``Free as Air, Free As Water, Free As Knowledge''
by Bruce Sterling
Speech to the Library Information Technology Association
June 1992, San Francisco CA
Hi everybody. Well, this is the Library Information Technology Association, so I guess I ought to be talking about libraries, or information, or technology, or at least association. I'm gonna give it a shot, but I want to try this from an unusual perspective. I want to start by talking about money.
You wouldn't guess it sometimes to hear some people talk, but we don't live in a technocratic information society. We live in a highly advanced capitalist society. People talk a lot about the power and glory of specialized knowledge and technical expertise. Knowledge is power --- but if so, why aren't knowledgeable people in power? And it's true there's a Library of Congress. But how many librarians are there in Congress?
The nature of our society strongly affects the nature of our technology.
It doesn't absolutely determine it; a lot of our technology is sheer accident , serendipity, the way the cards happened to fall, who got the lucky breaks, and, of course, the occasional eruption of genius, which tends to be positively unpredictable by its nature. But as a society we don't develop technologies to their ultimate ends. Only engineers are interested in that kind of technical sweetness, and engineers generally have their paychecks signed by CEOs and stockholders. We don't pursue ultimate technologies. Our technologies are actually produced to optimize financial return on investment. There's a big difference.
Of course there are many elements of our lives that exist outside the money economy. There's a lot going on in our lives that's not-for-profit and that can't be denominated in dollars. ``The best things in life are free,'' the old saying goes. Nice old saying. Gets a little older-sounding every day. Sounds about as old and mossy as the wedding vow ``for richer for poorer,'' which in a modern environment is pretty likely to be for-richer-or poorer modulo our prenuptial agreement. Commercialization. Commodification, a favorite buzzword of mine. It's a very powerful phenomenon. It's getting more powerful year by year.
Academia, libraries, cultural institutions are already under protracted commercial siege. This is the MacNeill Lehrer News Hour, brought to you by publicly supported television and, incidentally, AT&T. Welcome students to Large Northeastern University, brought to you by Pepsi-Cola, official drink of Large Northeastern. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make ye employable. Hi, I'm the head of the microbiology department here at Large Northeastern. I'm also on the board of directors of TransGenic Corporation. The Chancellor says it's okay because a cut of the patent money goes to Large Northeastern.
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