"The Cult of the Amateur" cult.of.the.amateur.txt Part 1 "The Cult of the Amateur" A reply to the complaints of the paid professional punditry on the subject of having lost their previously impermeable media monopoly they are just now only realizing hit an immoveable iceberg quite a while ago with the Internet, cell phone, and iPod revolutions. by Michael S. Hart Internet User #199 Founding Member of Project Gutenberg, World eBook Fair & General Cyberspace "And The Band Played On. . . ." The Titanics of world media crashed, full speed ahead, into these new media options years ago and that was called The Dot Com Bust. These people STILL don't realize that half of the world population that will ever buy cell phones already have done so; nor are their realizations of the world view in touch with the effects of such a change from one-way media to two-way media, but are still in shock that the Internet provided media coverage to bloggers that toppled "The Great and Powerful Oz" in the form of Dan Rather, while their news reports tried and failed, to make a fake story about toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein. The fact that "The Emperor Has No Clothes" is becoming obvious for half the world population directly via their cell phones, they can see it for themselves, and can no longer be fooled quite so easily as the United States Congress was fooled by the faked "Tonkin Gulf Incident" that led to "The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution" that created The Viet Nam War" in a true homage to "You supply the pictures and I'll provide the war" of the height of Yellow Journalism. If you've been paying attention to the professional media pundits, then you've probably heard at least some of their complaining from their professional pulpits that their monopolies on information in the new world of communication are waning, and that this informing of the public is increasingly being done more on the order of that "of the people, by the people, for the people," that was the ideal of the founding fathers of modern democracy. According to the professionally paid punditry, they have done what anyone would have, could have, and should have done in the face of their admittedly "situational ethics" of their various times, but, in face of all that, I just wonder if perhaps these pundits should not have had more to say about many issues if not for bosses up an already crowded ladder of mostly prevention of stories going out. "Prevention of Stories Going Out?" Just ask anyone on the political beat at any media level, and they will likely tell, off the record, and some even on the record, the number of important investigative journalism results that actually get refused for publication are DOUBLE the number they published. Twice as many political revelations get withheld as published. . . just ask around. . .or so some research. . .you will find that Mr. Jack Anderson, perhaps the most powerful political reporter of the last century, said his work output was only 1/3 what it should be, mostly as a result of political and professional pressures, put on him in no uncertain terms, that such-and-so political figures were NOT to be discussed in light of what he had uncovered. "The Historical Record" The Encyclopedia Britannica is often cited as an example of a best result of the professional system, usually in contradistinction to the amateur efforts of Wikipedia. However, Britannica's spectacular failures to report on Einstein's 1905 writings that fundamentally changed our understanding of this entire universe, along with their simultaneous refusal to change a centuries old attitude towards racism, the roots of World War One, just to name a few instances of brittle Britannica bias, should be enough reason alone to encourage other sources of information. Marvin Minsky, arguably, "The smartest man in the world," at least by the standards of Isaac Asimov, says that, "You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way." How can you learn anything more than one way if the professionals' attention span is that of a myopic gnat? What we need is MORE information sources. . .not less! "The Future Is Not The Past" Paid professional pundits predict the future based on the past and they make this mistake time and time and time again simply because they know it is the safe thing to do. Britannica didn't mention Einstein until around 1923. He was on the front page of newspapers around the world for years, so what was the idea of not putting him in the Britannica? Well, the truth may just be that the venerable Britannica was just too invested in the world of Isaac Newton. Then again there are the questions of Darwin, evolution. Piltdown, and a host of other political pressures on pundits at Britannica's desks, and others, including "The Monkey Trial" which was do blown out of proportion that most people forgot that Clarence Darrow was NOT the winner in that spectacular court case, to which thousands, even millions, of people paid more attention than we to Watergate. Speaking of Watergate, do we have to be reminded that Bob Woodward was the lowliest of nobodies at The Washington Post, and how lucky we are [or unlucky, to those millions who would still prefer Nixon to have been re-elected for a third and fourth term, the law about such re-elections not withstanding]. . .how lucky we were that the story, like so many others in Washington Post history was not just killed outright by professional edict from above. "A Professional Pundit". . .What Does That Mean? The first thing you have to realize about the professional pundits is that they are not independent. Not independent. They start their jobs the same as all of us with layer after layer of bosses, bosses' bosses, middle management, top management and a whole layer of executive suites and owners above all that, meaning that every one of the layers must agree to get a story published. HEADLINE! Every One of the Layers Above Must Agree to Get a Story Published! How much can actually get done when every one above you has to say "Yes" to every story you do, either implicitly or explicitly? How much can actually get done when every one above you CAN SAY NO and kill your story. Let's just say you are such a good reporter than 90% of your ideas get the green light from your boss, and 90% of his recommendations get the green light from the next boss, in line, and so on. . . . 