Corporate will say that you can only ever rent content, artists will say that art is only temporary. Ironically, both are saying the same thing. Both will go on to rework material. Both can do it for profit. Unfortunately, one wants to wipe out all competition and believe that all ideas are their own, while the other wants to see what others have done and take inspiration. One of these two are certainly more concerned with doing, the other with having.

More deeply and unavoidably, we need to look at the entire ecosystem through the expanded lens of VRM. I purchase my government with votes, taxes, fees, and behaviors. Way too much of that is way too opaque and not at all accessible. There is not an aspect of human behavior that is not regulated. Government is only slightly less ubiquitous than the Internet, but that does not mean it is to be hated or destroyed, but rather remade. So far we’ve had half duplex government. It changes radically when we go to full duplex.

We are in the midst of that transition now. Willing buyer and willing seller will happen, but the terms we use and conventions of exchange will not be recognized for some time. Like all good revolutions, this one will go unnoticed for a long time before it materializes in the consciousness of people. Government as social media is the beginning as is contract as social media (and social media as contract).

This also points to the beauty of the Internet: enabling ceaseless change the traditions, rituals and mores of old code are swept away. Left in high relief are the ancient principles that got us here. This is sort of like common law, but in this world everyone is judge, everything is precedent, and all are parties. Where VRM will play the most important role is writing the code of the code that stitches all of it together: IP for law (noting again, that the IP is not the skinny waist, but the nanotubes we play with; waists only happen when markets don’t work, but that doesn’t make the nanotubes not nanotubes; it makes their control something to be dealt with).

I’m also concerned about corporate silos, including the ones we call “clouds.” My hope is that they’ll prove less useful in the long run than the open alternatives. But, we’ll see.

This is a topic I’ve thought a lot about recently. There are many ramifications to this change in ownership versus renting, particularly content.

Libraries (and musuems) had for a long time been cultural memory institutions. However, as they increasingly are purchasing online digital versions of content, who will be preserving this information into the future? Publishers should be doing more in this regard, but they’re not. Increasingly this is true of all media that is no longer in any analog format.

No one much worried about the preservation of printed texts, because writing on paper (if well stored) can last hundreds or thousands of years. Digital information can disappear in the blink of an eye, or more likely become obsolete because of media or technology changes. While publishing-driven initiatives like Portico or LOCKSS address this question for some content, they are only limited to the content participating in those programs. There is a wide swath of digital information we are apt to lose, such as blogs, Facebook pages, twitter streams, online notebooks, or non-printed research reports that don’t end up in repositories that will likely go dark in future decades. Much of the current research on historical figures relies on their notes, letters and diaries to round out the story of their lives and activities. Today much of that is now online and prone to loss. Not to over-emphasize their present importance, but someone 100 years from now might want to know what the next generation’s President Obama wrote during law school on her Facebook pages.

Or perhaps, someone might want to study you and your ideas. Hopefully, they’ll have access to them when Harvard takes your blog down from their servers.

Hope you are all well and can’t wait to see you next month.

First of all, thanks for the link. As I read through your piece, I couldn’t help but think about a quote I heard recently in the context of spreading ideas. It’s from Jefferson but still very much applicable today: “he who lights his candle at mine receives light without darkening me.”

To wit, Jefferson thought about creating a marketplace of exchange of ideas in a time far far removed from the Internet and many of the early proponents of the internet had similar desires. While there is a tremendous cacophony around the internet, I do suspect that all the knowledge that is poured in represents those goods we can only give.

There are, however, a few fundamentals which cause me to not share your optimism as to the next stage. Our willingness to let go of control may also be tied to the willingness of corporations to provide us with spaces where they take over that control. At the current time, it is mostly a beneficial relationship but I sometimes wonder if some dastardly and darker corners of corporations might make this more nefarious. I have not made up my mind on that phenomenon yet as the evidence of such behavior seems to still be largely counteracted by the corporate self-interest in participation and preservation.

Oh, and by the way Native Americans also don’t believe in ownership, only in stewardship,