For the Love of Money....
The House of Representatives recently voted to reduce protections available to endangered species. At the same time we have industries suing for protection.
I love the idea of having searchable, indexed full-text literature on-line for free, as Google has been planning. Not because I want to read things for free. (I can do that already, Publishing Industry: it's called a 'public library.') In fact, I dislike reading more than three or four pages' worth on a screen.
No, what I love about the idea is the "searchable, indexed" part. It means no more having practically to re-read whole books to find a half-remembered sentence or paragraph. That, dear Publishing Industry, is the entire point of computing: to save time on the boring stuff.
Now, I am not one to like the new for newness' sake. It maddens me whenever I hear some flighty nitwit scold more cautious folk for being unwilling to "embrace the future." "The future" is not technology (or anything else) — it is what is done with those things, what use is made of them. The recording industry might have a stronger claim for caution than the publishing industry — I can't think of any practical use for digitizing music other than to expand its distribution (although you won't catch me spending the extra effort to rip all of my CDs, or P2P lots of songs I don't already have on CD, and then load them onto various bits of new equipment that I'd also have to buy, install, and maintain in order to have constant access to my entire music library at all times). But to obstruct production of a de facto concordance to masses of the world's literature because a relative few diehards, who prefer running down batteries or burning coal to look at thousands of screens' worth of text in Courier (at least that's how they do it at Project Gutenberg) to killing trees, might deprive a hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars industry of a few tens of thousands? I don't care how you frame that: it's greedy, not principled.
Like most selfishness, it exhibits a blindness that is sadly reminiscent of the various green movements: namely, that the status quo is the most desirable set of circumstances. Imagine the furor the Amalgamated Illuminators' Guild might have raised at the introduction of the printing press! Think, in fact, of the local depression (in both senses) caused by industrialized manufacturing to literal cottage industries: although those cases are not strictly comparable to this one because they involve individual craftsman rather than, well, industrialized production.
Much green rhetoric is about 'saving' the planet or 'the environment.' Of course, what they mean by the latter is, this environment. Our environment. The status quo environment. It's not so much about saving the planet or the environment from us as about saving it for us. Not that I have a problem with that goal. But let's be honest, shall we? The planet, the environment, doesn't need us to take care of it. It will take care of itself. It's called 'evolution.' The question is whether it will take care of us or, you know, "take care" of us. There were extensive extinctions several times in the past, and yet the biosphere is still teeming. (Granted, trilobites were unfairly shafted, and the apes will be a sad loss [end of a subfamily, too, not just species].) The idea that "the environment" is something that we both can and should save is (if I may borrow, for what will probably be an inappropriate application [but y'know what? This is a blog] from S. J. Gould's Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle) an application of whiggery to the history of the biosphere: that is, the idea of progress and the present as its culmination.
There has not been environmental stability for at least 10,000 years (since the last glaciation), if not for the last 4.5 billion. Various tree species are still migrating northward from their southern glacial refugia. The great plains of the U.S. were drier than today until about 3,000 years ago. The world appears to have been generally chilly between 1,00 and 500 years ago.
Moreover, it is not just climatic change that affects "the environment." Each biological response to climate change constitutes a change in environmental conditions to which other organisms, and even the surface geology, will respond in further change, ad infinitum. The only constant is change.
I love the idea of having searchable, indexed full-text literature on-line for free, as Google has been planning. Not because I want to read things for free. (I can do that already, Publishing Industry: it's called a 'public library.') In fact, I dislike reading more than three or four pages' worth on a screen.
No, what I love about the idea is the "searchable, indexed" part. It means no more having practically to re-read whole books to find a half-remembered sentence or paragraph. That, dear Publishing Industry, is the entire point of computing: to save time on the boring stuff.
Now, I am not one to like the new for newness' sake. It maddens me whenever I hear some flighty nitwit scold more cautious folk for being unwilling to "embrace the future." "The future" is not technology (or anything else) — it is what is done with those things, what use is made of them. The recording industry might have a stronger claim for caution than the publishing industry — I can't think of any practical use for digitizing music other than to expand its distribution (although you won't catch me spending the extra effort to rip all of my CDs, or P2P lots of songs I don't already have on CD, and then load them onto various bits of new equipment that I'd also have to buy, install, and maintain in order to have constant access to my entire music library at all times). But to obstruct production of a de facto concordance to masses of the world's literature because a relative few diehards, who prefer running down batteries or burning coal to look at thousands of screens' worth of text in Courier (at least that's how they do it at Project Gutenberg) to killing trees, might deprive a hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars industry of a few tens of thousands? I don't care how you frame that: it's greedy, not principled.
Like most selfishness, it exhibits a blindness that is sadly reminiscent of the various green movements: namely, that the status quo is the most desirable set of circumstances. Imagine the furor the Amalgamated Illuminators' Guild might have raised at the introduction of the printing press! Think, in fact, of the local depression (in both senses) caused by industrialized manufacturing to literal cottage industries: although those cases are not strictly comparable to this one because they involve individual craftsman rather than, well, industrialized production.
Much green rhetoric is about 'saving' the planet or 'the environment.' Of course, what they mean by the latter is, this environment. Our environment. The status quo environment. It's not so much about saving the planet or the environment from us as about saving it for us. Not that I have a problem with that goal. But let's be honest, shall we? The planet, the environment, doesn't need us to take care of it. It will take care of itself. It's called 'evolution.' The question is whether it will take care of us or, you know, "take care" of us. There were extensive extinctions several times in the past, and yet the biosphere is still teeming. (Granted, trilobites were unfairly shafted, and the apes will be a sad loss [end of a subfamily, too, not just species].) The idea that "the environment" is something that we both can and should save is (if I may borrow, for what will probably be an inappropriate application [but y'know what? This is a blog] from S. J. Gould's Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle) an application of whiggery to the history of the biosphere: that is, the idea of progress and the present as its culmination.
There has not been environmental stability for at least 10,000 years (since the last glaciation), if not for the last 4.5 billion. Various tree species are still migrating northward from their southern glacial refugia. The great plains of the U.S. were drier than today until about 3,000 years ago. The world appears to have been generally chilly between 1,00 and 500 years ago.
Moreover, it is not just climatic change that affects "the environment." Each biological response to climate change constitutes a change in environmental conditions to which other organisms, and even the surface geology, will respond in further change, ad infinitum. The only constant is change.
posted by Dr. Bubbles at 09:36
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