90% of your stories get approved by your #1 chain of command boss 81% of your stories get approved by your #2 chain of command boss 73% of your stories get approved by your #3 chain of command boss 66% of your stories get approved by your #4 chain of command boss 59% of your stories get approved by your #5 chain of command boss 53% of your stories get approved by your #6 chain of command boss ...Mid-level Hierarchical Structure Lies Approximately Here... 48% of your stories get approved by your #7 chain of command boss 43% of your stories get approved by your #8 chain of command boss 38% of your stories get approved by your #9 chain of command boss 35% of your stories get approved by your #10 chain of command boss 31% of your stories get approved by your #11 chain of command boss 28% of your stories get approved by your #12 chain of command boss Obviously the bigger the media giant you work for [and doesn't the majority still want to work for the Big Boys], the higher the odds are that there will be more levels of bosses you must appease. Let's say your local media lies somewhere in the middle levels. That would mean that just about half of the stories written by the reporters that have a 90% batting average, and whose bosses have a 90% batting average, etc., etc., etc., actually ever get published in your local media. Obviously the higher up the food chain, the more likely your story is to be eaten by a higher level predator. So, if you get your news from CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, BBC, CBC, etc... the odds are that you rarely, if ever, hear much of anything on an order of competition. . .they all answer to the same kind of plain and obvious system. . .they usually give the same sound bytes more or less. . .more and more. . .even in the case of the BBC who used to be the flagship for saying what the others would not, could not or should not say. However, since the BBC got into the money business with a reversal of cash flow that would have made "Scrooge McDuck" quite proud, it has limited itself to the more mundane in the world of news as has PBS when it also repositioned itself as a commercial network, and, I should add that, technicalities notwithstanding, it should be an awful lot more than obvious that both the BBC and PBS headed in an awful lot more of a commercial direction in the Bush II Era. "Then the End Result is What?" The end result, as with all new media technologies, is first a new wave of publication. . ."The Powers-That-Be" just cannot move fast enough, really don't WANT to pay attention to "New Wave" stuff and the result is that they are like "The Titanic" for the first years of any new trend, running "full speed ahead" in a direction that's no longer the direction they really want to go. and. . . It's not as if there is a "vacuum" in the "New Wave" of publishing via the Internet, Podcasting, cell phones, etc. . .the rest of the world is just ignoring "The Olde Boye Networke" and moving on from a world that just barely exists for them any longer, the world for which "The Olde Boye Networke" is boss. . .level after lever as we saw above. . .to a world in which they can get a true first-person report from a variety of someones who do not have to say a pledge- of-allegiance to their megacorporate kieretsus before work each of their workdays until that dreaded day when they are "downsized" to a new location 6 feet under the ground on which they walked a walk precribed by their bosses, never the walks proscribed by bosses of bosses of bosses. . ."look for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man." Perhaps, if we, the people, are lucky, these people will write the record of all they were forbidden to write. . .in their last days, and we will finally have, albeit on their death beds. . .reporting from their own perspective rather than that of Big Brother. /// "The Cult of the Amateur" Part 2 Scientists versus The Media by Michael S. Hart Internet User #199 Founding Member of Project Gutenberg, World eBook Fair & General Cyberspace "The Cult of the Amateur" A reply to the complaints of the paid professional punditry on the subject of having lost their previously impermeable media monopoly they are just now only realizing hit an immoveable iceberg quite a while ago with the Internet, cell phone, and iPod revolutions. A second essay on "The Cult of the Amateur" concentrating on some aspects of professional scientists versus amateurs. The Three Greatest Scientific Thinkers of the Last Millennium When it comes to science names such as Einstein, Newton, Galileo, stand out above all the rest when it comes to understanding those scientific aspects of the universe around us. However, the world did not accept these as scientists at the time when they focused their imagination on things the rest of world's experts would sooner have left unexplored. Einstein has been thrown out of school and did what many feel the greatest scientific work of the last millennium while he was just puttering around in his spare time. If you feel Newton was more important than Einstein, that doesn't change things much, as Newton was also home away from school when he did what many feel to be his greatest work. I presume I don't have to remind too many of our readers that the work of Galileo was so well received that he was put under "house arrest" for pretty much the rest of his life as a reward. Note bene: Shakespeare was born the same year as Galileo