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DanaDelgerSecondPaper 4 - 05 May 2009 - Main.DanaDelger
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The Grand Inquisitor Meets Free Information | | | The problem of spurning freedom is not at all unique to the technology and intellectual property context, but Dostoyevsky suggests to us that it may be particularly acute here. The Grand Inquisitor taunts Christ: “There are three powers, three powers alone, able to conquer and to hold captive for ever, the conscience of these impotent rebels for their happiness. Those forces are miracle, mystery and authority.” It is precisely these forces that closed source technologies so perfectly harness. Why would a man look beyond the black box of his cell phone, the impenetrable wall of his computer, when their function is alternately magical and miraculous to him? These things are as impenetrable to him as the rituals of his Church, which he knows to be of unquestionable authority. There is fear, too, in attempting to look beyond the black box. The Grand Inquisitor says: “Freedom, free thought and science, will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves, others, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another, while the rest, weak and unhappy, will crawl fawning to our feet..." If this true, man may not easily accept a free information world. | |
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< | What then, is the answer, if the Grand Inquisitor is right, if man will either himself destroy the freedom we offer or spurn it, finding it awful? One meta-answer, provided by Dostoyevsky’s novel, is merely that we offer freedom anyway. (The Grand Inquisitor may condemn Christ, but The Brothers Karamazov doesn’t, at least not entirely). Indeed, in the end, the Grand Inquisitor releases Christ before he is killed. Christ kisses the Grand Inquisitor, but despite having saved him, the priest does not repent of his condemnation: “The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea.” But if our aim is to have people take not merely what we offer but indeed own what is already theirs, then we must address the Grand Inquisitor’s charge more directly than to merely point the way to freedoms that may in turn be freely spurned. | >
> | What then, is the answer, if the Grand Inquisitor is right, if man will either himself destroy the freedom we offer or spurn it, finding it awful? One meta-answer, provided by Dostoyevsky’s novel, is merely that we offer freedom anyway. (The Grand Inquisitor may condemn Christ, but The Brothers Karamazov doesn’t, at least not entirely). Indeed, in the end, the Grand Inquisitor releases Christ before he is killed, but despite having saved him, the priest does not repent of his condemnation: “The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea.” But if our aim is to have people take not merely what we offer but indeed own what is already theirs, then we must address the Grand Inquisitor’s charge more directly than to merely point the way to freedoms that may in turn be freely spurned. | | |
Another solution may be contained in the Grand Inquisitor’s charge itself. Men, he says, can have either freedom or bread, but not both, and accordingly they will always choose bread. But just as technological contexts may be particularly susceptible to the rejection of freedom, so too might they carry with them their cure, for “(i)f Rome possessed the power to feed everyone amply at no greater cost than that of Caesar's own table, the people would sweep Caesar violently away if anyone were left to starve.” It is perhaps only in the universe of the mind and machine that we are able to produce unlimited bread. No one must go hungry in a world of ideas, and so it seems that free-as-in-free software and the sweeping away of the ownership of knowledge may answer the charge the Grand Inquisitor levels. If man can have “freedom and bread enough for all” perhaps he may finally be convinced to accept both. |
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