We all agree that the free flow of ideas is essential to
creativity. And we like to believe that in our modern,
technological world, information is more freely available and flows
faster than ever before. But according to Nobel Laureate Robert
Laughlin, acquiring information is becoming a danger or even a
crime. Increasingly, the really valuable information is private
property or a state secret, with the result that it is now easy for
a flash of insight, entirely innocently, to infringe a patent or
threaten national security. The public pays little attention
because this vital information is "technical"--but, Laughlin
argues, information is often labeled technical so it can be
sequestered, not sequestered because it's technical. The increasing
restrictions on information in such fields as cryptography,
biotechnology, and computer software design are creating a new Dark
Age: a time characterized not by light and truth but by
disinformation and ignorance. Thus we find ourselves dealing more
and more with the Crime of Reason, the antisocial and sometimes
outright illegal nature of certain intellectual activities.
"The Crime of Reason" is a reader-friendly jeremiad, "On
Bullshit" for the Slashdot and Creative Commons crowd: a short,
fiercely argued essay on a problem of increasing concern to people
at the frontiers of new ideas.
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