Hope and Technology

 

We think with our brains - now and then - but rarely about them. We should,

because the brain is a remarkable organ - the foundation of the entire human

race. The human brain is one example of a so-called Complex Adaptive System

(CAS). There are lots of CASs in nature, but we know of none more complex.

The human brain is unique also in the sense that it can itself produce

similar systems. Such systems are now part not only of nature, but also of

human culture, technology and economy.

 

The global economy is a CAS, as is the Internet, and I myself

believe that world literature can also be seen as one. It is a peculiar

mycelium that grows and is alive, mostly under ground, in people's

consciousness - and subconsciousness. World literature is evolving, but the

works are only its visible manifestation.

 

Library professionals, more than most, are in close contact with

the global web and with world literature. Both are part of the writing

culture, though the Internet, naturally, is also much more. After Gutenberg

the Internet is the most important turning point of this

culture. Its growth has been staggeringly wild. I believe it has been

faster than any previous technical innovation. The World Wide Web has been

available for only four years or so, but even now there is hardly any area

of society to which it has not spread.

 

Information and money are dimensions of power - and publicity. Both

the Internet and literature contain vast quantities of information.

Information, or intellectual property, is also capital - quite literally so:

from the head. But, come to think of it, from whose head?

 

The question has grown ever more complicated, and I will focus on

this complexity - or on some aspects of it at least - or changes in attitudes

to, and legislation of, copyright are revealing examples of the

far-reaching effects of new technology. There's more juice in this than

meets the eye, and it's not just for the lawyers. Our relationship with

intellectual capital is, I maintain, one of the most important challenges

facing today's information society.

 

Technology changes economy, legislation and social relationships.

Digitisation affects almost all society's infrastructures. Of course,

conditions for cultural works, and how to archive and distribute them, also

change. Unlike money and material things, intellectual capital is strange

in that it can be shared and, in the sharing, it grows. When gathered in

one place it is not taken away from another place, as is the case with

matter and Mammon. Gathering and increasing information deprives nobody

else of it, rather it improves their chances of getting more. This is the

great difference between information and money.

 

But ideas have their own economy. Copyright involves both finance

and democracy, both the value of intellectual capital and the rights of its

creator and its user. Equality of access to the sources of information is

one of the touchstones of democracy. That's why the issue of intellectual

capital is so vital to western culture and the concept of equality.

 

The present phase of technology, especially transferring data into

electronic form, has put the spotlight on these problems in quite a new

way. Digitising information should mean easier sharing of intellectual

capital and more effortless data transfer-greater equality. But there is a

fear that the Internet might increase inequality in this respect too.

 

The concept of copyright has changed radically in our information

age, and the low cost and high speed of new technology bring new risks.

Digitisation threatens copyright in many ways. It is easy and almost

costless to spread intellectual capital as electronic pirate copies. The

Internet does not yet, in its present form, offer full-scale audio and

video services, but surely that will soon come. A digital film, book or

piece of music can be e-mailed to millions in minutes.

 

We got used to paper as the medium for transfer of text and

pictures, vinyl for sound and celluloid for film. This is no longer so. The

differences are disappearing, and today the various media and modes of data

transfer converge, join and mix. Soon the medium will be the same for all

forms of communication.

 

Publication is becoming cheaper, individuals have opportunities to

publish and interaction is everywhere, so the whole concept of what is

public is changing. Legislation has not kept pace. It's doing its best, but

now seems at risk of overreacting. Herein also lies a real threat to

democracy and equality of information access. It is easy to monitor access

to information on the net, and so equally easy to charge for it.

 

Already it is possible to distinguish two clearly different or even

opposing camps: the anti-copyrightists and the copyrightists. The former

party opposes tightening the copyright legislation, and many of its

supporters can be found among library people and the reading public. They

are familiar with Stewart Brand's slogan "Information wants to be free."

 

But in its entirety Brand's sentence reads: "Information wants to

be free because it is now so easy to copy and distribute casually - and

information wants to be expensive because in an Information Age, nothing is

so valuable as the right information at the right time."

 

Copyright is increasingly seen as the key to prosperity. American

journalist Charles C. Mann, author of a long essay about copyright "Who

will own your next good idea?", concludes that the economic winners will be

those who own the bits - the zeros and ones - not those who produce the

hardware to transfer the bits.