and put the written word of the amateur right alongside these greatest of the scientific world, which will be mentioned in Part III of this series, which will include The Arts. Galileo, however, amateur that he might have been when it came to the sciences, being much more of a worker in metals and the other materials of the age, making and selling his "military compasses" and other little gizmos in his own shop, literally turned world's perspectives in their heads in other ways, as he reinvented those telescopes from Flanders to the point they changed both the world of trade and the world of astronomy. . .but. . .in the process he changed the whole world of science itself. . .inventing what this modern world calls "The Scientific Method." Galileo built new technologies for the purpose of research, and a publication of the results followed. . ."The Scientific Method." However, it should never be forgotten that Galileo, no matter the intellect, the ability to build his own tools from scratch to the point of excellence that he outcompeted all professional artisans from the world around, no matter his ability to write up his work in a manner that still survives today as a guidebook for sciences not even invented yet in his time, and no matter the Inquisition, and his resistance to it. . .let there be no mistake that Galileo was an outsider, one of those our current "professionals" are yet calling for the removal of as amateurs. In each of these cases the work was done outside an establishment of any educational or scientific community and purely as a matter of self-directed inquiry into the nature of the universe. OK, you might say, but Einstein was a century ago, Newton was far beyond that, and Galileo might as well have been in the Dark Ages for all the good having been born after Gutenberg did him, and it could no longer happen this way in modern times. The Greatest Scientific Efforts of the Modern Age The Human Genome Project The Computer Revolution No room for amateurs in modern times??? How quickly the world forgets that we owe Craig Venter for making the Human Genome Project get up off its stodgy academic ass to do the research he wanted to do 6 years earlier, and was pretty much shown the door as a result. Have we already forgotten that we owe The Computer Revolution for all intents and purposes to two garage tinkerers from Cupertino's reject pile who could see what no one else could see, just as the previous people in this list could see? The Human Genome If not for Craig Venter we would just now be finishing up the one first pass of mapping the human genome, one step at a time in the old-fashioned way, step after step, all those millions of steps-- without anything like a plan, or even a flashlight to look ahead, to figure out which are the important parts to look at. The comparable story from a century ago would be to disassemble a pyramid one stone at a time to figure out how it was put together and only then to follow the flashlight through the pathways to go to the places of most interest. As far as _I_ am concerned, no race can be said to have matured a step beyond the genetic rolling of the dice who has not measured, calculated, and reworked its own genetic structure. Otherwise, we're less well planned than our racehorses, and roses they wear in the winner's circle, not to mention our dogs, cats & entire hosts of other plants and animals we have bred better than we have bred ourselves down through the ages. Even Mendel, The Father of Genetics, Was Thrown Out Of School The last line of Mendel's transcript at University of Vienna: "He lacks insight and the requisite clarity of knowledge." Even so, years later, Mendel discovered the roots of genetics and published his results in 1866. . .the silence was deafening, just about as deafening as the silence from Encylopedia Britannica one half century later when Einstein shook down the tree of physics-- the one that had been planted by Newton. All of these three earthshaking events took place outside the all powerful ivory towers of academia, but at least Newton's teachers knew genius when they saw it. . .and, even rarer, accepted it. Not so for Mendel. Even though Mendel was elected Abbot of his monastery and wrote a very nice compendium of his genetic experiments that would stand, even to this day, his works were burned by the next abbot, and he was left to the vagaries of the winds of time. Luckily for Mendel, and for us, his work survived elsewhere. The trouble with having your work in religious libraries, is that religion does not follow logic, and the temporal church rulers of the religion, whether they be popes or abbots, may outlaw you and your work, and burn your entire life's work, and in previous days burn your life out of you, as well. However, for 30 years Mendel's work languished out of sight, and, as they say, out of mind. . .until just about the time Einstein's school career ended. . .and he was tossed out as well. And let us not forget Wallace and Darwin, who quite independently came up with theories on the origin of species, fittest survival, and the concept of evolution. . .while neither of these were what anyone could call an outcast, they were Victorian gentlemen, and, as such, did not do what anyone would call much work or school or have any real other kind of training or education. Mendeleev, who bridged the gap between physics and chemistry, was an outcast in his native Russia, even after his great success via his periodic chart of the elements, due to the fact that the Tsar didn't like him. Little good would it do the Tsar in a long run, as much good as it did all the rest who opposed such progress. Yes, you can stop an idea for a while, but in the long run: "There is no force stronger than an idea whose time has come." That's right, if you can't compete with an idea's contents, then, by all means, any other means, ridicule its form, its author, and any other possibly