I first researched Creative Commons by reading an XKCD comic involving one Cory Doctorow. Following a trail of Google Screes and Wikipedia entries, I discovered the Canadian novelist and internet activist has published a lot of material online about limited copyright and free flow of information. Recently I have become more interested in news, current events, politics, and the like. I want to read read read read READ! The amount of information available in the world is gargantuan, and (for me) there's rarely a boring moment in the trolling of online media material.
Yet, I am sometimes blocked from reading certain items by the demand of payment (e.g. majority of The Economist.com). SpringerLink and other online journal archives are very protective of their content and, being a frugal college student, these cash-keyed barriers make research (for pleasure and work) difficult. I imagine there is a plethora of interconnecting reasons and agendas for why so much interesting reading is walled away behind subscription-only gates, but I get frustrated nonetheless.
Perhaps there is a better way of organizing and distributing online information. By "better" I mean easy access for everyone, without paying for a subscription. Businesses have to offset the cost of supporting an online interface by charging customers, but maybe there can be cooperation between state departments and the private sector: subsidization of online costs for the purpose of making all journal and news material free to viewers. This suggestion may sound political (another annoying stigma of my culture: the habit of labeling ideas with partisan politics right up front), but I think it has merit beyond campaign fodder. We citizens already pay for internet service to our homes and offices, perhaps a cooperation between ISP companies and information brokers would be a better solution. Cash flow could be further supported by side bar and banner ads for the ISPs and there services.
Looking back on these last few paragraphs, I need more research to support these ideas. For now, total free access to internet material is a nice thought, and I know I'm not alone in that dream. There has already been a great deal of talk about this subject. Entities like Creative Commons are monuments to this public dialog. A third thought that occurred to me was the ever-increasing "blogosphere." I came into contact with quantifiable information about the world of blogging recently, through a Popular Science article on techpresident.com. This site tracks the 2008 presidential candidates to correlate their online presence with their success in the polls and at the caucuses. Techpresident compiles and daily updates statistics like MySpace friends, Facebook supporters, and, most importantly, the discussion of the candidates in blogs from all over the net. While there is doubt as to the reliability of the site's 'measuring sticks,' I think the concept is brilliant. Most important of all, every last byte of information is FREE. From techpresident.com I traveled to Technorati.com, a website dedicated to compiling blogs from around the world and posting a select few for online readers to view, much like how Google News sets up their site. This blog archive (blarchive -- credit Mike) is also free to any internet user. Check out the "About" section on Technorati.com. The figures on blogs are quite telling of the blogosphere's size and influence.
All free, all available. I am fortunate enough to have been born in a time where information is power and more and more people are striving for it to become totally accessible to all humankind. There is no excuse to not learn about the world.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
No excuse indeed! Note to the frugal: if you get on the Mines' school website and search for a while, you can figure out how to tunnel in and access every journal that Mines has access to without leaving your home. It isn't easy, but it's entirely possible.
I agree that information should be more accessible, but I'm in a unique position that bears some examination. I'd like to mesh all of the things I've learned about teaching snowsports and what I've learned in school into a superior educational product. I will release the rights to the intellectual property after I've made some money, but I really want to keep eating while I pursue that goal. Hell, I'd like to make enough money to impress future interplanetary investors. The output of writers and musicians is uniquely transferable, but walking the line between eating and giving it away isn't so simple. I don't really know the answer, but I can definitely empathize with the desire to know and the desire to eat (your's, not the author's).
I attempted to put in the link in a format that you could copy and paste, but you'll just have to remove the spaces.
< a {turn the area between the curlys into a space} href = "www.websitename.com" > Displayed Text < / a >
Post a Comment