 

In the old days there was a professional group called artists. Now

they have almost disappeared. There are only "producers of contents", or - even

worse - "workers in the consciousness industry". Editors, publishers, big business

and contents-producers compete for the ownership of bits. Various interest

groups seek to supervise the distribution, and the price, of information.

Copyright owners may well object to their rights being restricted (as they

are now by library rights, for instance) in a digital environment. Some

demand cryptographic protection for all new information. This would be a

fatal blow both to public libraries and users of the Internet. Undoubtedly

it would bring some kind of security to authors, but it would also mean

loss of readers.

 

The relative balance between user rights and copyright is upset.

Even authors have landed in a new ambivalent situation. Without a reader

there is no author: every author needs a reading public, and every author

is also a reader. Writers need other books and libraries in order to

practise their profession.

 

For an author the issue of copyright deals directly with financial

interests, rights and opportunities to earn a living through one's own

work. If copyrights crumble - which is quite possible - authors will suffer

financially.

 

Finnish artists, unlike most Europeans, enjoy a brilliant system of

grants. But the grants are far from applying to everyone, they make nobody

rich nor even pay their mortgage. There is reason to be afraid of that this

system will be dismantled before long, or that it will at least be

weakened, as it is perhaps not in harmony with EU legislation. It seems we'll be

needing plenty of private sponsors who, at least until now, have shown not

the slightest interest in literature. The author must find new ways to earn

a living, perhaps as a stand-up performer.

 

But, as Charles Mann remarked: "If prosaists must earn their living

by public performances, J.D. Salinger would be penniless, and Salman

Rushdie would be dead."

 

According to many interest groups, licensing systems, digital

agreements and copyright-chips are inevitable if we are to secure the

financial interests of authors. But they have their shortcomings. Producers

and publishers of contents may not gain as much as they imagine. If the

illegal is generally socially accepted, there will always be ways of

evading the law.

 

And it isn't just a matter of economic benefits even for an author.

As a reader the writer too must gain access to information, and each

tightening of copyright directly limits this basic right. The thirst for

knowledge is a profound human urge; it is both personal and common to us

all.

 

In Finland, the public right of access (which is mainly a right to

roam in nature) is a rare and valuable right, not a privilege for the few.

Though every piece of land is owned by somebody, anyone can harvest berries

and mushrooms from the forests. Almost no one has sought to question or

limit this right. In Finland we should be especially sensitive to the

objectives of the anti-copyright party. I too hold the view that people

should still be allowed to read without special licences. To ratify

copyright along the lines that WIPO (the World Intellectual Property

Organisation of the UN) suggested in 1996 would essentially hinder people

with less means from getting access to information, and thereby increase

inequality. (WIPO made additions to the Bern copyright agreement, which

would also apply to the digital environment. The aim was to consider all

digital copies to be separate entities, which would make spreading material

on the Internet very problematic.) Likewise, the most recent EU directive

of December 1997 threatens to scrap the exceptions from copyright that

cater for "fair use".

 

I myself have published many of my texts on the World Wide Web, and

all are freely available without charge. They include an entire small illustrated work,

which so far hasn't been readable anywhere else. I don't advocate this

solution for others, nor am I in any way accountable for it. The author has

a choice: publish free of charge on the web or don't publish there at all.

At least I don't know of a way for an individual author to charge those who

visit his or her pages.

 

My activity is not as generous as it seems. I don't feel I have

lost out financially, because for most of my texts I have already received

some sort of compensation. Either, I have first presented them as lectures

or talks, or I have published them in a journal or anthology. It is also

clear that I have gained lots of new readers this way, some of whom may

even one day buy one of my printed books.

 

I believe it was a big mistake to extend copyright protection to

seventy years. I think it would be more sensible to ensure access to

information for today's generations than to provide for the livelihood of

the author's offspring yet unborn. Descendants unto the forth and fifth

generation surely must make their own livings.

 

But there are further reforms and accompanying problems in store.

Electronic paper will, once more, revolutionise literary culture and the

copyright legislation. Until now consumption of paper - contrary to

predictions - has increased with the advent of computers. Electronic paper is

a step in a more ecologically sensible direction, and at the same time is

more economically profitable, of course.

 

There are already several prototypes of the digital book. They have

brand names such as SoftBook, RocketBook and EveryBook. One day the

electronic book will operate on mere light - or through the kinetic energy of

our own hand. Such a book is empty - but it is precisely its emptiness that

enables it to contain a library, or libraries. Slightly altering the Finnish poet

Mirkka Rekola's words: "Each day an empty page in front of me. I read it

and keep it open."

