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"The Cult of the Amateur"

cult.of.the.amateur.txt

Part 1

A reply to the complaints of the paid professional punditry on the
subject of having lost their previously impermeable media monopoly
they are just now only realizing hit an immoveable iceberg quite a
while ago with the Internet, cell phone, and iPod revolutions.

by Michael S. Hart
Internet User #199
Founding Member of
Project Gutenberg,
World eBook Fair &
General Cyberspace

"And The Band Played On. . . ."

The Titanics of world media crashed, full speed ahead, into these
new media options years ago and that was called The Dot Com Bust.

These people STILL don't realize that half of the world population
that will ever buy cell phones already have done so; nor are their
realizations of the world view in touch with the effects of such a
change from one-way media to two-way media, but are still in shock
that the Internet provided media coverage to bloggers that toppled
"The Great and Powerful Oz" in the form of Dan Rather, while their
news reports tried and failed, to make a fake story about toppling
the statue of Saddam Hussein.

The fact that "The Emperor Has No Clothes" is becoming obvious for
half the world population directly via their cell phones, they can
see it for themselves, and can no longer be fooled quite so easily
as the United States Congress was fooled by the faked "Tonkin Gulf
Incident" that led to "The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution" that created
The Viet Nam War" in a true homage to "You supply the pictures and
I'll provide the war" of the height of Yellow Journalism.

If you've been paying attention to the professional media pundits,
then you've probably heard at least some of their complaining from
their professional pulpits that their monopolies on information in
the new world of communication are waning, and that this informing
of the public is increasingly being done more on the order of that
"of the people, by the people, for the people," that was the ideal
of the founding fathers of modern democracy.

According to the professionally paid punditry, they have done what
anyone would have, could have, and should have done in the face of
their admittedly "situational ethics" of their various times, but,
in face of all that, I just wonder if perhaps these pundits should
not have had more to say about many issues if not for bosses up an
already crowded ladder of mostly prevention of stories going out.

"Prevention of Stories Going Out?"

Just ask anyone on the political beat at any media level, and they
will likely tell, off the record, and some even on the record, the
number of important investigative journalism results that actually
get refused for publication are DOUBLE the number they published.

Twice as many political revelations get withheld as published. . .
just ask around. . .or so some research. . .you will find that Mr.
Jack Anderson, perhaps the most powerful political reporter of the
last century, said his work output was only 1/3 what it should be,
mostly as a result of political and professional pressures, put on
him in no uncertain terms, that such-and-so political figures were
NOT to be discussed in light of what he had uncovered.

"The Historical Record"

The Encyclopedia Britannica is often cited as an example of a best
result of the professional system, usually in contradistinction to
the amateur efforts of Wikipedia.

However, Britannica's spectacular failures to report on Einstein's
1905 writings that fundamentally changed our understanding of this
entire universe, along with their simultaneous refusal to change a
centuries old attitude towards racism, the roots of World War One,
just to name a few instances of brittle Britannica bias, should be
enough reason alone to encourage other sources of information.

Marvin Minsky, arguably, "The smartest man in the world," at least
by the standards of Isaac Asimov, says that, "You don't understand
anything until you learn it more than one way."

How can you learn anything more than one way if the professionals'
attention span is that of a myopic gnat?

What we need is MORE information sources. . .not less!

"The Future Is Not The Past"

Paid professional pundits predict the future based on the past and
they make this mistake time and time and time again simply because
they know it is the safe thing to do.

Britannica didn't mention Einstein until around 1923.

He was on the front page of newspapers around the world for years,
so what was the idea of not putting him in the Britannica?

Well, the truth may just be that the venerable Britannica was just
too invested in the world of Isaac Newton.

Then again there are the questions of Darwin, evolution. Piltdown,
and a host of other political pressures on pundits at Britannica's
desks, and others, including "The Monkey Trial" which was do blown
out of proportion that most people forgot that Clarence Darrow was
NOT the winner in that spectacular court case, to which thousands,
even millions, of people paid more attention than we to Watergate.

Speaking of Watergate, do we have to be reminded that Bob Woodward
was the lowliest of nobodies at The Washington Post, and how lucky
we are [or unlucky, to those millions who would still prefer Nixon
to have been re-elected for a third and fourth term, the law about
such re-elections not withstanding]. . .how lucky we were that the
story, like so many others in Washington Post history was not just
killed outright by professional edict from above.

"A Professional Pundit". . .What Does That Mean?

The first thing you have to realize about the professional pundits
is that they are not independent.

Not independent.

They start their jobs the same as all of us with layer after layer
of bosses, bosses' bosses, middle management, top management and a
whole layer of executive suites and owners above all that, meaning
that every one of the layers must agree to get a story published.

HEADLINE!

