I used to play a MUD, a text based game. It was called AberPhoenix. It still exists. Wikipedia describes an "AberMUD, pronounced /ˈæbərmʌd/, was the first popular open source MUD, named after the town in which it was written, Aberystwyth." I loved the game and played it for months. We had a magic dragon named Puff, and if you asked her questions, sometimes she would respond with some hard coded responses. She mentioned "Interdimensional travel" at some point. She never described the theory though. I wrote a piece about that, and Sharky put a response in when you asked about interdimensional travel to refer to me. This small piece describes two theories -- tthe latter a benefit to the prior due to aquired knowledge we build upon. We learn from our mistakes, and adjust. Some times drastically. Turning it into Fast Knowledge and patenting it has the potential to stunt our growth of knowledge by the prior taking over the latter due to legal maneuvours.
Back in college I wrote an essay called 'The Metaphorical Yard,' and one weak point about the essay was that I called my slow writing process slow knowledge as described by David Orr. I should have explained that in more detail, but tonight I did that after I made some connections regarding slow knowledge and fast knowledge, aka patents, and creativity. At the end it recommends a piece called "We're living in the most creative time in history."
This afternoon after I sent Richard Stallman an email on the following thesis, my thoughts exploded on the topic of slow programming knowledge and slow knowledge in general. This is a night of creativity. After reading this, wonder about slow creativity and how any little contribution matters in the larger approach to collective critical thinking and growing the slowly aging collection of Slow Knowledge. It is my hope that people reject the concept of Fast Knowledge as discussed in David Orr's piece titled 'Slow Knowledge.'
Stallman is the top brain in the creation of GNU and the GNU General Public License (GPL). About that in a moment. I wrote him twice. Should have slowed down and applied the process of Slow Knowledge -- to go over and over spurts of creativity - to adjust and grow knowledge. We create knowledge, or at least paraphrase it and modify it. We are all creative. We all think along these lines; these are natural. Slow knowledge is natural. Our life's work is slow knowledge with our own preferences and culture.
Programming is slow knowledge, kinda like math. David Orr says, "...the aim of slow knowledge is resilience, harmony, and the preservation of long-standing patterns..." You can't patent knowledge, or math would be widely expensive. The GPL shouldn't exist because there's no GPL of Mathematics.. Richard Stallman talks about source code and software being like cooking recipes. There is no GPL of Cooking Recipes. People will usually tell you whom they got a recipe from. Few could afford the expense of eating nice meals if there were cooking recipe patents.
Are patents detrimental to society if we're not taking the advantageous approach to growing slow programming knowledge? Think of all the creativity in this age. It's more vigorous and more thorough than ever. We're churning information at the speed of neutrinos, and Slow Knowledge is accelerating with the advancements most important. Don't start patenting it so.
Slow knowledge is world wide. Cooking recipes are slow world knowledge and culturally fond of delicacies and choices. We should share and cherish our most creative designs, and learn from their involvement with slow knowledge and cultural preferences like naming conventions.
I wrote this in bits and pieces, just going over and over the snippets, making a record of them, and learned from them through a thought process of reading over and over till reaching the end.. It's the action of slow knowledge. We all contribute to slow knowledge without obligation; we want that for ourselves, to have available information, and to share what we've created. We should feel ok to share it or keep it a secret; it's our choice, but we shouldn't grow a monopoly from it. Let cultural preferences choose.
Orr says that we have little choice but to keep on growing slow knowledge, even if fast knowledge is more profitable due to patents.
Here's a piece on this age's massive knowledge machine. It's called "We're living in the most creative time in history." http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120131/23562317608/were-living-most-creative-time-history.shtml
The growth between Interdimensional travel and One-Dimensional Traversal is an example of slow knowledge. Two sets of theories, the prior a benefit to the latter due to aquired knowledge. We learn from our mistakes, and adjust. Some times drastically. Turning it into Fast Knowledge and patenting it has the potential to stunt our growth of knowledge by the prior taking over the latter due to legal maneuvours. The prior (private) invention could sue the latter (public) invention through unfair legal maneuvers, like what's going on with android. It's an essay on public knowledge vs. private knowledge, and how private knowledge is a threat to public knowledge and creativity in general.