Agorafobia cultural y los prejuicios de las universidades hacia el contenido abierto

James Boyle en su libro The Public Domain argumenta que la Academia tiene una aversión o fobia (miedo irracional) hacia el principio de acceso abierto (open access). Sostiene que esta “agorafobia cultural” es detrimental para el desarrollo y el progreso de la ciencia. Mientras no exista un equilibrio saludable entre lo abierto y lo cerrado, la Universidad no podrá cumplir  cabalmente su función de promover el acceso al conocimiento, la innovación y la creatividad.

Les incluyo el enlace a la  presentación que ofreció James Boyle en el Faculty Academy   de University of Mary Washington. Para los que quieren conocer más sobre el trabajo de Boyle comparto estos enlaces:

7 Ways To Ruin A Technological Revolution

FT.com / Technology / New Technology Policy Forum – A closed mind about an open world

• Studying intellectual property and the internet has convinced me that we have another cognitive bias. Call it the openness aversion. We are likely to undervalue the importance, viability and productive power of open systems, open networks and non-proprietary production.

• You have to design a global computer network. One group of scientists describes a system that is fundamentally open – open protocols and systems so anyone could connect to it and offer information or products to the world. Another group – scholars, businessmen, bureaucrats – points out the problems. Anyone could connect to it. They could do anything. There would be porn, piracy, viruses and spam. Terrorists could put up videos glorifying themselves. Your activist neighbour could compete with The New York Times in documenting the Iraq war. Better to have a well-managed system, in which official approval is required to put up a site; where only a few actions are permitted; where most of us are merely recipients of information; where spam, viruses, piracy (and innovation and anonymous speech) are impossible. Which would you have picked?

• Imagine a form of software that anyone could copy and change, created under a licence that required subsequent programmers to offer their software under the same terms. Imagine legions of programmers worldwide contributing their creations back into a “commons”. Is this anarchic-sounding method of production economically viable? Could it successfully compete with the hierarchically organised companies producing proprietary, closed code, controlled by both law and technology?

• It is not that openness is always right. Rather, it is that we need a balance between open and closed, owned and free, and we are systematically likely to get the balance wrong.

James Boyle’s Home Page

James Boyle (academic) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

RSA – James Boyle – 10 March

Richard Smith: If we’re going to beef up copyright law, we may as well ban Wikipedia | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

John Naughton: Control freaks don’t get it: the web works best in a free-for-all | Media | The Observer

• but those who are obsessed with lock-down and control, on the one hand, and those who celebrate openness and unfettered creativity on the other.

• The cultural agoraphobia from which most of us suffer leads us always to overemphasise the downsides of openness and lack of central control, and to overvalue the virtues of order and authority. And that is what is rendering us incapable of harnessing the potential benefits of networked technology. Industries and governments are wasting incalculable amounts of money and energy in Canute-like resistance to the oncoming wave when what they should be doing is figuring out ways to ride it.

Cultural Agoraphobia | Crowd Surfing

Cultural agoraphobia | DavePress

• The cultural agoraphobia from which most of us suffer leads us always to overemphasise the downsides of openness and lack of central control, and to overvalue the virtues of order and authority. And that is what is rendering us incapable of harnessing the potential benefits of networked technology. Industries and governments are wasting incalculable amounts of money and energy in Canute-like resistance to the oncoming wave when what they should be doing is figuring out ways to ride it.