attachable person, style, fashion, etc. However, be forewarned, this is only a stopgap performance and it usually comes back to haunt the perpetrator. . .in spades. . . . "Every strong intellect wants to be a guardian of integrity." "Aristocracy of the intellect versus democracy of the intellect." John Von Neumann did the great work for which he is famous in the pair of fields in which he is known, before he turned 25. He was one of the greatest mathemeticians of all time, but. . . . Instead of continuing on these paths, he wasted his latest years, sadly to say, in the corridors of power. . .financial power, and, then later political power. . .but not learning anything more for which he would be remembered. As per: J. Bronowsky, The Ascent of Man In regards to scholars, I would be remiss if I did not mention an "ear" written on the front of my high school alma mater: "And gladly would he learn, and glady teach." The Oxford Scholar of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The reason this must be brought up is because so many scholars of today refuse to teach what they have learned in any clear manner, but perfer to muddy the waters to help themselves appear brighter in comparison to their students. My own idea/ideal of this is that students should pay teachers in proportion to their own success, that teachers should be paid the equivalent salary proportional to how their students do. If you don't manage to teach much, you don't get paid much. THAT should motivate teachers to a higher level of performance. In fact, I think EVERY job should be paid according to a measured evaluation of performance over time. . .highway builders would be rewarded for highways that lasted longer, rather than an opposite philosophy of hiring them again sooner if the highway wears out. Sometimes it seems as if the entire wage/salary structure of what we call "The Developed World" was created to avoid a relationship between performance and reward. This is perhaps why the old money looks so disdainfully at member positioning of "The Nouveau Riche" or "Self-Made" persons in what they have previously consider their private domains. The Computer Revolution When I first learned I had access to the Internet back in 1971 it was as if one of those lights you see in the comics went off with a flash right over my head. That very day I started talking about being able to carry library collections of the very largest size in one hand, but I had years to wait before Wozniak and Jobs made the first feasible computers I could use at home, quickly followed by CP/M machines powered by Gary Kildall's operating system, and eventually, because Kildall, as history tells us, was interested in too many other things, IBM chose Bill Gates to build their operating system, and I went that direction simply because I loved batch macro commands and working from a command structure that went from here to there rather than from there to here [PIP = Peripheral Interchange Program]. Yes I never really mastered "Reverse Polish Notation" either, for a new device known as calculator, and instead chose the competing place with an "Electronic Slide Rule." However, without Woz and Jobs, we would have continued at a mercy of the people at IBM and the like, who said that the world didn't need any more than half a dozen computers, or Bill Gates who said we didn't need any more than 640K of memory. Well, Bill was wrong about that, but he learned. . . . You don't become the richest person in the world without learning a few things along the way. By the way, Bill was a school dropout, just like so many others a world owes so much to, including those on this list, for whatever reasons they were not at school at the time of their inventions. What If We Waited for Authoritarians to Make These? You've most certainly heard experts argue and discuss everything, and still come to no conclusion. Like the media editors of the previous "Cult of the Amateur," the authoritarians and the scholars rarely come to the action points. The world of authoritarians and scholars is a world of inaction. Even if every great invention or discovery took just 1% longer to accomplish for every year it was in development, that will mean a 70 year timespan will cut advancement by half! Just as any investment broker what 1% per year means. More Examples Socrates, perhaps the smartest person of all time was an opposite of authoritarian, he invented logic and the syllogism so plebians could argue successfully against the sophists, and rhetorititians in the public assemblies, and they sentenced him to death for it, over and over and over again they sentenced him to death for it-- but the first few times their state lasted a shorter span than of Socrates life, and he walked away a free man in the new state. Yet Socrates kept his loyalty to those states, even to the point, as is so well told, of refusing to escape when his friends bribed his way out of prison, instead choosing to honor the law that had condemned him to death. Socrates left behind a trail of the greatest philosopher of time, including his student Plato, and his student Aristotle, and, then even his student Alexander, just to mention one line, but look up the Stoics, the Cynics, etc., to see Socrates' overall effect. But nothing overshadows his logic. . .his mathematics. . .or, his syllogism. . .for sheer impact on the world. The Reason for Socrates' Impact Simple. . .everyone could understand and use syllogisms. . . . Not everyone could understand and use the works of Plato, and his student Aristotle. Their world was an elitist school of thought. Too elitist to change the world for the public. /// "The Cult of the Amateur" by Michael S. Hart Internet User #199 Founding Member of Project Gutenberg, World eBook Fair & General Cyberspace Part 3 A reply to the complaints of the paid professional punditry on the subject of having lost their previously impermeable media monopoly they