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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
I'm not sure it's possible for it to exist outside of a capitalistic framework. People will create the content, and need to be compensated, and others will manufacture and distribute it, and need to be compensated. Where does the money come from, and how does it get distributed?
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My understanding of capitalism as it pertains to this discussion is that it declares the right of the individual to seek compensation (typically monetary) for resources expended (money, time, effort, etc.). My concern is that this framework is often extended into a moral realm, and the conclusion becomes, rather that it is
right to seek compensation for resources expended; consequently, it is
wrong (or at least weird) not to. That was the basis of the goofy apartment discussion I was having with Bob on
page two. If you're willing to suspend our capitalist viewpoint for the moment, consider entertaining a behavioural one which does not prescribe rights, but describes phenomena.
"People will create content." I agree. As a teacher, I create handouts for my students. As a student, I create papers for my professors and for publication. What compels me (behaviourally) to do so is necessity: I feel obligated to give my students the best resources I have access to (or can create), if not for my individual, moral reasons, then more practically because it improves my security in my teaching position. As a student, that content creation likewise drives my viability to remain and advance in academe, which I may wish to do for individual, moral reasons, or because it will lead to something else I want (like a source of income that requires academic credentials). Here, content creation is rewarded by prestige or personal satisfaction, both of which can contribute to behaviours that will secure my financial, and eventually physical, security.
In this system, there are behavioural elements that will determine my standpoint to other people using my materials, or my using other people's materials. As a teacher, I may feel that what I can produce, plus the resources I invest in producing it, is of superior value to what I can access (if this isn't the case, I will probably get my resources elsewhere rather than create them; I frequently do). As a student, the risk of discredit and expulsion from academe, the individual moral inquietude, and the perception that I am reducing my educational rewards may, if they are powerful enough, mitigate my compulsion to plagiarise.
Certainly, in practise I don't think about these things quite so discretely in my day-to-day decisions. Indeed, my individual morality serves me as a shorthand in this way. Right to compensation for my efforts does not enter into this description, yet the description accounts for perpetual content creation. Educators and students making their resources and research freely available (as they do in open education and culture) does not interfere with this description and does not rely upon compensation. In fact, a bonus of this approach is prestige and validation of having one's efforts appreciated and used by someone else.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
And "community authorship" leads you into the morass that Wikipedia sometimes becomes. I'll use Wikipedia (and do daily), but with distinct reservations and grains of salt, depending upon the topic, because I don't assume that the view most commonly held is correct, nor that facts can be determined by committee.
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I used to have the exact same reservations, but in studying university and information systems, I've come to see that there are no immediate answers to the question of "what determines the veracity of a fact" which satisfy the ideal of objective truth. Wikipedia can become a morass and is open to individuals or groups with private agendas making changes to the content to suit their needs, rather than to reflect Truth. What makes a published, hard-bound encyclopaedia more reliable? There is, after all, no necessary correlation between the attractiveness of a proposed idea and its factuality.
The answer, in practise, is peer-review, and is the same principle which bolsters confidence in the truth content of academic publications (where each individual reader isn't in a position to test proposed, new information for him or herself). This leads to consensus about what's true and what isn't; this
is truth by committee, and it drives a great deal of what we consider to be knowledge. It's the basis of Connexion's "Lenses," which help educators sort through the available content when designing the open-content textbooks I've been talking about.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
But you might benefit by focusing your attention on the demand side of the equation, not the supply side. Remember, textbook publishers aren't really selling to you as the student. Yes, you have to buy them, but what texts you buy is determined by the school you attend, and the courses you take. You buy the books required for that class. You don't get to decide which to use.
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I agree. I think the only real place to grapple with this is from the position of the educator, though if I'm a professor and I notice that all of my students aren't doing the readings, that puts a pressure on
me to put a pressure on the publishers.
Regarding my figures for the electronics textbook, see the
Baraniuk video from around 8:40. Sorry, I should have referenced that right in my post.