Overload

Overload

    It's been a busy week, a phrase uttered by many and likely uttered with more meaning and justification than that which is coming from me; but it has at least seemed busy.  Our friend arrived for her mother's funeral (our Irish friend) and spoke of how much there was to do...the arrangements, the cleaning, the settling of the house, the papers.  Her husband (the daughter's husband, that is) is an independent app developer for games and she spoke of the competition he faces (400 new apps released daily); our neighbor is a published author (with an agent) and he often mentions the competition there as well (750 new books released daily).  Then came the three new pilot episodes from Amazon, each struggling to find a new place among that group's massive streaming audience.  And then I went to pick up my mail only to again find a weight of magazines overfilling my box.  Pick up, sort, prioritize and repeat again next week.  How does one keep up (I say this after discovering just the single app, Public Radio & Podcast, which opens access to hundreds of additional apps and podcasts; we particularly enjoyed the views of Tom Hanks on the podcast of Desert Island Discs, a show that has been broadcasting since 1942).  Apps, books, streaming, podcasts...so much information and quite honestly, much of it really quite interesting.  But where's the time? (okay, thank you for taking your time to read this blog because I should have added that there are millions of other blogs and YouTube videos also out there, many of them containing useful and interesting views as well)...I tried to glimpse some of this overwhelming influx in an earlier post on going digital.

    But now comes a new argument from the New York Review of Books for yes, more access to what's out there. Here's one argument...over $2.5 billion (as converted at today's rate of the falling British pound).  That's last year's profits from just one science, medical and technology publisher, all from research and reports that for the most part, have been completed and released by universities or funded by taxpayer dollars...but denied viewing by the non-paying public  According to the article, allowing the public to view such research has been an uphill struggle and was only made possible in 2008 when the National Institutes of Health said that research paid for by its grants should be made available for viewing for free (the law was since changed to allow a one-year hold on such new publication viewing, a compromise after lobbyists lost a battle to have the law overturned altogether...their efforts, however, continue as evidenced by their opposition to the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act which give public access to view some additional research funded by other federal agencies).  Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution gives Congress the power “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”  The Copyright Act of 1790, “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning,” fixed that time limit at fourteen years, renewable once.  In creating copyright, the Founders intended to promote a public good, the advancement of learning, while leaving room for private interest—a temporary monopoly on the sale of books...What are the proportions of the public and the private interests in the world of books today?  The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (also known as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, because the copyright on Mickey was soon to expire) extended copyright to the life of the author plus seventy years—that is, more than a century in most cases.  The vast majority of books published in the twentieth century remain excluded from the public domain...according to statistics furnished by the American Library Association for 2012, academic libraries spent $2.8 billion on information resources, of which half was for electronic serial subscriptions.  Stanford University pays $1.2 million for annual subscriptions to four hundred RELX (one of the publishers) journals, which contain a large number of articles written by its own faculty.

     Sorting through this jumble of words, the issue boils down to one of public access to many books and publications which are currently out of reach to the general reading public.  Google has already digitized the works of over 20 million works and three other groups have done the same to a combined 37 million other works (it's unknown how many of the works actually overlap).  The Library of Congress alone has over 24 million works.  Imagine if one could browse through such a collection?  But should Google or a librarian make such a decision to allow free public access to a copyrighted book, the company or librarian could face a fine of $150,000.  What if the owner/author of the copyright can't be located, or if the book has been out of print for years?  The fines could still happen, say today's copyright laws.  And what of the universities and federal institutions who spend all sorts of their own monies on research and then have to pay to view its publication or to gain further insight into additional research?  But would allowing free access to such research raise some security concerns or possibly shortchange some royalties?  All are legitimate rationales, but are limited in scope.  And some publications' board members are resigning in protest over the issue of charging such "excessive prices" for what they apparently feel should be available to the public for little or no charge.  The result has been a compromise of sorts, the "creation of open-access journals"...online and available for viewing for free.  Can it work, you wonder?  How will they make money?  But so far there are over 9000 such open-access "high-quality, peer-reviewed" journals.  Adds the article: Not only do they relieve the budgets of libraries, but they provide information quickly and free of charge to small businesses and other enterprises that can convert it into profits.

    So truth is, just when you felt that you might be overloaded with too much information, you discover that behind the curtain waits yet another massive library, one filled with the efforts of dedicated researchers and businesses and foundations, each seeking a solution or an advancement to some problem...and it the coming years, it might just be made available to your eyes.  And as with all libraries, there is likely hidden knowledge back there just waiting to be viewed by the right person or persons, perhaps even by someone who's not a scientist or a researcher (this was best captured in the recent film, The Man Who Knew Infinity, based on the true-story of mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan) .  And where that will take us remains to be seen...if only we can sort through it all.