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DanaDelgerSecondPaper 6 - 05 May 2009 - Main.DanaDelger
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The Grand Inquisitor Meets Free Information
“In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, ‘Make us your slaves, but feed us.’ They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them… They will marvel at us and look on us as gods, because we are ready to endure the freedom which they have found so dreadful and to rule over them—so awful it will seem to them to be free.” | |
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< | When the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov condemns Christ to the fires for having himself condemned mankind to freedom, those of us who look to throw open the cloistered doors of technology and intellectual property --- that is, to make free-as-in-freedom software and to loosen if not lose the property rights that have accumulated in ideas--- must remember that it is the flame of our auto-da-fé, too, the old priest is stoking. The closing of technology and the privatization of thought represents to many the immoral exclusion of some human beings from the world “intellectual work(s) of beauty and utility” when it is now possible to provide “all the human value of every increase of knowledge” to everyone for virtually nothing. This divide, this terrible imposition of caste where it does not belong and need not be, may well be the central crime of our age. But solving this problem, bridging the gap, means more than simply overcoming those “owners of culture” who cling to their entrenched interest in the old world. We must overcome also the natural resistance residing in the very world we seek to change, for information may want to be free, but it isn’t so clear that people always do. | >
> | When the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov condemns Christ to the fires for having himself condemned mankind to freedom, those of us who look to throw open the cloistered doors of technology and intellectual property --- that is, to make free-as-in-freedom software and to loosen if not lose the property rights that have accumulated in ideas--- must remember that it is the flame of our auto-da-fé, too, the old priest is stoking. The closing of technology and the privatization of thought represents to many the immoral exclusion of some human beings from the world “intellectual work(s) of beauty and utility” when it is now possible to provide “all the human value of every increase of knowledge” to everyone for virtually nothing. This divide, this terrible imposition of caste where it does not belong and need not be, may well be the central crime of our age. But bridging this gap means more than simply overcoming those “owners of culture” who cling to their entrenched interest in the old world. We must overcome also the natural resistance residing in the very world we seek to change, for information may want to be free, but it isn’t so clear that people always do. | | |
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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