Every One of the Layers Above Must Agree to Get a Story Published!

How much can actually get done when every one above you has to say
"Yes" to every story you do, either implicitly or explicitly?

How much can actually get done when every one above you CAN SAY NO
and kill your story.

Let's just say you are such a good reporter than 90% of your ideas
get the green light from your boss, and 90% of his recommendations
get the green light from the next boss, in line, and so on. . . .

90% of your stories get approved by your #1 chain of command boss
81% of your stories get approved by your #2 chain of command boss
73% of your stories get approved by your #3 chain of command boss
66% of your stories get approved by your #4 chain of command boss
59% of your stories get approved by your #5 chain of command boss
53% of your stories get approved by your #6 chain of command boss
...Mid-level Hierarchical Structure Lies Approximately Here...
48% of your stories get approved by your #7 chain of command boss
43% of your stories get approved by your #8 chain of command boss
38% of your stories get approved by your #9 chain of command boss
35% of your stories get approved by your #10 chain of command boss
31% of your stories get approved by your #11 chain of command boss
28% of your stories get approved by your #12 chain of command boss

Obviously the bigger the media giant you work for [and doesn't the
majority still want to work for the Big Boys], the higher the odds
are that there will be more levels of bosses you must appease.

Let's say your local media lies somewhere in the middle levels.

That would mean that just about half of the stories written by the
reporters that have a 90% batting average, and whose bosses have a
90% batting average, etc., etc., etc., actually ever get published
in your local media.

Obviously the higher up the food chain, the more likely your story
is to be eaten by a higher level predator.

So, if you get your news from CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, BBC, CBC, etc...
the odds are that you rarely, if ever, hear much of anything on an
order of competition. . .they all answer to the same kind of plain
and obvious system. . .they usually give the same sound bytes more
or less. . .more and more. . .even in the case of the BBC who used
to be the flagship for saying what the others would not, could not
or should not say.

However, since the BBC got into the money business with a reversal
of cash flow that would have made "Scrooge McDuck" quite proud, it
has limited itself to the more mundane in the world of news as has
PBS when it also repositioned itself as a commercial network, and,
I should add that, technicalities notwithstanding, it should be an
awful lot more than obvious that both the BBC and PBS headed in an
awful lot more of a commercial direction in the Bush II Era.

"Then the End Result is What?"

The end result, as with all new media technologies, is first a new
wave of publication. . ."The Powers-That-Be" just cannot move fast
enough, really don't WANT to pay attention to "New Wave" stuff and
the result is that they are like "The Titanic" for the first years
of any new trend, running "full speed ahead" in a direction that's
no longer the direction they really want to go.

and. . .

It's not as if there is a "vacuum" in the "New Wave" of publishing
via the Internet, Podcasting, cell phones, etc. . .the rest of the
world is just ignoring "The Olde Boye Networke" and moving on from
a world that just barely exists for them any longer, the world for
which "The Olde Boye Networke" is boss. . .level after lever as we
saw above. . .to a world in which they can get a true first-person
report from a variety of someones who do not have to say a pledge-
of-allegiance to their megacorporate kieretsus before work each of
their workdays until that dreaded day when they are "downsized" to
a new location 6 feet under the ground on which they walked a walk
precribed by their bosses, never the walks proscribed by bosses of
bosses of bosses. . ."look for me tomorrow and you shall find me a
grave man."

Perhaps, if we, the people, are lucky, these people will write the
record of all they were forbidden to write. . .in their last days,
and we will finally have, albeit on their death beds. . .reporting
from their own perspective rather than that of Big Brother.

///

"The Cult of the Amateur"

Part 2

Scientists versus The Media

by Michael S. Hart
Internet User #199
Founding Member of
Project Gutenberg,
World eBook Fair &
General Cyberspace

"The Cult of the Amateur"

A second essay on "The Cult of the Amateur" concentrating on some
aspects of professional scientists versus amateurs.

The Three Greatest Scientific Thinkers of the Last Millennium

When it comes to science names such as Einstein, Newton, Galileo,
stand out above all the rest when it comes to understanding those
scientific aspects of the universe around us.

However, the world did not accept these as scientists at the time
when they focused their imagination on things the rest of world's
experts would sooner have left unexplored.

Einstein has been thrown out of school and did what many feel the
greatest scientific work of the last millennium while he was just
puttering around in his spare time.

If you feel Newton was more important than Einstein, that doesn't
change things much, as Newton was also home away from school when
he did what many feel to be his greatest work.

I presume I don't have to remind too many of our readers that the
work of Galileo was so well received that he was put under "house
arrest" for pretty much the rest of his life as a reward.

Note bene: Shakespeare was born the same year as Galileo and put
the written word of the amateur right alongside these greatest of
the scientific world, which will be mentioned in Part III of this
series, which will include The Arts.