 

Soon we'll be able to load it with any work we want from the

net-bookshop. Readers can use a light-pen to underline and make their own

comments in the margins. That kind of book can be read in bed - a crucial

factor for many readers, I've noticed.

 

We've had repeated assurances that the digital and Gutenbergian

technologies will continue in peaceful coexistence far into the future. Me,

I'm not so sure. In the 19th century a machine was something quite

different from what it is today, and I'm sure the concept of what a book is

will also change. It will not mean the same thing to the next generation as

it still does to us.

 

The Finnish President recently got a brand new official

residence-purpose designed to the last nail. But the interior designers

were so far ahead of the times that they didn't include one single

bookshelf.

 

The significance of the printed book as a source of information and

pleasure will decrease - has already done so. Before long the Gutenbergian

book will be a rarity, an object desired by collectors. We will have to say

goodbye to the paper book as an everyday thing, and the farewell will be

melancholy. The old joke: "I already have a book" will be no joke. What

then will happen to libraries, to bookshops, publishers and printers - God

only knows. Who will pay whom and how much also remains to be seen.

 

I lived my childhood in a world that was very different from the

Finland of today. Still mainly an agricultural society, it didn't have

technology, just industry which was heavy, polluting and labour-intense.

Then satellites, sci-fi and comics made us children fantasise about a

future that would be so different from our then everyday life. We thought

that by the year 2000 we'd have colonies on the moon, maybe on other

planets too, and we'd all be flying around and eating little energy pills

instead of normal food.

 

That hasn't happened, but our daily routines really have changed.

Because we have all this new technology, we also have quite a new kind of

civilisation and democracy. Not even scientists or authors had the faintest

idea what direction change would take; they couldn't envisage PCs or the

progress of telecommunication. Today's reality was but fairy-tales and

magic in the 50s and 60s.

 

Our image of the world has changed radically since then. Industry,

in the old sense of the word, has given way to new technology. The

scientific paradigm has switched, and our relationship with work has been

transformed. The crucial force of change has been the machine, the computer

or, actually, the concept of it.

 

The computer is no more a mass of metal, silicon and plastic, but part of a gigantic

network of consciousnesses. Networking is one of the key concepts of this

millennial change. No longer can we isolate different disciplines of science from

each other; the compartmentalisation of sciences is coming to an end, so even

humanistic research and the natural sciences have to get to know each

other.

 

Computer-aided research fields such as artificial intelligence and

artificial life are continuing the same revolution as the theories of

relativity, quanta and chaos. They each break further the classic and

mechanistic view of solid and separate objects, of the universe of cause

and effect. We begin to understand that the same complex laws are in force

in all systems: biological, atomic, economic, sociological and cultural.

 

Digital and virtual have radically changed our perception of

reality, of life and of consciousness. We are moving to a phase where

simulation is increasingly difficult to distinguish from reality. This

issue already raises its head concerning copyright, but it extends far, far

wider. Questions about what is natural and what artificial, what is

original and what imitation will arise in quite a new way.

 

New technology has not happened by chance and is more than mere

technical innovation. It is a logical consequence of a changing media

concept. The Internet has developed alongside our economic and intellectual

development. We need the global web for political, social and moral

reasons. Nothing less will do when the problems are global. Governments,

parties, nations and trading alliances cannot even begin to solve them

independently and regardless of each other. We are forced to establish even

more diverse, massive and flexible connections in an attempt to avert some

of the catastrophies that lie in wait for us.

 

We have no idea how the global economy will survive its present

crisis. Will it expand even more? Markets have been based, fatally, on

inaccurate and irrational expectations, on a massive illusion: that mankind

can live on money.

 

Wishes can be fruitless and frustrating, but hope springs eternal.

It would be naïve to assume that the Internet will solve our problems. Our

own will, not even the most effective technical invention, decides the

future. Indeed the global web can increase the complexity of our

problems - the example of copyright legislation already shows that. We know

too that the web spreads disinformation, and offers channels for all kinds

of criminal activity. But it does also offer possibilities for citizen

activities on a global scale, for debate transcending political and ethnic

divides. In my view, this interaction is not illusory. It is really

happening, and it is this - rather than technological evolution - that proves

we are still hoping.

 

 

Leena Krohn

translation: Britt & Philip Gaut