day existence. Now back to the itinerant lover’s muse over intellectual squatting, a situation I find myself smack in the middle of, as I attempt to create “new knowledge” for the education field, my torture chamber of choice.
First the issue of tracing back knowledge to some single point of origin: IMHO, this is the ultimate exercise in ethnocentric narcissism, an attempt at holding onto a waning civilization, and ultimately the proof of its inevitable demise the prohibition of which, in my opinion, is the purpose for this exercise and the maintenance of which, is paid for through capitalistic, social, academic, etc. accolades/rewards, the world over.
My issue with the manufacturing, transfer, maintenance, etc. of knowledge isn’t that one is required to, from time identify regurgitate the past, but with whose past, knowledge, values, beliefs, and ideas, we are all ,the world over regurgitating. Further, I echo Todd’s question as to what end we are doing this? Who is this process benefiting or taking from? Is this the new turf of choice for the powers that be to fight over, while two thirds of the world population, perish in mindless adherence to a universal code of dos and don’t s produced and maintained through this process? As yet, I have no concrete answers.
However, as I comb through previous knowledge clearly attached to the owners, authors, and their prestigious affiliations, I’m stifled by how elites knowledge and the knowledge business has become (although I’m not sure it wasn’t always this way), how removed it all is from the lived experiences of most of the world population, and yet how far reaching into the world the outcomes of this same knowledge are. While most of the world’s knowledge remains unrecognized, undervalued and untapped, I wonder if it’s time yet to insist on intellectual anonymity, although the current system of transfer is hardly ideal. Seems like humanity desires acknowledgment before acceptance. I suppose this is an issue for another day.
I do think though, that most of of the Western philosophy anchored knowledge can be traced, if not its practical but at least ideological tenets to a thought process in alignment with this specific philosophy. Morphed by time, societal, and other social changes, perhaps but, I believe their lies at the core the notions of the past. Hence, IMHO, the seeming contradiction and frustrations with/in the expression of the present day advancements. It’s the proverbial new wine in an old wineskin analogy.
Back to Plato for a minute, at a time when humanity was far more superstitious and a lot less advanced, there was an assumed understanding of the marriage between academia and spirituality, in the search for knowledge, such as it might have been. One without the other was hardly considered adequate scholarship. The questions then, IMO, weren’t about to whom the knowledge belonged, but who in their expression articulated this marriage credibly as befitted the understanding the times. This assumption was at the core of the “desire, emotion, and knowledge” that influenced their behavior and I’m convinced, the reason why I’m still quoting that work, instead of the myriads of scholastic work churned out every minute. And perhaps it’s the separation/divorce of these two that has now led to the self-centered pursuit, acquisition, and ultimate dispensation of modern day knowledge. The only worthwhile purpose of any academic rigor is social, financial, and academic acknowledgment. The self is the desire, the emotion, and the knowledge. If this is so, then wanting to know who the source of knowledge is, is synonymous with the knowledge itself. Sort of like a little “god complex”. Just a thought….
Given that knowledge, has, is, and will continue to be fluid, it seems then that a preoccupation with the who, what, where, and is of it, in any specific time period, is an exercise in frivolity and at best extreme indulgence (Is this a bad thing? what is the basis of this answer? Spirituality maybe?).
” What then should we be thinking and consulting about, Maria?”, you ask. “I do not know for sure,” I answer all too eagerly. Here is what I have realized in the little while I have engaged in research: Without a clear Spiritually guided and humanity serving purpose, all the works I’m doing will one day, with my academic and social accolades clearly attached to them, be shelved for others to quote from, when their time for justifying their so called “new knowledge” comes, just like I’m doing now. It will neither have the self sustaining impetus nor the capacity building ,some of the older Spiritually guided philosophers and scholars had despite their scientific and technological disadvantage.
IMO, I think there are several dialogues here that should perhaps, happen concurrently:
1) The nature and purpose of knowledge
2)The universality and equitability (not sure of this is a word) of knowledge creation, maintenance and distribution
3)Knowledge as commodity
Ahhh, I have a headache!!
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April 6th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Hmmmm,
Interesting thoughts although it seems some of the core issues are a bit convoluted. I say this because it sounds to advocate for a pot-pouri approach to knowledge and understanding as opposed to a truly integrative epistemology.