Galileo, however, amateur that he might have been when it came to
the sciences, being much more of a worker in metals and the other
materials of the age, making and selling his "military compasses"
and other little gizmos in his own shop, literally turned world's
perspectives in their heads in other ways, as he reinvented those
telescopes from Flanders to the point they changed both the world
of trade and the world of astronomy. . .but. . .in the process he
changed the whole world of science itself. . .inventing what this
modern world calls "The Scientific Method."

Galileo built new technologies for the purpose of research, and a
publication of the results followed. . ."The Scientific Method."

However, it should never be forgotten that Galileo, no matter the
intellect, the ability to build his own tools from scratch to the
point of excellence that he outcompeted all professional artisans
from the world around, no matter his ability to write up his work
in a manner that still survives today as a guidebook for sciences
not even invented yet in his time, and no matter the Inquisition,
and his resistance to it. . .let there be no mistake that Galileo
was an outsider, one of those our current "professionals" are yet
calling for the removal of as amateurs.

In each of these cases the work was done outside an establishment
of any educational or scientific community and purely as a matter
of self-directed inquiry into the nature of the universe.

OK, you might say, but Einstein was a century ago, Newton was far
beyond that, and Galileo might as well have been in the Dark Ages
for all the good having been born after Gutenberg did him, and it
could no longer happen this way in modern times.

The Greatest Scientific Efforts of the Modern Age

The Human Genome Project

The Computer Revolution

No room for amateurs in modern times???

How quickly the world forgets that we owe Craig Venter for making
the Human Genome Project get up off its stodgy academic ass to do
the research he wanted to do 6 years earlier, and was pretty much
shown the door as a result.

Have we already forgotten that we owe The Computer Revolution for
all intents and purposes to two garage tinkerers from Cupertino's
reject pile who could see what no one else could see, just as the
previous people in this list could see?

The Human Genome

If not for Craig Venter we would just now be finishing up the one
first pass of mapping the human genome, one step at a time in the
old-fashioned way, step after step, all those millions of steps--
without anything like a plan, or even a flashlight to look ahead,
to figure out which are the important parts to look at.

The comparable story from a century ago would be to disassemble a
pyramid one stone at a time to figure out how it was put together
and only then to follow the flashlight through the pathways to go
to the places of most interest.

As far as _I_ am concerned, no race can be said to have matured a
step beyond the genetic rolling of the dice who has not measured,
calculated, and reworked its own genetic structure.

Otherwise, we're less well planned than our racehorses, and roses
they wear in the winner's circle, not to mention our dogs, cats &
entire hosts of other plants and animals we have bred better than
we have bred ourselves down through the ages.

Even Mendel, The Father of Genetics, Was Thrown Out Of School

The last line of Mendel's transcript at University of Vienna:

"He lacks insight and the requisite clarity of knowledge."

Even so, years later, Mendel discovered the roots of genetics and
published his results in 1866. . .the silence was deafening, just
about as deafening as the silence from Encylopedia Britannica one
half century later when Einstein shook down the tree of physics--
the one that had been planted by Newton.

All of these three earthshaking events took place outside the all
powerful ivory towers of academia, but at least Newton's teachers
knew genius when they saw it. . .and, even rarer, accepted it.

Not so for Mendel.

Even though Mendel was elected Abbot of his monastery and wrote a
very nice compendium of his genetic experiments that would stand,
even to this day, his works were burned by the next abbot, and he
was left to the vagaries of the winds of time.

Luckily for Mendel, and for us, his work survived elsewhere.

The trouble with having your work in religious libraries, is that
religion does not follow logic, and the temporal church rulers of
the religion, whether they be popes or abbots, may outlaw you and
your work, and burn your entire life's work, and in previous days
burn your life out of you, as well.

However, for 30 years Mendel's work languished out of sight, and,
as they say, out of mind. . .until just about the time Einstein's
school career ended. . .and he was tossed out as well.

And let us not forget Wallace and Darwin, who quite independently
came up with theories on the origin of species, fittest survival,
and the concept of evolution. . .while neither of these were what
anyone could call an outcast, they were Victorian gentlemen, and,
as such, did not do what anyone would call much work or school or
have any real other kind of training or education.

Mendeleev, who bridged the gap between physics and chemistry, was
an outcast in his native Russia, even after his great success via
his periodic chart of the elements, due to the fact that the Tsar
didn't like him. Little good would it do the Tsar in a long run,
as much good as it did all the rest who opposed such progress.

Yes, you can stop an idea for a while, but in the long run:

"There is no force stronger than an idea whose time has come."

That's right, if you can't compete with an idea's contents, then,
by all means, any other means, ridicule its form, its author, and
any other possibly attachable person, style, fashion, etc.

