“This is an extraordinary lecture on video in which Eben Moglen, the lawyer of the Free Software Foundation, explains that we have achieved an extraordinary moment in history, in which the whole of human knowledge can be shared with everyone, at marginal reproduction costs. In this context, sharing becomes the most economically fruitful strategy, and the proprietarizing of vital knowledge becomes highly immoral. It is also a way to redistribute the world’s resource without the use of coercion.”
By Eben Moglen at the Plone 2006 conference
Are we up to the challenge? In about 1980 I became aware an intriguing phenomenon when my older sister and my mom recalled an instance in our lives differently than I had experienced. I did not have a term for this changing of memory of the past in my immediate relatives until I read a speech by Bill Moyers about a year ago where he mentioned “epistemological relativism.” I’ve since learned that “epistemic relativism” suffices. It is where people believe that opinion, majority opinion, determines truth. It is basically the opposite of the scientific method. If you can open your eyes a bit you can see that it is quite common. It not only serves as the ultimate justification for propaganda but why the propagandist also professes and acts as if their desire based proclamations are true. It is common and non-resilient. Look at those who are denying a need to curtail green-house gas emmissions. Many are proclaiming that the observed changes to the weather are due to the sun increasing in warmth. They seem to have no consideration that even if true, this is no reason to not want to decrease green-house gas emmissions but, actually, further reason to do so. Heard the song by Gnarls Barkley “Crazy” with the line “I think you’re crazy just like me?” We are all out of touch with reality due to our limited perspectives. The dangerous type of insanity is that where one believes they are in touch with reality, they know what is true and what is false without question and are willing to force their beliefs on others, even if it means a “shock and awe” bombing campaign. I suspect from my limited perspective that we are in for some big changes. If we pursue conscious change to avoid calamity we can go far with ever increasing longevity, all of us. It is not a case of there not being enough for all. Many are and will try to force reality to be what they want and this is destined to fail. Those who are willing to meet the challenge of being and becoming ever more conscientious need to face the danger of those who believe that killing the messenger invalidates the message, that ignorance is bliss; what you don’t know can’t hurt you, that might makes right. We live in interesting times.
is there possible to have french subtitles (maybe use http://dotsub.com/ website ) ?
thanks