The seed of reason

100 books to save

Imagine this scenario: There is a great catastrophe and all the books written since 1740 are lost together with all cultural artifacts and oral traditions from after 1740. Humanity languishes in a new dark age. Which 100 books (post 1740) would you choose to save in order to greatest benefit this future society?

I have started to write a list on my wikipedia user page.  All visitors are encouraged to make changes to the working list over at the wikipedia page.  You can also comment on the project or make suggestions for the list by commenting on this post.  In this post I shall give my take on the task of creating such a list.

1) Items on the list should generally be progressive.  If a book does not somehow add to what went before then it should not be on the list. 

Some books represent the distilled work of many many people finally put into the form of a book by an individual.  Others are merely the creative outpourings of a lone genius.  The former is more valuable because more is lost with its destruction.  A book which represents 100 years of work by many people should be valued higher than a particularly popular work of fiction in most cases.  This does not mean that art books are worthless but that the art books we keep should be ones that represent big movements or really significant developments in the history of art.  Literary works may also have value from the ideas and social commentary contained within.

Currently we have:

The story of art - E. Gombrich
Brave new world - Aldus Huxley
The resistible rise of arturo Ui - Bertold Brecht
The handmaid's tale - Margaret Atwood.

We want:

A book on 20th century music involving the Jazz scales.

2) Political and Sociological developments are important.  Liberty and democracy were developments which required much struggle which involved solving many difficult problems.  Some of this accumulated wisdom is contained in works of philosophy and some in our modern legislative frameworks.

Currently we have:

Second treatise on government - John Locke
The rights of man - Thomas Paine
Hiroshima - John Hersey
The history of the English speaking peoples - Winston Churchill (this is useful for the development of democracy by gradual means from a state not previously very liberal)

We want:

A book on the emancipation proclamation
A history of the suffragette movement

3) The methodology of science is more important than the discoveries of science!  Teach a society to make aluminium and they'll make some useful tools, teach a society to do science and they'll make the modern world.  In this though a good science book can show how things should be done as well as providing the knowledge of the book itself.

Currently we have:

Great scientific experiments - Rom Harre
Logik der Forschung - Karl Popper
The origin of species - Charles Darwin
Symbiogenesis - Lynn Margulis

We want:

A good book on statistics
Another good book on the philosophy of science

4) Advances in medicine have also been very important.  The main advances over the past 150 in the human condition have been brought about by advances in medical science.  I've tried to concentrate on those advances that have had the greatest beneficial effect.

We are looking for books on:

Sewerage treatment, the germ theory of disease, the immune system, major infectious diseases and their cures, vaccination.  We should also probably have a book on re-hydration (dehydration is still a major killer!).

Other things I think are important include the dissemination of information (the modern printing press, the rise of the Internet), international development (the UN charter, the EU) and the founding technologies of the industrial revolution (engine design, design of power stations).

I shall periodically make posts concerning this list so expect to see more on this topic!

The music industry and its blunders

In this blog post I shall be looking into the problems that the music industry is currently experiencing and explain why I think that with their current attitude towards the issues that the situation is only going to get worse (for them and for the consumer).

Firstly we must deal with the concept of physical property.  I'm not going to fully define what the term means but I will make a few observations that we need to understand before I go on.

1) When you take something away from someone they no longer possess it themselves.  If I steal your bike you no longer have it.

2) If I alter something of yours then when you come to use it is changed.  If I hit your bike with a hammer then when you come to use it tomorrow it is damaged.

3) It takes a considerable amount of labour to make an identical copy of something of yours and depending on the object may not even be possible.

It is very important to realise that none of these observations apply to intellectual property.  In fact so fundamental are these three points to our understanding of property that the term intellectual property is verging on a misnomer.  It is also key to realise that it is the advent of the Internet that has made these differences so crucial.

When I sell you a piece of physical property then part of the price takes into account my storage costs, my distribution costs, my manufacturing costs and my loss of the piece of property.  With mp3s these three costs are becoming less and less relevant as the infrastructure of the Internet grows and grows.  Essentially the only costs left are advertising (which are more of an investment really) and production.  As production is a capital expenditure this should mean that the price of music falls to essentially zero.

There are caveats here.  We can expect the more music an individual buys the cheaper the cost per song to become.  We can rely on the government to cream off a large proportion of the value of music as tax (particularly as music is a luxury and when luxuries become too cheap the economy slows down).  Never the less we should still expect the cost per song to become negligible as the Internet allows us to download more tracks quicker.

Essentially there are two reasons this hasn't happened yet.  Firstly the music companies don't have the right business model to make money from a large number of very cheap sales (changing the model would be a big pain for them).  Secondly the music companies enjoy monopoly rights over the music that is sold.  This prevents the sale of music approaching its true market value (the value it would fetch at auction) and prevents start up companies from providing music to consumers in the way that makes most economic sense.

Many consumers, despite not being experts in economics, get the idea that they are being sold short.  This is very much the case.  As such consumers don't respect copyright law and any law is hard to enforce without the support of the people.