Clearly the overblown ego driven labyrinth of the who’s who of knowledge and ideas can lead to a redundant stranglehold on truthiness. But it doesn’t have to be that way. An integrative approach concerns itself much less with ownership than it does with expanding the sphere of understanding. There is a certain danger - it seems to me anyway - in going too far towards denying the contributions of individuals and arguing that the ideal approach is a collective soup of ideas. The question then becomes HOW does one honour, encourage and appreciate excellence without emboldening the ego?
In music there is a lot of borrowing of ideas. There is a lot of improvisation and sometimes blatant copying of styles. Did Elvis appear out of no where? Had anyone played that music before? Is there not a necessity to honour the shoulders on whom Elvis stood? Or the Beatles or whomever?
To suggest that everything is just a free for all and that thought is merely a pool where ideas can be deposited and withdrawn seems a little too extreme.
Creativity and originality do exist. What appears to be necessary - rather than denying excellence - is to radically reshape the paradigm of how knowledge and ideas are understood.
The constraints of ownership, hyper-valuation of the special, and a competitive mindset of out proving or out lasting the other - these definitely present hurdles to be overcome.
An integrative paradigm appreciates truth - and the multiplicity of sources that shine a light on what is known are always valued and honoured.
To pursue excellence BUT NOT pursue preference and distinction… this is the art of integrative thought.
Any ideas?
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April 6th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
It is funny that you should bring this topic up (and I don’t mean funny haha). Over the last few months, while I analyze the issues with some of the current structures, it always comes back to IP and the patent system. We have chosen a feudal system for our ideas which has only served to advance a few while marginalizing billions of people.
We have taken the right to tell people that they are not allowed to imagine anything better for themselves. Unless no one else can demonstrate in court that they thought of it first, and only if they have spent several tens of thousands of dollars to register their ideas with the US patent office.
Using, once again, the excuse to maximize profits and lower competition, we have only encourage an incredible litigious structure which muscles entrepreneurs into submission in the same way that land owners did their renters centuries ago. In a way being sued over IP now is that a hostile take over was to the late 80s early 90s. It is almost a business moddle in itself to create spleeper patents and to wait for someone to step on the trap. Once they have, you take the to court and squeeze!
This method has only served to protect old and antiquated business models while providing every obstacle to new developments. There might be a couple good things about it… but they are so far in between in these days.
The system needs to consider the wellbeing of the whole and not just of the first or the opportune.
The open source movement and FreePatentsOnline are just a demonstration of humanities need and wish for this commingling of ideas.
ae
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April 6th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Great post Todd.
Assuming you are right (and I think you are) that traditional IP laws :
“motivate innovation in a fragmented world where we believe that ideas are neatly stacked bricks proposed by individuals whose nature is to be self-maximizing greedy ego-driven cogs whose primary (sole?) incentive is recognition and the pursuit of power. [...] It reflects a particular assumption of human nature that, IMHO, has sat on the throne of truth for far too long without being questioned. It underlies our societal constructs that, IMHO, are crumbling all around us and tearing at their seams.”
then an interesting conversation might be one centered around what we can do with this knowledge. How can this newly identified “law” be harnessed to maximize change? Creative Commons, the open source movement and FreePatentsOnline are examples of this.
For those that haven’t already read it, Kevin Kelly’s essay about a sustainable business with 1000 tue fans:
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php
Pedraum
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April 29th, 2009 at 11:58 am
I think this is a really fascinating concept with benefits, IMHO, not only for a future civilization where competition and cooperation operate in balance, but also, IMHO for the current industrial practices and economic models. If invention and innovation is no longer a holy grail by which untold can be realized, IMHO, business will be forced to focus on implementation: deeds and not words. That the development of products may slow and the flow of ideas increase, IMHO, may provide the masses of humanity more time to adjust, mentally and ethically, to material advances rather than being swept along by them.
You have my permission to begin implementing the necessary changes at the highest level.
Also, thanks for introducing me to the acronym, IMHO. It is, IMHO, as potentially useful as it is potentially obnoxious, IMHO. Two traits that, IMHO, are really fun to combine.
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May 8th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
[...] that holds ideas back lest somebody else take them and run with them (note me thoughts on intellectual squatting). I had the fortune of receiving some timely assistance in musing over this topic as in the last [...]