{"id":429,"date":"2006-06-20T10:49:57","date_gmt":"2006-06-20T16:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=429"},"modified":"2006-06-20T10:49:57","modified_gmt":"2006-06-20T16:49:57","slug":"cut_and_paste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=429","title":{"rendered":"Cut and paste"},"content":{"rendered":"

All technological change is generational change. The transitional generations – the in-betweeners with five toes in the old world, five in the new – never see things clearly. You couldn’t even say they see through a glass darkly; it’s a bright mirror they’re looking into. They assume that what’s to come will be a perfect mashup of what they think was good about the old and what they think is good about the new. But that’s not how it works. Technological change, and the economic change it produces, is not a moral force; it’s simply an implacable force. “We’re making the technologies,” says<\/a> John Brockman. “Then the technologies make us.”<\/p>\n

Patrick Ross, of the Center for the Study of Digital Property, shares a tale<\/a> from the home front:<\/p>\n

\n

A few months ago my 11-year-old daughter was researching a paper on Jesse Owens for social studies. She didn’t go to the library, pull down reference books and fill up 3×5 index cards. She went onto Google. She found plenty of materials. But when I asked to read her completed paper, it was nothing but a cut-and-paste job from various web sites on Owens; she even included, quite randomly, part of a press release about some recent celebration in his honor.<\/p>\n

My daughter’s work ethic may not always be what I’d like it to be, but she’s bright and can write more than sufficiently for a 5th grade social studies class. Yet she seemed flat-out baffled when I explained to her that the paper wasn’t acceptable. “Is the information wrong?” she asked. “Did I leave something out?” No to both. But she hadn’t written her own paper, and more importantly, she hadn’t learned anything, as was clear when I began to quiz her about the content in her own “paper.” Hard to transfer knowledge in the two seconds it takes to select and move.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Click click. Cut and paste.<\/p>\n

“The ultimate search engine,” says Larry Page, “would understand everything in the world.” Just like Patrick Ross’s daughter understands Jesse Owens.<\/p>\n

Ross offers a second tale:<\/p>\n

\n

A few weeks ago, I was doing some intellectual property research and was reading materials on a WIPO-affiliated web site. A Google search on a narrow topic I wanted more information on suggested a Wikipedia entry as my first choice … so I pulled up the link. Lo and behold, the exact text I had just read on the WIPO site was in the Wikipedia entry, but there was no indication it came from WIPO.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Click click. Cut and paste.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019re already taking back the Internet,” says<\/a> Jimmy Wales, of Wikipedia. “With your help, we can take back the world.”<\/p>\n

From whom, Jimmy? From whom?<\/p>\n

Ross points to a BBC article<\/a> on the way “many of the new generation of students raised on the internet see nothing wrong with copying other people’s work.” “I just couldn’t say it better myself,” they’ll explain, so why not cut and paste? I mean, why give us the Internet if you don’t want us to use it?<\/p>\n

The issue isn’t plagiarism. The issue is the meaning of “understanding” and how it’s changing.<\/p>\n

Here’s<\/a> Mark Cuban, another Internet billionaire: “In the past, you had to memorize knowledge because there was a cost to finding it. Now, what can’t you find in 30 seconds or less? We live an open-book-test life that requires a completely different skill set.”<\/p>\n

Click click. Cut and paste.<\/p>\n

A completely different skill set.<\/p>\n

Andrew Keen is aghast<\/a>: “We have created technology that is encouraging a culture of intellectual kleptocracy and all anyone wants to talk about is rights.”<\/p>\n

But the road ahead is paved with the yellow bricks of good intentions, Andrew. It must be leading to a happy place. And, besides, we’re the in-betweeners. We’ll all be comfortably dead by the time our grandchildren pass through the gates of Oz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All technological change is generational change. The transitional generations – the in-betweeners with five toes in the old world, five in the new – never see things clearly. You couldn’t even say they see through a glass darkly; it’s a bright mirror they’re looking into. They assume that what’s to come will be a perfect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}