How much of our world do we know? And how much CAN we know?

Is it possible to create a digital library where you give all the content away for free, asks Brewster Kahle in his TED talk. All sort of questions pop up, from technical, economic, logistical...can such a thing co-exist with the world of publishing?



Universal access to all knowledge of, by and to all of humankind.
For Free.
How many comparable achievements throughout human history can you think of ?


I came across the other great video I saw today through reddit. Richard Dawkins, in a 2006 TED presentation, talks about the wonders of the world we live in. Much of it is about things that almost any student of science has wondered about in their twenties, but nonetheless it's a lot of fun to hear him put it all together.

On the "huge price of Street Politics"

India's only living Nobel Laureate, in a letter published in The Telegraph expresses his concern about his home state.

...for West Bengal as a whole, it would be a huge economic setback, if the Tatas do move out. Its impact would not be confined only to the economic loss from the withdrawal of investments of the Tatas and the ancillary producers, but also from the general sense across India that the politics of West Bengal makes it nearly impossible to base any new economic move in the state, and that the single-minded politics of the street can drive out any new enterprise.

That politics might change over time once the terrible consequences of industrial and economic stagnation are more widely appreciated and understood. But for the moment the political attraction of street activism seems dominant, supplemented intellectually by the old physiocratic illusion of prosperity grounded only on agriculture. The latter piece of romantic thought cannot but fade over time with the influence of realism (no country has ever achieved much prosperity on the basis of agriculture alone). But at this moment realism looks like a distant dream.

If nothing else, this might come in handy in the coming decades when we try to explain to our well-wishers how West Bengal managed to snatch precious poverty from the jaws of impending prosperity.

Elitism, Aristocracy, and US politics

Sam Harris in Newsweek nails the Palin problem : "When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country."

Maureed Dowd in NYT asks Obama, in the voice of Jed Bartlet, to get angrier. "The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it."

Somehow, both of these led me to remember E.M.Forster's statement on Aristocracy (from Two Cheers for Democracy)

I believe in aristocracy. . . — if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke. I give no examples — it is risky to do that — but the reader may as well consider whether this is the type of person he would like to meet and to be, and whether (going further with me) he would prefer that this type should not be an ascetic one. I am against asceticism myself. I am with the old Scotsman who wanted less chastity and more delicacy. I do not feel that my aristocrats are a real aristocracy if they thwart their bodies, since bodies are the instruments through which we register and enjoy the world. Still, I do not insist. This is not a major point. It is clearly possible to be sensitive, considerate and plucky and yet be an ascetic too, and if anyone possesses the first three qualities I will let him in! On they go — an invincible army, yet not a victorious one. The aristocrats, the elect, the chosen, the Best People — all the words that describe them are false, and all attempts to organize them fail. Again and again Authority, seeing their value, has tried to net them and to utilize them as the Egyptian Priesthood or the Christian Church or the Chinese Civil Service or the Group Movement, or some other worthy stunt. But they slip through the net and are gone; when the door is shut, they are no longer in the room; their temple, as one of them remarked, is the holiness of the Heart’s affections, and their kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide-open world.