However, be forewarned, this is only a stopgap performance and it
usually comes back to haunt the perpetrator. . .in spades. . . .

"Every strong intellect wants to be a guardian of integrity."

"Aristocracy of the intellect versus democracy of the intellect."

John Von Neumann did the great work for which he is famous in the
pair of fields in which he is known, before he turned 25. He was
one of the greatest mathemeticians of all time, but. . . .

Instead of continuing on these paths, he wasted his latest years,
sadly to say, in the corridors of power. . .financial power, and,
then later political power. . .but not learning anything more for
which he would be remembered.

As per:

J. Bronowsky, The Ascent of Man

In regards to scholars, I would be remiss if I did not mention an
"ear" written on the front of my high school alma mater:

"And gladly would he learn, and glady teach." The Oxford Scholar
of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

The reason this must be brought up is because so many scholars of
today refuse to teach what they have learned in any clear manner,
but perfer to muddy the waters to help themselves appear brighter
in comparison to their students.

My own idea/ideal of this is that students should pay teachers in
proportion to their own success, that teachers should be paid the
equivalent salary proportional to how their students do.

If you don't manage to teach much, you don't get paid much.

THAT should motivate teachers to a higher level of performance.

In fact, I think EVERY job should be paid according to a measured
evaluation of performance over time. . .highway builders would be
rewarded for highways that lasted longer, rather than an opposite
philosophy of hiring them again sooner if the highway wears out.

Sometimes it seems as if the entire wage/salary structure of what
we call "The Developed World" was created to avoid a relationship
between performance and reward.

This is perhaps why the old money looks so disdainfully at member
positioning of "The Nouveau Riche" or "Self-Made" persons in what
they have previously consider their private domains.

The Computer Revolution

When I first learned I had access to the Internet back in 1971 it
was as if one of those lights you see in the comics went off with
a flash right over my head.

That very day I started talking about being able to carry library
collections of the very largest size in one hand, but I had years
to wait before Wozniak and Jobs made the first feasible computers
I could use at home, quickly followed by CP/M machines powered by
Gary Kildall's operating system, and eventually, because Kildall,
as history tells us, was interested in too many other things, IBM
chose Bill Gates to build their operating system, and I went that
direction simply because I loved batch macro commands and working
from a command structure that went from here to there rather than
from there to here [PIP = Peripheral Interchange Program]. Yes I
never really mastered "Reverse Polish Notation" either, for a new
device known as calculator, and instead chose the competing place
with an "Electronic Slide Rule."

However, without Woz and Jobs, we would have continued at a mercy
of the people at IBM and the like, who said that the world didn't
need any more than half a dozen computers, or Bill Gates who said
we didn't need any more than 640K of memory.

Well, Bill was wrong about that, but he learned. . . .

You don't become the richest person in the world without learning
a few things along the way.

By the way, Bill was a school dropout, just like so many others a
world owes so much to, including those on this list, for whatever
reasons they were not at school at the time of their inventions.

What If We Waited for Authoritarians to Make These?

You've most certainly heard experts argue and discuss everything,
and still come to no conclusion.

Like the media editors of the previous "Cult of the Amateur," the
authoritarians and the scholars rarely come to the action points.

The world of authoritarians and scholars is a world of inaction.

Even if every great invention or discovery took just 1% longer to
accomplish for every year it was in development, that will mean a
70 year timespan will cut advancement by half!

Just as any investment broker what 1% per year means.

More Examples

Socrates, perhaps the smartest person of all time was an opposite
of authoritarian, he invented logic and the syllogism so plebians
could argue successfully against the sophists, and rhetorititians
in the public assemblies, and they sentenced him to death for it,
over and over and over again they sentenced him to death for it--
but the first few times their state lasted a shorter span than of
Socrates life, and he walked away a free man in the new state.

Yet Socrates kept his loyalty to those states, even to the point,
as is so well told, of refusing to escape when his friends bribed
his way out of prison, instead choosing to honor the law that had
condemned him to death.

Socrates left behind a trail of the greatest philosopher of time,
including his student Plato, and his student Aristotle, and, then
even his student Alexander, just to mention one line, but look up
the Stoics, the Cynics, etc., to see Socrates' overall effect.

But nothing overshadows his logic. . .his mathematics. . .or, his
syllogism. . .for sheer impact on the world.

The Reason for Socrates' Impact

Simple. . .everyone could understand and use syllogisms. . . .

Not everyone could understand and use the works of Plato, and his
student Aristotle.

Their world was an elitist school of thought.

Too elitist to change the world for the public.

