what I am prepared to engage in and what I am not prepared to engage in with my energy--the archives

[Therese Fitzpatrick]

I do not consider myself a member of this community, not really knitted in
as so many of you are.  Mindful of Birgitt's tenderness, I am a bit afraid
to say anything but I will.

I am heartfully sorry that you are now experiencing pain in a place that has
obviously been a nurturing space for you, Birgitt.  Your generous expression
of your difficult emotions has touched me in a way that surprises me.  I do
not know you and yet I am sitting here wishing I could reach out across the
earth and comfort you.  How could this be?  We do not know each other.  And,
if I may be so selfish as to share my selfish thoughts, why is Birgitt's
pain resonating so deeply within me?  What is it about, really, for me to
have this reaction?

I belong to many online communities and I have known for many years that any
thought that I send across this planet with the click of a link is cast
beyond my reach, like a mustard seed into the wind.  The internet seems, to
me, to represent the essence of open space.  The world seems to be rushing a
lot faster than I wish to be rushed.  Boundaries don't seem like boundaries
anymore.  And when I find myself in organizations that aspire to embrace
open space as much as possible, no one seems to be in charge and yet people
seem to have power and I know they have power because they sometimes use it
in ways that I would not have done. I slip in and out of comfort with a lack
of hierarchy, even though it has been my life's work to undo hierarchy.  My
cognitive dissonance, right now in my real life, is so unsteady. . . if only
the people with whom I am called to interact would slow down, accept a
little bit of form, adopt some common clarity. . . but no, I set out to
travel into new ways of being and doing and lo and behold I find my personal
world filled with people who. . . well, people who seem determined to
embrace open space and collaboration and trust and a lack of attachment to
outcome and transparency.  I seem to have found people determined, just as I
am, to find new ways of being and gosh some of them are adopting faster than
me. . .

Sure, I wanted the values I have just listed to be made manifest in the
world but not so fast, not until I can catch up, catch my breath.

I dare to identify with your tender feelings, Birgitt.  I have been
overwhelmed by all the open space in several work groups I am in right now.
The genie of open space technology has infected almost everyone I know.  No
one is in charge, least of all me.

I was going to tell you something similar to what Michael has told you about
copyright law. I used to be a lawyer and I sometimes appoint myself to
explain the law but Michael has done it for me.  I have just been reading a
book called "The Future of Ideas" by Lawrence Lessig.  It is not about
copyright law, altho Lessig is a law professor.  It is about how society can
allow ideas to grow.  If one person or a group of persons controls an idea
or many ideas, well, nature cannot take its course.  I have lost my trust in
some institutions but so far, I am still willing to trust nature.

It is interesting to me that Paul has chosen to compare the openness of
OSI's archives to an alleged openness at Microsoft.  Microsoft just got
fined $673 million dollars by European courts for violating antitrusts laws
because Microsoft has done a great deal of damage to the freedom of
innovation that created the internet.  Microsoft became great in an
environment that valued a free sharing of technological innovation and now
it uses its power in the marketplace to crush innovation.  Lessig's book
suggests that if people are allowed to control ideas, the driving forces of
the marketplace (and, in my opinion, the driving forces of capitalism, which
does not, in my opinion, have the welfare of humanity at stake) limit
innovation. Microsoft grew and prospered in the early environment of free
sharing that created computer technology but now it uses its market position
to limit the innovation and growth of others.  If ideas cannot be freely
shared, evolution is hindered.

Apple did make an early miscalculation in its openness and Apple has paid a
cost.  I believe the entire human race has paid dearly for the simple,
humble fact that Apple, at a critical juncture in the development of
computer technology, attempted to control the free exchange of ideas.  None
of us knows what the world would be like today if Apple had not tried to
lock up the mercurial thing we call an idea.  We might be looking at a world
with a dozen operating systems and many software giants instead of a world
where 90% of the computers use Microsoft's operating system.

I am thinking of a radio program I heard within the past year.  It was about
how the vast majority of potatoes in the United States are now grown to suit
the fast food french fry market.  And this is a dangerous thing because if a
bug came along that wiped out the limited strain of potatos being grown for
the fast food french fry market, it would destroy countless farm communities
and businesses and livelihoods.  Nature does not like having her potato
variety limited.  Even potatoes need to have its seeds freely shared.

Seeds are a lot like ideas.

I share a lengthy quote from Thomas Jefferson from p. 94 of Lessig's book.
Jefferson was our attorney general when the United States first enacted
copyright laws.  Jefferson did not actually think ideas should be
copyrighted at all!

quoting Thomas Jefferson
“If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea,
which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to
himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession
of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.  It’s
peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every
other person possesses the whole of it.  He who receives an idea from me,
receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lites his
taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.  That ideas should
freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual
instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been
peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like
fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any
point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical
being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation.  Inventions
then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
Enlightenment was in nature’s plan."

Ideas have always spread like wildfire, Birgitt.  With the quick fire of the
internet, they seem to be spreading faster but. . . and I wish I did not
have thoughts like this and I wish life would slow down and I wish I could
stop spending my life thrashing with ideas sometimes. . . I think ideas
spread even faster than my DSL connection.

I have taken too long to say this, Birgitt, but, as you sit painfully with
the awareness that your thoughts are now 'posted' in an archive for all the
world to see, I lovingly, gently, whisper to you that you are safe.  And so
am I.

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