Posts by BenWilson
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The analogy falls because there is no physical product that is analogous to intellectual property.
I think that's part of the reason it's so hard to get heads around the idea of value for IP. Most value in society is for a good or a service. IP is very different.
Really, IP is the means of production, rather than the product. Creating some IP is most analogous to making a factory. You spend a certain amount of time or capital on it, then it can produce profit in perpetuity. But it's a very special kind of factory - it's one where you get to stop anyone else making the same kind of goods, or at least demand a fixed cut of every good they sell.
I'm getting a feeling this idea is likely to have already been covered on the other thread, but don't care to read the entire thing to find out. Can someone who has already done that spare me the pain, I don't want to talk more on this if it's already being done.
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I really can't for the life of me understand why so many people consider feelings as somehow occurring outside of biology.
I can understand it. I just don't agree with it. I'm sure the reason people don't see the mind as biological is because they themselves have one. It's the only mind they can see, and furthermore they see it directly. But no-one else can. So it's pretty easy to think that maybe it's somehow intangible. Also, the illusion of free will is a particularly difficult conundrum for seeing ourselves merely as machines.
But what is easy to think is so often not true.
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Further, it is possible for an ordinary person to gain respect through writing good prose. That's quite cool.
I reckon. In fact, it's possible for ordinary people to get all kinds of respect from things they add to the net. I found the services of various amateur documentary makers on YouTube invaluable recently when I resolved it was finally time to own an electric bike. I saved a heck of a lot of time and money (and heartache) that way.
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Yes, when I was young and foolish I hadn't learned that it is not necessary to read a book to the end.
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Don't worry dude, I know you're just amicably making your mark. You are not marked for death. It's not a black mark on your name.
I think in Thailand the name lent itself to all sorts of word play, because it's part of the verb "to be".
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mark, reading about zen seems very pointless. But you do have to read a bit about it to realize that.
I noticed that in Thailand my name also seemed to arouse a lot of mirth.
English: Mark: ....skid-mark, a trail of left on the ground by tyres, and....
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I finished it. But I wouldn't say I was profoundly moved by it, despite it actually coming from every angle I could appreciate, being a motorcycle rider myself, having a long interest in Zen, having studied Western philosophy (which it was actually more about), and having written a lot of technical manuals. The bit I didn't dig about it was the endless psychological torture that was inflicted on the child in the story, and the implication that you have to go nuts to find yourself. Zen has always struck me as a much more practical and compassionate philosophy than any of that.
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I was surprised by that manual having very little in it about motorcycle maintenance at all. It didn't even tell me how to fix a flat. From what I could tell, the zen way to fix a bike is just to do it, not read about it. Curious that it took hundreds of pages to say that.
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And let's not go the other way and confuse the interests of all the players in the process of creating and consuming entertaining literarature with those of writers.
Indeed. I sometimes lament that I can't make a million bucks writing a 4KB computer game, the way it was possible to do in the 1980s. Now it typically requires a colossal team, and can be as expensive as a big budget movie. But there are still lots of people writing 4KB games and making money out of them. They just can't make the colossal fortunes that were possible when such things were bleeding edge. But who out there apart from old programmers is lamenting that, when they get their hands on the latest PlayStation extravaganza?
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The key problem with the analogy is that the actual trade of writing will be mostly unaltered. It will still be the job of putting one word after another, unlike the blacksmith who simply became mostly redundant as his wares were no longer wanted. The question is not whether writing will be lost. It will not. The question is whether good writers will be lost. Will these people, who specialized in putting one word after another, be crushed by a tidal wave of mediocrity?
Or will they, as jon knox's "how to charge" link suggests, just have to lift their game? Is it akin to fashion, in which it is of course possible to buy cheap knock off clothes, and most people do, but really stylish trendy stuff still sells at colossal premiums, and keeps a thriving industry in business? Writers will still be a brand, whatever the delivery mechanism. People have a lot more clothes than they did just from when I was a child, but do they have less quality clothes? Talking to young girls I don't get the impression that they consume quality clothes any less than they did when I was a kid, they just have a lot more now, and quite a lot of junk. My bookshelves are about 5 times the size of what my mother remembers her bookshelves being, but is there more or less quality in there? I think there is more total, and probably less proportionally. Which is a net gain, IMHO.
But personally, I find these bookshelves a pain in the arse, they're wasting a ton of precious storage space, which I now need with another baby on the way. I can't bear to part with all those books, and would really like it if there was a way that I could do the obviously possible - put the entire damned lot on an SD stick and keep it in my wallet. Unfortunately, the entire world of copyright stands between me and that entirely possible and extremely practical outcome. I can't see that humanity is served by the billions of tons of paper and cardboard that our legal system insists on having slowly sequestering in bookcases and boxes all around the world.
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