are just now only realizing hit an immoveable iceberg quite a while ago with the Internet, cell phone, and iPod revolutions. The Structure of the Professional Versus Amateur World Systems The Structure of the professional societies, associations, and an assortment of all other professional groups dates back to feudal, Dark Age times, in which everyone had their place and knew it and stayed in that place under threat of severe penalties. In this system grew the guilds, legal associations of skilled and trained artisans, craftsmen, etc., from The Stationers Guild, who controlled nearly all the written records, to a wide variety of a number of guilds for various crafts in the making of goods of all sorts from leather, wood, metal, etc. The guilds were an incredibly "insider" system of operation, with years and years of apprenticeship at a subsistence pay level, and then more years and years at the journeyman level, before members were finally allowed to hang out their own shingle and set up the shop of their dreams they had been working towards for decades. You had to prove yourself worth their investment of training, and worthy of the secrets of their trades. . .years of insidering for the privilege of become one of the guildsmen. From the highest levels of modern medical associations and levels of modern professors associations, the legal bar associations and all the rest of elitists, all the way down to the union member of the lowliest garbage collectors union, dog catchers union or what you might call the lowliest sanitation engineering job, etc., all our modern professional associations come from feudal guilds, and this is evident from the first moment you walk in and see sheilds and escutcheons that would be more properly places on the knights of the Dark Ages. The major premise of these organizations is to keep outsiders out and insiders in. . .let there be no doubt about it. The worst thing that can happen to these organizations is for any of their members, or even recruits, to decide they could have the benefits of being outside the system rather than inside it. A current example of this in the sports world is David Beckham of football [soccer] fame, who has jumped ship several times from an assortment of approved English clubs to foreign clubs and finally now to the dreaded Black Hole of sports, Los Angeles. The world just isn't the same place when people can abandon their roots like that and simply go where people want them most, rather than staying where they belong. Of course, sometime the case is just the opposite, as Einstein in great duress emigrated to the United States, not that he was ever really a part of the system from the word go, as mentioned in the previous portions of this series. The world just wasn't ready to accept an Einstein. . .at least "The Old World." The same was true for Craig Venter, who kick-started DNA research after spending 6 years as a surfer, while he waited for the world to catch up far enough that he could demonstrate his thought in a more obvious and undeniable manner to a world of Human Genome who could not understand him, much in the same manner as the world of a century earlier could not understand Einstein, until an obvious "proof" of the curvature of space during the famous solar eclipse preceding 1920 made him a household word, except in Britannica. Note: it took even took more than one of these eclipses to allow the more hard-boiled critics of Einstein to admit he was right. In addition, one should note that this defense is still deemed an acceptable defense toward refusing any revolutionary change in an assortment of fields, both in the hard sciences, soft sciences or in the more artistic fields of endeavor. In the world of music we have Mozart, and a quick look at Amadeus [the movie] gives a look at just how much of an outsider he was. Not to mention Beethoven, who shocked the world by putting in the scherzo dance where the minuet and trio had been enshrined. And yet everyone remembers the scherzo in Beethoven's Ninth but a real expert is required to differentiate all those clones of more minuets and trios of previous eras. The Facts versus the Propaganda Propaganda. . .an interesting word. . .simply meaning something a movement has produced to propagate itself. . .advertising. . . . Look up the roots of The Office of Propaganda the Catholic Church used for centuries. . .try this quotation as a starting point for your searches AFTER you simply look up "Office of Propaganda." Extraordinary gifts are not to be rashly desired, nor is it from them that the fruits of apostolic labors are to be presumptuously expected. Those who have charge over the Church should judge the genuineness and proper use of these gifts, through their office not indeed to extinguish the Spirit, but to test all things and hold fast to what is good. (cf. Th. 5:12 and 19-21)." Indeed, the "extraordinary gifts" given to such persons mentioned above are often the focus of a great deal of jealously in sacred, secular, political, physical, and other arenas. Of all mentioned above, perhaps Isaac Newton was the least persecuted for his. I won't even go into such "extraordinary gifts" as Joan of Arc or other more churchly related matters, but it becomes obvious in an all but undeniable manner that when Vatican II comments referred: "not indeed to extinguish the spirit" but "extinguish the spirit" is what indeed what the purpose of said officials actually was. It becomes equally obvious when/if you do your research that this more modern version of the guilds in existence today via the ALA, AMA, MLA, ABA, and most of the professional organzations, are not merely organs of information, but organs of misinformation and of disinformation. . .and. . .well, just plain propaganda. Just read the little pamphlets libraries hand out on copyright as provided by the various publishers associations to see the biases these people are willing to state