Connectedness and Copyright

I don't understand the concept of copyright. Atleast not in the work that I do. Absolutely everybody that I have met for any length of time, has contrinuted to who I am today and thereby the work that I am capable of doing and thereby any constructs or tools that my company uses, practices, implements.

It bothers me that a sense of belonging must be attached to the knowledge that one owns the rights over something. Why is it hard to feel that one can use something comfortably even when it is shared?

A reminder (from Joy and Suparna)

Copper Beech is about conscious living. And conscious living is anchored on the twin concepts of awareness and choice. Two faces of the same coin. Common sense tells us, if we get to know about something we get to choose. No information, no choice. No choice, no action. We are thinking of a world where we need to act out our choices that comes out of knowledge. We’ve got that worked out.

Choices can weight you down, choices can set you free.

Copper Beech seeks to provide a platform for like-thinking, like-believing, like-acting, like-feeling folks to converge, create, and collaborate. Out of the core comes the distant rumbling of a world turning itself inside out. We are a growing tribe of unapologetic, unabashed, and unassuming people who are willing to wear their hearts on their sleeves. We will log on to become members of social networking sites, be heard on the Radio, seen on TV, read on Magazines, be discussing on Blogs, scripting Wikis, building Conscious Centers and Cities. We are not here to change the world.

We figured if we change ourselves, the world still stands a chance – because – well, we are the world. We’ll be busy and chances are you’ll find us.

Where do we want to be 97 years from now?

There is a enchanting posting at Paleo-Future of French postcards from 1910 depicting a vision of life in the year 2000. I find visions of the future illuminate many subtle aspects of their time. These postcards evince a powerful belief that technology is good, and that mechanical means of performing manual tasks is preferable to humans doing the work. There are even machines for brushing your hair in the morning.

Some of the aspirations are almost universal to the idiom, such as individual flight that has evolved into the idea of jet-packs, some are dystopian such as the prediction of horses verging on extinction and some are brilliantly joyful such as the festival of flowers where people fly about in small craft hurling blossoms at eachother.

I feel these images give us a glimpse into the hopes and aspirations of the time. Where we are now is a very different place. Some of these wishes have been realised, in some form, we have video-conferencing and news podcasts now, but this innocent popular imagining of the future seems to be disappearing. There is a prevailing view that technology is something that happens to us, and that if anyone plots its course they are far removed from us.

Perhaps by engaging in these flights of whimsy we can shape our future. What kind of future do we want or think will be 97 years from now?

And on the 7th day...

And on the 7th day, Joy looked down on all the Copper Beech platforms and said...