///

"The Cult of the Amateur"

by Michael S. Hart
Internet User #199
Founding Member of
Project Gutenberg,
World eBook Fair &
General Cyberspace

Part 3

The Structure of the Professional Versus Amateur World Systems

The Structure of the professional societies, associations, and an
assortment of all other professional groups dates back to feudal,
Dark Age times, in which everyone had their place and knew it and
stayed in that place under threat of severe penalties.

In this system grew the guilds, legal associations of skilled and
trained artisans, craftsmen, etc., from The Stationers Guild, who
controlled nearly all the written records, to a wide variety of a
number of guilds for various crafts in the making of goods of all
sorts from leather, wood, metal, etc.

The guilds were an incredibly "insider" system of operation, with
years and years of apprenticeship at a subsistence pay level, and
then more years and years at the journeyman level, before members
were finally allowed to hang out their own shingle and set up the
shop of their dreams they had been working towards for decades.

You had to prove yourself worth their investment of training, and
worthy of the secrets of their trades. . .years of insidering for
the privilege of become one of the guildsmen.

From the highest levels of modern medical associations and levels
of modern professors associations, the legal bar associations and
all the rest of elitists, all the way down to the union member of
the lowliest garbage collectors union, dog catchers union or what
you might call the lowliest sanitation engineering job, etc., all
our modern professional associations come from feudal guilds, and
this is evident from the first moment you walk in and see sheilds
and escutcheons that would be more properly places on the knights
of the Dark Ages.

The major premise of these organizations is to keep outsiders out
and insiders in. . .let there be no doubt about it.

The worst thing that can happen to these organizations is for any
of their members, or even recruits, to decide they could have the
benefits of being outside the system rather than inside it.

A current example of this in the sports world is David Beckham of
football [soccer] fame, who has jumped ship several times from an
assortment of approved English clubs to foreign clubs and finally
now to the dreaded Black Hole of sports, Los Angeles.

The world just isn't the same place when people can abandon their
roots like that and simply go where people want them most, rather
than staying where they belong.

Of course, sometime the case is just the opposite, as Einstein in
great duress emigrated to the United States, not that he was ever
really a part of the system from the word go, as mentioned in the
previous portions of this series. The world just wasn't ready to
accept an Einstein. . .at least "The Old World."

The same was true for Craig Venter, who kick-started DNA research
after spending 6 years as a surfer, while he waited for the world
to catch up far enough that he could demonstrate his thought in a
more obvious and undeniable manner to a world of Human Genome who
could not understand him, much in the same manner as the world of
a century earlier could not understand Einstein, until an obvious
"proof" of the curvature of space during the famous solar eclipse
preceding 1920 made him a household word, except in Britannica.

Note: it took even took more than one of these eclipses to allow
the more hard-boiled critics of Einstein to admit he was right.

In addition, one should note that this defense is still deemed an
acceptable defense toward refusing any revolutionary change in an
assortment of fields, both in the hard sciences, soft sciences or
in the more artistic fields of endeavor.

In the world of music we have Mozart, and a quick look at Amadeus
[the movie] gives a look at just how much of an outsider he was.

Not to mention Beethoven, who shocked the world by putting in the
scherzo dance where the minuet and trio had been enshrined.

And yet everyone remembers the scherzo in Beethoven's Ninth but a
real expert is required to differentiate all those clones of more
minuets and trios of previous eras.

The Facts versus the Propaganda

Propaganda. . .an interesting word. . .simply meaning something a
movement has produced to propagate itself. . .advertising. . . .

Look up the roots of The Office of Propaganda the Catholic Church

used for centuries. . .try this quotation as a starting point for
your searches AFTER you simply look up "Office of Propaganda."

Extraordinary gifts are not to be rashly desired, nor is it from
them that the fruits of apostolic labors are to be presumptuously expected. Those who have charge over the Church should judge the genuineness and proper use of these gifts, through their office
not indeed to extinguish the Spirit, but to test all things and
hold fast to what is good. (cf. Th. 5:12 and 19-21)."

Indeed, the "extraordinary gifts" given to such persons mentioned
above are often the focus of a great deal of jealously in sacred,
secular, political, physical, and other arenas. Of all mentioned
above, perhaps Isaac Newton was the least persecuted for his.

I won't even go into such "extraordinary gifts" as Joan of Arc or
other more churchly related matters, but it becomes obvious in an
all but undeniable manner that when Vatican II comments referred:
"not indeed to extinguish the spirit" but "extinguish the spirit"
is what indeed what the purpose of said officials actually was.

It becomes equally obvious when/if you do your research that this
more modern version of the guilds in existence today via the ALA,
AMA, MLA, ABA, and most of the professional organzations, are not
merely organs of information, but organs of misinformation and of
disinformation. . .and. . .well, just plain propaganda.