as facts under the seals of the organizations in question. They should be ashamed to perpetuate such outright misinformation in the name of their members, their organization, or just a plain offense against truth. What If THEY Got Their Way? What if Mozart had bent his talent to the mainstream? What if Galileo had be silenced by The Roman Catholic Church? What if Martin Luther's 95 Theses had never been published? What if Gutenberg had not invented interchangeable type? What if Newton had followed in Aristotle's footsteps? What if Einstein had followed in Newton's footsteps? What if Woz and Jobs believed only 6 computers were needed? What if everyone believed in Bill Gates 640K? What if Tim Berners-Lee had followed Archie and Veronica? The oxymoronic truth of all this is that each of these guilds was started by someone who lived outside the box, who created the new revolutionary idea or ideal that founded the new field. In fact, the term "revolutionary" dates back hardly any further a date than Galileo, to his immediate predecessor, Copernicus, whom we have now enshrined for his "Revolution of the Celestial Orbs," but who was not so well received in his own day, even though that day coincided with Martin Luther, The Gutenberg Press, etc. Each of the persons listed previously, and hundreds, or thousands more we own an incredible debt to, were pretty much ostracized in their own time for their incredible gifts. . .not only the gifts, as it were, of their own, but for their gifts to humanity. Thus we see "revolutionary" works have created the world in which we are living, step by step, throughout the ages against the will of whatever "powers-that-be" have ruled against them, from early, to middle, to modern history. Each age thinks it is the "end all, be all" of all civilizations, and wants to freeze everything in the current mold, defeating all attempts possible to make change, since any change is likely from the perspective of the "powers-that-be" to be a threat to them in the sense that they made it to the top under the current laws for making it to the top, and usually these laws have been redrafted, rewritten, even originated, by these "powers-that-be," to benefit themselves at the expense of all others. Remember: the goal of the guilds was always their own benefits-- not the benefits to the world at large. The same is true of their descendants. You would be surprised at just how many of our organizations from the modern perspective have not changed in essence from those now in our ancient history. The basic idea/ideal is US VERSUS THEM, and there is never enough for the membership, there are no objective standards as to ENOUGH IS ENOUGH as in the case of "The Stationers Guild" and copyright. I have written about copyright extensively elsewhere, so I should only mention the broadest outline of that history here. A Brief History of Copyright Law The general idea/ideal of copyright is that it is always legal to copy until the power to own copies trickles down to the masses. Before The Gutenberg Press there were no restrictions to copying, other than the fact that only the most elite of the wealthy, and, the most elite of the educated, were capable of making copies, so no laws were passed against their right to do so, just as no laws were written against the VCR when only millionaires had them. The Gutenberg Press changed the world as much as any invention of the last millennium, particularly from the perspective of elitist versus the masses. . .most inventions before this targeted a rich portion of a population, usually only the top 1%, and the effects only related directly to that top 1% and perhaps only that 1%. However, unlike most previous inventions, The Gutenberg Press had an effect on the rest of the world much greater than any previous inventions other than the basics of fire, leverage, agriculture-- things that almost anyone could take advantage of. The Gutenberg Press changed books from something that cost a lot, the average books cost as much as the average family farm, to the price that allowed wagonloads of books to arrive at marketplaces. The result was far greater than anything anyone imagined! For one, the literacy rate escaped from that top 1%, and suddenly control of information that had been kept secret with low effort, and just one result was "The Protestant Revolution" in which that most powerful single entity of The Western World, "The Holy Roman Catholic Church," was toppled from its peak of power by the works of just one person, Martin Luther, multiplied by the power of The Gutenberg Press. However, the ones who made the biggest stink about disempowerment of the previous monopoly power was not The Roman catholic Church, but rather The Stationers Guild, who had held a virtual monopoly, since time immemorial, down through their various incarnations. The result was, after 250 years of lobbying, "The Copyright Law." 250 years of failures. . .and finally one became law, written for and by The Stationers Guild. Galileo's predecessor, Giordano Bruno, was burned at the stake in response to his astronomical observations and reports. Galileo, at the age of 70, was commanded to appear before "Office of the Inquisition" in Rome, notwithstanding his age or infirmity and at his own expense. He was tried in one day, with "evidence" that had been assembled for over 30 years, and twice shown racks, and other instruments of torture as they were to be used on him. He was found guilty, sentenced to the harshest house arrest, with no ability to publish, or even speak to Protestants. As a result Descartes stopped publishing in France, moved himself to Sweden, while Galileo decided to continue writing his book the Inquisition had interrupted. . .it was only published years later and many countries away. Thus ended The Scientific Revolution in the Mediterranean and the course of this history would continue only in Northern Europe. The same year Galileo