I’ve just read an article by Nobel Prize-winning environmentalist Vandana Shiva that set me to thinking a bit more about the dangers that excessive concern with protecting “intellectual property” in the rich world poses to the developing world and to societies’ capacity for self-determination more generally. The article appears in Global Capitalism, a volume [...]
Andrew Sullivan recently published an interesting reflection in the Times of London on the failure of Web content to generate profit, blaming its overabundance (as opposed to scarcity) for the problem. But he also suggests that the economic function of his “blog” may not be to generate profit directly but to promote his books, [...]
There are a few photos, etc. up on the Argentina section of this site. I just got back from a trip to Peru and Bolivia.
I have always mistrusted John Perry Barlow and his cohorts at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Barlow is inevitably identified as a “lyricist for the Grateful Dead” in the brief bio that follows most of his print publications, and as a fan of rock music, the immense popularity of the Grateful Dead is a phenonomenon whose [...]
A series of articles that touch on important themes related to intellectual property has caught my attention today as I scanned a few of my favorite websites today, for the first time in a while.
The New York Times reports on the efforts of the International Commission on Intellectual Property Rights to persuade the [...]
Exhausted by two years of study in a graduate program in American literature, and disillusioned by the hyper-politicization of academic inquiry in that field, I left school in 1996 with no real career direction. I relocated to Chicago, and in the midst of an ignominious stint in the office temp world I managed to [...]
It has occured to me that some of you, after seeing the changes I’ve made to my website, might be wondering: What is this free software stuff and why should I care? Others may be saying to themselves: Where are all the pictures of the beautiful Argentine women he’s always talking about? [...]
I came across an exchange on Slate between journalist Andrew Sullivan and novelist Kurt Andersen, in which the two writers exchanged observations about the cultural significance of the phenomenon of blogging. Both agree that it represents a positive trend in the sense that it democratizes news analysis and challenges the hegemony of the [...]
One of the things I offered to do for Via Libre is search for a potential source in the United States of used equipment donations. The Alameda County Computer Resource Center is probably the best known such source, and today Salon ran an article about it.
Seems anti-globalization protesters are gearing up to cause trouble [...]
This article from the New York Times addresses (however briefly) a free software-related theme that is still a little murky in my mind. I understand in principle that money can be made through free software by selling services to support it, writing customized versions of GPL-based software for a customer, etc., etc. But [...]
The founders of Via Libre, the organization where I work as a volunteer, have published an article (in Spanish)summarizing the value of free software in La Voz del Interior, Cordoba’s newspaper.
What’s interesting is the extent to which they downplay the utility of free software for home users. I’ve even heard Federico in the office [...]
In the wake of the introduction of legislation to require free software use in governments at both the state and federal levels in both the U.S. and abroad, Microsoft (with allies like Intel and also other proprietary software vendors) has undertaken an initiave to counteract these developments. I can only assume its name is [...]
This week I finally began to think more concretely about writing an article about free software use in Latin America. I am particularly interested in situating the story in the context of the Argentine crisis, which has proven to be a harbinger of similar crises in other South American countries like Brazil and Peru. [...]
[This review appeared in the Spring 2001 issue of Regeneration Quarterly.]
Given sufficient computer processing power and memory, just about all of reality might one day be digitally encoded — at least if a number of today’s futurologists and techno-optimists are to be believed. For the rest of us, such scenario may seem far-fetched, but every [...]