Just read the little pamphlets libraries hand out on copyright as
provided by the various publishers associations to see the biases
these people are willing to state as facts under the seals of the
organizations in question.

They should be ashamed to perpetuate such outright misinformation
in the name of their members, their organization, or just a plain
offense against truth.

What If THEY Got Their Way?

What if Mozart had bent his talent to the mainstream?

What if Galileo had be silenced by The Roman Catholic Church?

What if Martin Luther's 95 Theses had never been published?

What if Gutenberg had not invented interchangeable type?

What if Newton had followed in Aristotle's footsteps?

What if Einstein had followed in Newton's footsteps?

What if Woz and Jobs believed only 6 computers were needed?

What if everyone believed in Bill Gates 640K?

What if Tim Berners-Lee had followed Archie and Veronica?

The oxymoronic truth of all this is that each of these guilds was
started by someone who lived outside the box, who created the new
revolutionary idea or ideal that founded the new field.

In fact, the term "revolutionary" dates back hardly any further a
date than Galileo, to his immediate predecessor, Copernicus, whom
we have now enshrined for his "Revolution of the Celestial Orbs,"
but who was not so well received in his own day, even though that
day coincided with Martin Luther, The Gutenberg Press, etc.

Each of the persons listed previously, and hundreds, or thousands
more we own an incredible debt to, were pretty much ostracized in
their own time for their incredible gifts. . .not only the gifts,
as it were, of their own, but for their gifts to humanity.

Thus we see "revolutionary" works have created the world in which
we are living, step by step, throughout the ages against the will
of whatever "powers-that-be" have ruled against them, from early,
to middle, to modern history.

Each age thinks it is the "end all, be all" of all civilizations,
and wants to freeze everything in the current mold, defeating all
attempts possible to make change, since any change is likely from
the perspective of the "powers-that-be" to be a threat to them in
the sense that they made it to the top under the current laws for
making it to the top, and usually these laws have been redrafted,
rewritten, even originated, by these "powers-that-be," to benefit
themselves at the expense of all others.

Remember: the goal of the guilds was always their own benefits--
not the benefits to the world at large.

The same is true of their descendants.

You would be surprised at just how many of our organizations from
the modern perspective have not changed in essence from those now
in our ancient history.

The basic idea/ideal is US VERSUS THEM, and there is never enough
for the membership, there are no objective standards as to ENOUGH
IS ENOUGH as in the case of "The Stationers Guild" and copyright.

I have written about copyright extensively elsewhere, so I should
only mention the broadest outline of that history here.

A Brief History of Copyright Law

The general idea/ideal of copyright is that it is always legal to
copy until the power to own copies trickles down to the masses.

Before The Gutenberg Press there were no restrictions to copying,
other than the fact that only the most elite of the wealthy, and,
the most elite of the educated, were capable of making copies, so
no laws were passed against their right to do so, just as no laws
were written against the VCR when only millionaires had them.

The Gutenberg Press changed the world as much as any invention of
the last millennium, particularly from the perspective of elitist
versus the masses. . .most inventions before this targeted a rich
portion of a population, usually only the top 1%, and the effects
only related directly to that top 1% and perhaps only that 1%.

However, unlike most previous inventions, The Gutenberg Press had
an effect on the rest of the world much greater than any previous
inventions other than the basics of fire, leverage, agriculture--
things that almost anyone could take advantage of.

The Gutenberg Press changed books from something that cost a lot,
the average books cost as much as the average family farm, to the
price that allowed wagonloads of books to arrive at marketplaces.

The result was far greater than anything anyone imagined!

For one, the literacy rate escaped from that top 1%, and suddenly
control of information that had been kept secret with low effort,
and just one result was "The Protestant Revolution" in which that
most powerful single entity of The Western World, "The Holy Roman
Catholic Church," was toppled from its peak of power by the works
of just one person, Martin Luther, multiplied by the power of The
Gutenberg Press.

However, the ones who made the biggest stink about disempowerment
of the previous monopoly power was not The Roman catholic Church,
but rather The Stationers Guild, who had held a virtual monopoly,
since time immemorial, down through their various incarnations.

The result was, after 250 years of lobbying, "The Copyright Law."

250 years of failures. . .and finally one became law, written for
and by The Stationers Guild.

Galileo's predecessor, Giordano Bruno, was burned at the stake in
response to his astronomical observations and reports.

Galileo, at the age of 70, was commanded to appear before "Office
of the Inquisition" in Rome, notwithstanding his age or infirmity
and at his own expense. He was tried in one day, with "evidence"
that had been assembled for over 30 years, and twice shown racks,
and other instruments of torture as they were to be used on him.

He was found guilty, sentenced to the harshest house arrest, with
no ability to publish, or even speak to Protestants.