died, still under house arrest, was born in England a child named Isaac Newton. "The Cult of the Amateur" Part 4 A reply to the complaints of the paid professional punditry on the subject of having lost their previously impermeable media monopoly they are just now only realizing hit an immoveable iceberg quite a while ago with the Internet, cell phone, and iPod revolutions. by Michael S. Hart Internet User #199 Founding Member of Project Gutenberg, World eBook Fair & General Cyberspace The Media. . .versus. . .The Media??? Would a television executive rather lose hundreds of millions not made because he failed to green light a show that would have been a smash hit rather than be proven wrong in his choice? This question is actually being played out as we speak, via a new phenomenon that is reviving dead pilots for TV shows, and putting them on the Internet to try for an audience the television owners were unwilling to court in the first place. At first this seemed like a win-win scenario, as the TV producers could make some serious money on shows that would otherwise rust, collect dust, etc., stashed away in some forgotten storehouse. Perhaps you are already aware that the majority of movies made in all history have been lost due to being tossed out, lost, or kept in the worst kinds of storage conditions, and then Jack Valenti-- the same one who said that home video was to Hollywood as was the "Boston Stranger" to the single woman, and then proceeded to make billions from home video once he realized just how wrong he was-- pleaded with the public on Oscar (R) night to look for treasures, left under beds, in garages or attics, and to return them to this Hollywood industry who had so callously thrown them away so these unmeasurable treasures could be revived and reconditioned to sell to the public once again. Well, this same sort of thing is being played out in the world of television right now, as people are scrambling to find old pilots that were never made into series and to give them another chance, via the Internet, which costs virtually nothing compared to those hundred pound movies shipped to all major theaters every week. So. . .what is stopping them? The TV executives who blackballed the shows in the first place! These top executives can't stand the idea that some show they had labeled as a flop before it ever got going could become a hit. The result would be that people will realize these top executives don't always know what they are doing. So the result is that the top execs are putting an end to this in rapid fashion before many of you even knew it was happening. Putting an end to something that could blossom into the next show such as "Friends". . .which was almost blacklisted. . .a billions and billions of dollars show. . .and the executive who blacklists such a show might find himself tossed out into the gutter, with a private blacklist of his own of people who will never hire him. So, for the good of the executives, and the not-so-good of public access to these shows, and the very not-so-good losses of billion dollar TV revenues to the networks, it would appear that we could miss out on this opportunity. There is a name for this kind of attitude. . .it is called SPITE. "Spite" is a word usually reserved for small children who hate to lose so badly that they will destroy their own chances of success rather than let someone else defeat them. "Spite-TV" might just be the latest trend in television executive behavior, once again proving that those who run the bit networks, such as depicted in the movie "Network" [highly recommended!] are just as childish. And Not Just Television Networks. . .Even Car Racing Does This! I doubt if many of you know much about automotive turbine engines or their mostly unwritten history, but at one time it appeared as if turbine engines would revolutionize at least certain aspects-- and one of these engines nearly won "The Indianapolis 500" and it was outlawed before the next race to make sure it never won. Turbine powered cars had been allowed for years, but none had the ability to qualify until veteran Parnelli Jones did it in 1967 in which he led nearly 90% of the laps until only 4 laps to go, when a plain vanilla bearing died in the rear end and Jones coasted to a stop just short of the pits. . .however, there would be no next year's rematch, as the rules were changed to eliminate it. By the way, the turbine engine used in Parnelli Jones' car was no special deal. . .it was a standard helicopter engine. . .and that meant too much of a threat to the standard cylinder engines which were the power base of Detroit. These events took place in the days when Indy 500 cars were moved from the huge cylinders of the old Offenhausers engines to a less massive, and thus more responsive, engine, and body, of Formula 1 racing cars after the likes of Jimmy Clark came over the the U.K. to teach us poor colonials a thing or two about racing, even when the racing was done on a silly little closed track with only left turns and no hills, no nothing. . .a very boring racecourse. The difference is that you can't rule out a winner, but you can a second place finisher. . .and Andy Granatelli's turbine car was a runner up. . .not a winner. . .and thus history was changed and a turbine car, with only one serious moving part [some people count ball bearings as moving parts. . .and, as luck would have it, the reason the turbine car lost was a failed bearing]. Of course, the same thing happened to pole vaulters when they got to the limits of stiff poles and had to use something flexible to jump higher. . .for years the flexible poles were outlawed. Not to mention what happened when calculators first appeared, and were banned from the classroom because students could not learn a thing if the calculator did all the work. . .I'm sure any similar events concerning the introduction of the slide rule got the same or similar treatment. All