6 Jul 2004

Intellectual "proper"ty?

Posted by Just a little unwell in General | 11:26am


Monetizing expertise........ Currency of the information age.... Knowledge capital...... buzzwords galore! For a species that's taken to packaging and marketing water, or even air....... this is not a very deviant behavior. Attach a price tag for everything. Mother's womb for rent! What else?

Evolution - the ongoing process which resulted in micro-organisms eventually transforming themselves into humans (who are now digging into the very same micro-organisms and inventing new forms of life in the name of genetic engineering). 'Evolve' was what all these life forms did, whenever the going got tough. They evolved and overcame whatever limited them. Those that couldn't, perished. The bacteriae got bigger, the fish jumped on to the land, the crawlers / the reptiles developed strong legs to stand up and run faster, the giraffes stretched their neck out to reach those high-hanging leaves, and the four legged baboons stood erect and walked on two feet - stories of how life evolved to get the better of adversities.

The humans evolved too - discovered fire, wheel, medicine, agriculture, weaponry, housing, power - their potential knew no bounds. They kept evolving - transferring whatever they learnt between each other, spreading knowledge like fire. Their collective wisdom propelled them to greater heights - the heights that we are in today. Tempting science fiction writers to dream the undreamable...... and normal folks like us to wish for the impossible........

Now i'll apply some brakes. Humanity faces some of the worst diseases and the cure that is available is beyond an average human's reach. In fact, the segment which is most prone to acquire the disease is the least likely to afford the cure. While knowledge freely flowed like water in the earlier times resulting in a 'collective upliftment' of the species, we now have a situation whereby knowledge is pocketized - available only in isolated pockets.It has become an exclusive preserve and is contributing to a 'selective upliftment' of the species, in contrast to the earlier times.

Knowledge is on its way to becoming a rarity. It's junk that's floating around in the garb of 'information overload'. Whosoever originates real knowledge holds on to it dearly in the name of 'intellectual property', making it unavailable for the rest of the humanity. It's a different matter that their creations borrowed heavily on inherited wisdom, for which no royalties / compensations are considered necessary. The fundamental laws of science and arts, intelligence acquired over thousands of years, all those go uncompensated for and get leveraged without a second thought. But the '



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