Crooked links

This whole debacle boils down to the question you asked earlier about the difference between ownership of physical property verses the ownership of intellectual property. The difference is one of value. As mass production and automated customization techniques grow in complexity, thereby lowering costs, the corresponding value of physical property decreases. The intellectual property that supports and defines this automation, however, increases correspondingly. Conceivably, the near future will continue this trend until self-replicating nanobots assemble anything of a physical nature we want for no cost. At that point, the only thing of value will be intellectual property.

Who will own this property? The future will be either Gates’ or Torvalds’ vision. Actions we take now will decide.

I for one, admit that the intellectual property I generate rightly belongs to all humanity because I certainly didn’t create it from scratch. In a best case scenario, I might have extended the thousands of years of logical hierarchy, investigation and creativity one or two percent. I have no moral claim of ownership over it. I have no ethical right to ransom it for payment. If I successfully hold this information hostage through legal means, extracting payment in excess of the comparatively miniscule amount of work I personally added, I would be stealing that compensation from society. I would be inflating my importance and influence on world events out of proportion to the demonstrated usefulness of my contributions.

When one node overpowers others in a parallel processing system through methods other than demonstrated usefulness, we call that node “corrupt.” The highest innate priority of any self-sufficient evolutionary system must be to identify and correct the influence of such nodes. We see this in our social evolutionary system when people object to lock-ins, leveraging, and elimination of competition. Even when the perpetrator goes on to do good things with his ill-gotten gains, the imbalance of his influence remains. Our most fundamental level of consciousness asks, “What makes the perpetrator best suited to direct the course of these good things?” Capitalism’s answer of “It’s his money,” makes increasingly less sense in a world where money can only buy artificial weight and other intellectual property, especially considering that all intellectual property could just as easily be free for everyone to enjoy.

Zephram, what effort, then, merits compensation in the form of money? Please forgive me if I have missed the gist of your argument

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Nicholas Carr

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