I’ve been reading up (again) on Project Xanadu again for MWT[1]. This forms part of the history of hypertext. But I always feel a dis-ease at some of the concepts embodied in that ‘proposal’. According to the page at Wikipedia, one of the 17 Rules of Xanadu[2] is that each individual is uniquely identified. Each document is uniquely (and securely) identified[3]. Each use (transclusion) includes a royalty mechanism at any desired degree of granularity to ensure payment on any portion accessed[4]. So that idea I just copied from Wikipedia? Transcluded. It would require a royalty payment and an automatic link backwards and forwards and indelibly.
So what would happen if I dumped this blog? Erased this post? Maybe I couldn’t because of the transclusion. But that’s not really my point.
The thing I really like about Wikipedia is directly (and inversely) related to what I am uncomfortable with about Xanadu, about the idea of putting a price on our culture. Wikipedia allows us free and unfettered access to culturally relelvant ideas. Yes, there are issues about what is included or excluded from Wikipedia, but generally, if you want an overview of a topic, Wikipedia has it. And it’s free.
This is also the problem I have with the Recording (music) and Movie industries. They seem to want to create our culture[5], but they also want us to pay and pay and pay. When we hear a piece of music that speaks to us, that we share with our friends, that helps bind us as a group, that music becomes part of our culture, our identity. That’s why musicians make music[6], they want to connect with us and allow us to connect to each other. I really get annoyed at the notion that we have to pay for each and every version of a song that speaks to us, that we appropriate for our own purpose, our own identity.
Transclusion, Xanadu, comes with this same level of cost for our culture. We will never own ideas. We may never learn new things because each idea is already transcluded (or completely excluded) from our grasp. I read recently about a newfangled piece of equipment that would allow the identification of people thinking ‘terroristic’ thoughts[7] as they passed through an airport. How far will this technology go before they can identify that we are thinking a song and are thus liable for royalties? When does a song, an idea, become our own?
Our culture seems to be up for ransom. Every single use, every idea, every development is already owned[8]. We all stand to lose if we cannot appropriate ideas for our own use. We lose if we cannot find information on Wikipedia and simply link to it. I don’t have to know everything about Project Xanadu, I don’t need to link and transclude the ideas, because I can remix them, I can shift them, I can change them. That’s what makes the web as we know it so interesting!
- Mobile Workforce Technologies [↩]
- Number 3 to be exact [↩]
- Rule 10 [↩]
- Rule 9 [↩]
- or at least some versions of it [↩]
- or so I’m led to believe [↩]
- If I do a search for “identifying terrorist thought patterns” will I be flagged as a potential Person of Interest? Or will I find over 200000 hits? And how could I include this idea without the 200000 hits of the people already talking about it? And which is the original? [↩]
- or should that be pwned!!! [↩]