As a result Descartes stopped publishing in France, moved himself
to Sweden, while Galileo decided to continue writing his book the
Inquisition had interrupted. . .it was only published years later
and many countries away.

Thus ended The Scientific Revolution in the Mediterranean and the
course of this history would continue only in Northern Europe.

The same year Galileo died, still under house arrest, was born in
England a child named Isaac Newton.

"The Cult of the Amateur"

Part 4

by Michael S. Hart
Internet User #199
Founding Member of
Project Gutenberg,
World eBook Fair &
General Cyberspace

The Media. . .versus. . .The Media???

Would a television executive rather lose hundreds of millions not
made because he failed to green light a show that would have been
a smash hit rather than be proven wrong in his choice?

This question is actually being played out as we speak, via a new
phenomenon that is reviving dead pilots for TV shows, and putting
them on the Internet to try for an audience the television owners
were unwilling to court in the first place.

At first this seemed like a win-win scenario, as the TV producers
could make some serious money on shows that would otherwise rust,
collect dust, etc., stashed away in some forgotten storehouse.

Perhaps you are already aware that the majority of movies made in
all history have been lost due to being tossed out, lost, or kept
in the worst kinds of storage conditions, and then Jack Valenti--
the same one who said that home video was to Hollywood as was the
"Boston Stranger" to the single woman, and then proceeded to make
billions from home video once he realized just how wrong he was--
pleaded with the public on Oscar (R) night to look for treasures,
left under beds, in garages or attics, and to return them to this
Hollywood industry who had so callously thrown them away so these
unmeasurable treasures could be revived and reconditioned to sell
to the public once again.

Well, this same sort of thing is being played out in the world of
television right now, as people are scrambling to find old pilots
that were never made into series and to give them another chance,
via the Internet, which costs virtually nothing compared to those
hundred pound movies shipped to all major theaters every week.

So. . .what is stopping them?

The TV executives who blackballed the shows in the first place!

These top executives can't stand the idea that some show they had
labeled as a flop before it ever got going could become a hit.

The result would be that people will realize these top executives
don't always know what they are doing.

So the result is that the top execs are putting an end to this in
rapid fashion before many of you even knew it was happening.

Putting an end to something that could blossom into the next show
such as "Friends". . .which was almost blacklisted. . .a billions
and billions of dollars show. . .and the executive who blacklists
such a show might find himself tossed out into the gutter, with a
private blacklist of his own of people who will never hire him.

So, for the good of the executives, and the not-so-good of public
access to these shows, and the very not-so-good losses of billion
dollar TV revenues to the networks, it would appear that we could
miss out on this opportunity.

There is a name for this kind of attitude. . .it is called SPITE.

"Spite" is a word usually reserved for small children who hate to
lose so badly that they will destroy their own chances of success
rather than let someone else defeat them.

"Spite-TV" might just be the latest trend in television executive
behavior, once again proving that those who run the bit networks,
such as depicted in the movie "Network" [highly recommended!] are
just as childish.

And Not Just Television Networks. . .Even Car Racing Does This!

I doubt if many of you know much about automotive turbine engines
or their mostly unwritten history, but at one time it appeared as
if turbine engines would revolutionize at least certain aspects--
and one of these engines nearly won "The Indianapolis 500" and it
was outlawed before the next race to make sure it never won.

Turbine powered cars had been allowed for years, but none had the
ability to qualify until veteran Parnelli Jones did it in 1967 in
which he led nearly 90% of the laps until only 4 laps to go, when
a plain vanilla bearing died in the rear end and Jones coasted to
a stop just short of the pits. . .however, there would be no next
year's rematch, as the rules were changed to eliminate it.

By the way, the turbine engine used in Parnelli Jones' car was no
special deal. . .it was a standard helicopter engine. . .and that
meant too much of a threat to the standard cylinder engines which
were the power base of Detroit.

These events took place in the days when Indy 500 cars were moved
from the huge cylinders of the old Offenhausers engines to a less
massive, and thus more responsive, engine, and body, of Formula 1
racing cars after the likes of Jimmy Clark came over the the U.K.
to teach us poor colonials a thing or two about racing, even when
the racing was done on a silly little closed track with only left
turns and no hills, no nothing. . .a very boring racecourse.

The difference is that you can't rule out a winner, but you can a
second place finisher. . .and Andy Granatelli's turbine car was a
runner up. . .not a winner. . .and thus history was changed and a
turbine car, with only one serious moving part [some people count
ball bearings as moving parts. . .and, as luck would have it, the
reason the turbine car lost was a failed bearing].

Of course, the same thing happened to pole vaulters when they got
to the limits of stiff poles and had to use something flexible to
jump higher. . .for years the flexible poles were outlawed.

