Though what has been said about Napster is certainly relevant, I don't think the import of it for self-archiving of one's professional work, published or pre-print, has quite come into focus for us here. Let us leave aside the use of it to pirate music, which is a red herring relative to the concerns of this forum. What makes it relevant here is its potentialities as a communications technology that can be used to defeat reactionary intellectual property practices. Now, the likelihood that programs of this type actually will be used extensively for that purpose is another matter, but that cannot be guessed at intelligently without getting clear on precisely what its potentiality is in that respect. I don't think that has been brought out perspicuously enough and I would like to take a try at it.
Described in its generalized form, what this comes to, on first inspection, at least, is this: Merely running the program -- which is remarkably small given its powers -- has the effect of: (1) converting one's personal computer into a server which serves up whatever files one wants to make available to corresponding client programs as long as one is connected with the internet, either all of the time or with some regularity, (2) providing one with the corresponding client program, thereby providing every such server with a clientele extending to everyone else who downloads, installs, and runs the same program on their personal computer, and (3) providing a dynamical index, continually in process of being updated, which gives push-button access to all files currently available on all such personal servers: in short, an indexed distributed archive of those materials. That's quite a lot for a free program that can be installed and run in a few minutes by any klutz who can use a computer at all! I just want to make a couple of points about this. The first is that one advantage it offers that is not accommodated by the public archives in process of construction at present is that one can make publicly available many different kinds of resource material in addition to scholarly or scientific research reports proper, and this with extreme ease, simply by clicking a switch for the directories on one's computer which contains these materials. Now, the significance of this will doubtless vary greatly among the various research disciplines. In some fields this might be insignificant since such resource materials are almost all publicly available in some form, anyway; but in others it could be an enormous benefit because it could make easily available scholarly and investigative tools of the sort which heretofore have always perished with those individuals who devised them. One reason for the relatively unprogressive character of many nonscientific disciplines is that the instruments used by its most accomplished practitioners are reconstructed again and again from scratch by every investigator with the same aims, whereas in scientific disciplines the physical character of the instruments has made it possible for them to become a part of what is routinely accumulated for common use in the research tradition, thus allowing for them to be developed and made more powerful over time. Thus the simple magnifying lens as an instrument of microscopic access transmutes across time into the particle accelerator, and with it the theoretical-experimental understanding of matter that informs its use transmutes as well. How could that theoretical development have occurred if every generation of physicists had had to master the art of primitive lens grinding again and again and never been able to move past it? In the humanities, though, we routinely reinvent the wheel and cannot move beyond it in its most simple form. This provides an incentive for use of the Napster-like technology in addition to whatever incentive, if any, attaches to making one's research reports openly available, and thus tends to encourage the sharing of the latter as a matter of course. Would people actually be willing to share their research instruments and materials in that way, though? In time, yes. Initially, it would be done in a grudging spirit, no doubt, given the mean-spirited fear of intellectual sharing which is presently the norm in many fields; but this spirit is itself at least in part a heritage of the limitations of the paper-embodied text as research instrument, and in spite of this heritage there are liberal spirits in the humanities who do what they can to move past these limitations whenever possible. Second, although this Napster-like technology could yield a distributed archival database which could easily grow to be as large and comprehensive in scope as that being developed or provided for by current initiatives, and the techniques for organizing it could become sophisticated enough to make it well worth to use in practice, it would nevertheless have to remain distinct from the database of e-prints currently envisaged because of its highly fluid character, owing to its dependence on the willingness of individuals not only to keep on making the materials available but also to follow routine practices in revision of their work and in the development of their personal instruments of research. This is so unlikely that the value of it relative to the aims of the present forum could only lie in its side-effect of tending to encourage self-archiving of the stable sort wanted here. I do not think this should be dismissed as trivial or impertinent, though, merely because it can only be a side-effect. (Think of the side-effects of the automobile.) To use one of Stevan's favorite metaphors, if the horses, being shown the water, continue to be reluctant to drink, it could be because of inhibitions that can only be addressed in other ways than those that suggest themselves when one thinks of the problem of open publication only in the simplistic and highly abstract way it is usually described here. Napster is, potentially, a community-building device because it is essentially a mechanism for sharing something that couldn't otherwise be shared, and that is what a good many people have thought the internet was going to promote: not a mere porting of existing practices on-line in the interests of efficiency and economy but an occasion for building intellectual communities where that was impossible before. This might very well have bearing on the aims of the present forum. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Joseph Ransdell <ransd...@door.net> <bn...@ttacs.ttu.edu> Dept of Philosophy -- 806 742-3158 -- (FAX 806 742-0730) Texas Tech University - Lubbock, Texas 79409 USA http://www.door.net/arisbe (Peirce Gateway website) http://www.door.net/arisbe/homepage/ransdell.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~