you have to do to stop a new kind of engine technology from a racing career is to mandate a certain kind of fuel that the brand new engine doesn't run well with and you eliminate competition. Without appearing to have obviously aimed at that elimination. In states such as mine, where there is only one city's population that is over a million, they consistently pass laws based on city populations. . .taxes. . .ordinances. . .etc., that are targeted, but not obviously, at giving Chicago either an advantage or rough times for certain legislative agendas. In each of these cases those making the rules can say, pretending to do so in all honesty, that everyone is playing under the rules of the game. . .the same laws apply to everyone. . .when the real case is that they do NOT apply equally to everyone. These rule makers are usually the type who played the game in the early years in the local school "Student Council" or whatever, so it might be worth the while of those who have the opportunity for watching such events to take a little time to see how obvious the ploys are when the politicians are young, and then how little the change has been, other than polishing up their act, but not moral fortitude, when they get to the big time. In Conclusion What we see "the-powers-that-be" doing is situational ethics in a number of famous cases when they cannot win against a new idea: "There is no force greater than an idea whose time has come." and thus their response when unable to compete fairly is being unable also to keep to their stated morality, legal standing, etc. "Those unable Tilt the table." "The-powers-that-be" thus void their own laws, rewrite them over, and over, and over again, to continue their dominance when masses of the public could have the advantage of a new technology. This is particularly evident in the case of copyright, where very few copyrights were ever renewed [90% expired after a first term] and yet not only were the copyright terms extended, over and over and over again, but the need for renewal was eliminated, thus any hope for the public domain has been shattered, even though 10% is the average portion of copyrights ever renewed, and the fee was a merely nominal along with minimal paperwork and and extra year or two in which to file for the extensions. The result is that the publishing industry, from end to end has a hyperinflationary spiral that has taken the price of the averages of paperback markets to a billion people from around $.26 and the price included tax, to a price of over $16, tax included, in that same period of time as a gallon of gas went from $.26 with tax to $3 with tax. . .Oh! How the news media would pounce on the story, if it were gas that cost $16, never mind the book prices. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The more money that goes into the publishing empires that mergers and megamergers have created, the more money flows into lobbying, and the longer and longer and longer copyright has become, until, just recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case that was at one time labeled "Hart v Reno" [yes, me] and later called "Eldred v Ashcroft" that The U.S. Congress could make copyright as long a period as they wanted via continuing extensions in SPITE of their U.S. Constitution reading "limited period." The most famous quote from Hello Dolly is : "Money, pardon the expression, is like manure. It's not worth a thing unless it's spread around, encouraging young things to grow." The result of the opposite is that the rich are now richer in all measures than they have ever been before, absolute wealth and the percentage of the wealth they own and control. "The rich get richer, the poor get poorer." This sentiment has been echoed by presidents, poets, and Prophets down the ages, as follows: U.S. President Andrew Jackson, in his 1832 bank veto, said: "when the laws undertake... to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society. . .have a right to complain of the injustice to their Government." U.S. President William Henry Harrison said, on October 1, 1840: "I believe and I say it is true Democratic feeling, that all the measures of the government are directed to the purpose of making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in 1821, in A Defence of Poetry: (not published until 1840) argues that in his England, "the promoters of utility" had been able "to exasperate at once the extremes of luxury and want. They have exemplified the saying, `To him that hath, more shall be given; and from him that hath not, the little that he hath shall be taken away.” The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer. . . ." Matthew 13:12 tells us the same from two thousand years ago: "For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath." However, it should be obvious that not only the "powers-that-be" have taken notice of this situation, but also more down to Earth writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, who included the following: "One thing's sure, and nothing's surer. The rich get richer and the poor get. . .children." To conclude in the same spirit as the previous quotations. . . . For those who would prefer to see that literacy and education continue to wallow in the mire, I can only say that a silence on your part creates its just reward. Your expertise dies an awful death when it is smothered by hiding your light under a bushel, or under any other covering, howsoever named. Matthew 5:15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Mark 4:21 And he said unto them, Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, or under a bed? and not to be set on a candlestick? Luke 8:16 No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covereth it with a vessel, or putteth it under a bed; but setteth it on a candlestick, that they which enter in may see the light. Luke 11:33 No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light.