open access, elsevier boycott

On his blog Tim Gowers recently petitioned for a general boycott by scientists of Elsevier´s scientific journals.

His reasons I find excellent, as do many others, which has resulted in over 3,000 scientists now signing the petition on www.thecostofknowledge.com.

Let´s hope this initiative really takes off. I wrote on this subject on my visual arts blog earlier, and I find it truly heartening to see people taking a stand. Open access and open source can be (in my not so humble opinion) a way to reduce the poverty and the technology gap between rich and poor in this world.

Since society most often has already paid well for the research, it is extremely unfair that important knowledge should not be available to the public unless they can pay exorbitant prices.

We might think that mathematics is an important example (ok, I think so too, a little biasedly...) but consider important medical research, which can directly save lives...!

So open access is the first step, really. And money should not be a dominating force in the dissemination of human knowledge.


the open access logo

world cultural heritage 2: musée du quai branly

one of the museums not permitting the taking of pictures is the (new french prestige) musée du quai branly, which shamelessly presents extremely valuable religious/shamanistic tribal art works from africa, asia, polynesia, and the americas... shamelessly you say, why do you use that word frank? well, because one cannot help but wonder where all these incredible art works came from, and how they were acquired. and even if they are in need of protection and conservation, why they are not in the respective national museums of the countries of origin. [the same question irrevocably pops up when visiting the louvre, and seeing the enormous amount of egyptian art which i believe was largely simply carted off during 19th and early 20th century by the french. why not give it back to egypt?]

so, the art works having most likely been taken away from peoples not capable of protecting their national cultural heritage, the museum also actively obstructs these peoples and the rest of the world in acquiring images of these art works.

are these not mankinds collective treasures? are these not meant for as wide a dissemination as is possible? shame, musée du quai branly.



man, wood, african, 19-20th century (did not write down the details, sorry)

is generalized open source the future?

can one envisage a world society in which generalized open source is standard practice?

perhaps i should first explain what i mean with generalized open source. it's a (suitably vague) generalization of the open source approach in software, the interpretation of which is already disputed...;-) . (recognize the tower of babel theme from my starting posts?)

to me `generalized open source' means that knowledge (broadly interpreted) is shared freely. this means that the (knowledge) source of things/products/... is open to all. so in a world with total generalized open source, music is freely downloadable just as art, books, videos, plays, performances, dance, all science, technical designs, software, etc. etc.

time for a long list of objections to such a world? yes probably, but ... does not the idea merit some consideration? how many objections are really insurmountable?

but let me turn to art first -in my next post- , otherwise one might feel cheated in having been attracted to an art blog only to find it's just another philosophy rag... ;-)