So let us look at the measures available to the music companies and see where these will fail:

A) They can try to use cryptography to prevent a piece of music being copied.

Whatever technique that is tried will be thwarted by the following trick.  You plug the line out from you computer directly back into the line in and record the song again.  Its that simple!  This hasn't yet become necessary because various other mechanisms are still possible and are quicker.  But the best (for the companies) digital rights management can do is force you to take this step.

B) They can embed watermarks into your tracks so they can tell if it was you who started sharing the music on peer to peer networks.

This technique will fall foul of data privacy laws currently but it is theoretically possible to watermark them in a way that only the police could decode (requires strong cryptography).  This will slow but not stop the leakage of music from the CDs to the peer to peer networks.  In the end you only need one person to steal a CD and copy it for it to be accessible to everyone.  Right now though the technology isn't there to perform proper watermarks.

My prediction for what will happen is as follows:  The music companies will try every method under the sun to lock their songs so that they can't be copied.  The hackers will cut through each new layer of protection until the consumers get tired of the difficulties involved.  The music companies will start using watermarks.  The hackers will find ways of removing the watermarks.  The music industry will find watermarks that cannot be removed and the peer to peer networks will reorganise to compensate for this.  The music companies will still be in the same position that they are now.

Only then do I think will the politicians intervene and introduce a form of public stock market for music (and maybe other intellectual property).  At this point I expect people to begin to install music meters (similar to water, gas and electricity meters) to bill them for their music usage.  Such meters would need strong privacy provisions but this is acheivable using modern cryptography.  Note that such billing would certainly not be a simple per song matter but more likely would be very much cheaper (per song played) for those listening to a lot of music.  Watermarks and digital locks would cease to be necessary and I imagine they will disappear.  Slowly consumers will realise how much fairer the new system is and it will become possible once again to enforce the new reformed copyright laws.  Enforcement would be a matter of checking up on those without meters and ensuring meters are not tampered with (somewhat like utilities and somewhat like TV licences).

NB: The last paragraph here has been modified in response to comments.  There will be further posts on this topic.

 

What we believe but cannot prove (I)

In this post I shall talk about a book that I've recently finished with the above title (edited by John Brockman).  This book is a collection of leading thinkers giving their, as yet unproven, beliefs in many disparate fields of science.  As I was reading this I noted down what I took to be the highlights (for good and bad reasons) and they follow:

1) Ray Kurzwell - We will find ways to circumvent the speed of light as a limit on the communication of information.

Ray notes that physicists often claim that some wormholes (but only teeny ones) could stay open without what is known as negative energy (an exotic and difficult to control substance which we can only produce in minute uncontrollable amounts using the Casimir effect).  He also points out that if we only wish to send light through such holes then their width is not very important.  But as light is sufficient to move large amounts of information around such worm holes could allow us to communicate effectively with far off regions of space time (once we've moved the ends of the wormhole to where they're needed).

2) Douglas Rushkoff - Evolution has purpose and direction.

Douglas seems to be making an extraordinary claim at odds to the biological community.  In reality the claim isn't as grand.  Douglas is merely claiming that although evolution may not start out with purpose that it creates it.  A viewpoint expounded by Daniel Denette in his book "Freedom Evolves" (an excellent read btw).  For myself I agree with Douglas.  It is my view that although the universe began without purpose, morality, life or understanding that it is following an inexorable trend towards these things powered by deep processes that we are yet to understand (but which are perfectly natural).

3) Denis Dutton - Some works of art are near universal in their appeal.

Denis identifies various examples of 'timeless' works including those of Homer, Bach and Shakespeare.  I confess to no strong belief on this one.  Although I rate the works picked highly its not clear to me that they will be viewed in a similar light in a centuries time.  We live on the cusp of great change which may sweep away concepts in art as well as many ideas in science.

4) John H. Mcwhorter - Several languages without prefixes or suffixes originate from Homo Florensis (A species of human still coexisting with modern humans up to 18,000 years ago).

John gives a few reasons including simplicity of the languages, uniqueness of the languages and location of their presence.  He also tries to use the local folk tales to bolster the idea but the truth is that his claim requires far more evidence to convince even a moderate sceptic.  I think its best to wait to see if more evidence is forthcoming on this one.

5) Rebecca Goldstein - The theories of nature that science arrive at provide understanding about the world not just accurate predictions.  Nevertheless we will never have an accurate account of reality because reality cannot be finitely definable (appeals to Godel).

Generally speaking I agree with Rebecca here.  I think that the universe by and large can be understood with better and better approximations to an undefinable absolute truth of the matter.  However, Rebecca then goes on to try to observe that the existence of human consciousness implies this.  I don't think she really needs spiritualism, the notion of a soul or the supernatural to carry her beliefs.  I would like to see an attempt to justify such beliefs about the philosophy of science from mathematics and logic.  I know of no reason to think that it can't be done.

I hope you enjoyed these snippets.  There will be more to follow...