Not to mention what happened when calculators first appeared, and
were banned from the classroom because students could not learn a
thing if the calculator did all the work. . .I'm sure any similar
events concerning the introduction of the slide rule got the same
or similar treatment.

All you have to do to stop a new kind of engine technology from a
racing career is to mandate a certain kind of fuel that the brand
new engine doesn't run well with and you eliminate competition.

Without appearing to have obviously aimed at that elimination.

In states such as mine, where there is only one city's population
that is over a million, they consistently pass laws based on city
populations. . .taxes. . .ordinances. . .etc., that are targeted,
but not obviously, at giving Chicago either an advantage or rough
times for certain legislative agendas.

In each of these cases those making the rules can say, pretending
to do so in all honesty, that everyone is playing under the rules
of the game. . .the same laws apply to everyone. . .when the real
case is that they do NOT apply equally to everyone.

These rule makers are usually the type who played the game in the
early years in the local school "Student Council" or whatever, so
it might be worth the while of those who have the opportunity for
watching such events to take a little time to see how obvious the
ploys are when the politicians are young, and then how little the
change has been, other than polishing up their act, but not moral
fortitude, when they get to the big time.

In Conclusion

What we see "the-powers-that-be" doing is situational ethics in a
number of famous cases when they cannot win against a new idea:

"There is no force greater than an idea whose time has come." and
thus their response when unable to compete fairly is being unable
also to keep to their stated morality, legal standing, etc.

"Those unable
Tilt the table."

"The-powers-that-be" thus void their own laws, rewrite them over,
and over, and over again, to continue their dominance when masses
of the public could have the advantage of a new technology.

This is particularly evident in the case of copyright, where very
few copyrights were ever renewed [90% expired after a first term]
and yet not only were the copyright terms extended, over and over
and over again, but the need for renewal was eliminated, thus any
hope for the public domain has been shattered, even though 10% is
the average portion of copyrights ever renewed, and the fee was a
merely nominal along with minimal paperwork and and extra year or
two in which to file for the extensions.

The result is that the publishing industry, from end to end has a
hyperinflationary spiral that has taken the price of the averages
of paperback markets to a billion people from around $.26 and the
price included tax, to a price of over $16, tax included, in that
same period of time as a gallon of gas went from $.26 with tax to
$3 with tax. . .Oh! How the news media would pounce on the story,
if it were gas that cost $16, never mind the book prices.

"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

The more money that goes into the publishing empires that mergers
and megamergers have created, the more money flows into lobbying,
and the longer and longer and longer copyright has become, until,
just recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case that was at
one time labeled "Hart v Reno" [yes, me] and later called "Eldred
v Ashcroft" that The U.S. Congress could make copyright as long a
period as they wanted via continuing extensions in SPITE of their
U.S. Constitution reading "limited period."

The most famous quote from Hello Dolly is : "Money, pardon
the expression, is like manure. It's not worth a thing
unless it's spread around, encouraging young things to grow."

The result of the opposite is that the rich are now richer in all
measures than they have ever been before, absolute wealth and the
percentage of the wealth they own and control.

"The rich get richer, the poor get poorer."

This sentiment has been echoed by presidents, poets, and Prophets
down the ages, as follows:

U.S. President Andrew Jackson, in his 1832 bank veto, said:

"when the laws undertake... to make the rich richer and the potent
more powerful, the humble members of society. . .have a right to
complain of the injustice to their Government."

U.S. President William Henry Harrison said, on October 1, 1840:

"I believe and I say it is true Democratic feeling, that all the
measures of the government are directed to the purpose of making
the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in 1821, in A Defence of Poetry:

(not published until 1840) argues that in his England,

"the promoters of utility" had been able "to exasperate at once
the extremes of luxury and want. They have exemplified the saying,
`To him that hath, more shall be given; and from him that hath not,
the little that he hath shall be taken away.� The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer. . . ."

Matthew 13:12 tells us the same from two thousand years ago:

"For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have
more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken
away even that he hath."

However, it should be obvious that not only the "powers-that-be"
have taken notice of this situation, but also more down to Earth
writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, who included the following:

"One thing's sure, and nothing's surer.
The rich get richer and the poor get. . .children."

To conclude in the same spirit as the previous quotations. . . .

For those who would prefer to see that literacy and education
continue to wallow in the mire, I can only say that a silence
on your part creates its just reward. Your expertise dies an
awful death when it is smothered by hiding your light under a
bushel, or under any other covering, howsoever named.

Matthew 5:15

Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a
candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

Mark 4:21
And he said unto them, Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel,
or under a bed? and not to be set on a candlestick?

Luke 8:16
No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covereth it with a vessel,
or putteth it under a bed; but setteth it on a candlestick, that
they which enter in may see the light.

Luke 11:33
No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place,
neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come
in may see the light.