[ExI] The Open Future Foudation [Foundation?]

Bryan Bishop kanzure at gmail.com
Sat Jan 26 01:57:58 UTC 2008


On Friday 25 January 2008, Antonio Marcos wrote:
> So it doesnt matter much the name, just make a
> website.. If you can enough openscience people to
> agree with you, the foundations might probably pop up
> on their own.

Yep. I can put up a website quickly, but I'd have to figure out what to 
put on it.

> I would like to discuss though, and see what people
> here think about the issues openscience raises:
>
> 1) People abusing the discoveries made this way,
> patenting, etc..

Patenting is just for the legal system. The legal stuff doesn't matter. 
Let the politicians fight this out. That's their battle. Not mine. 
Meanwhile, I'll be doing whatever I can to help out.

>   I would say it would be more or less protected if it

Nothing is truly secure.

> acted like a university, though with public
> discussions even for research. So it would patent its
> discoveries.. but then it collides with your idea of a
> purely open model. A real fouNdation (or something :))
> would be needed.

Nah, even if people patent stuff, there's going to be people that do not 
patent. See, even if people do patent something, it doesn't matter. We 
can still come up with the same information and knowledge.

> 2) Economic impact this might cause:
>    How being so open would destabilize processes.. And
> how to deal with opponents of the idea.
>    Would people adopting this only do research as a
> hobby? if not, how would they feed themselves. And
> either way, how would research be funded? Donations?
> Like many sites do? Own pocket?

Money is fake anyway. This stuff doesn't matter. What we need to do is 
focus on moving towards an era of abundance, probably via 
self-replication technology and the empowering ability of 
nanotechnology. In the mean time, if we had to work with money, I am 
sure we can provide food some how. And besides, since we're all 
independent agents, we can all solve that problem on our own (at least 
until nanotech is an option).

> 3) Security and Responsability:
>   How to prevent misuse of the knowledge, i dont see a

You can't prevent misuse.

> completely open, as you suggest, model being able to
> do anything about it.. Maybe its not needed, people
> would eventually know better or monitor themselves.

Screwups will happen. We need to be prepared.

> Maybe its useless anyway, and would eventually all get
> in the open. But wouldnt this mean that eventually
> openness would be frowned uppon? maybe even science?!

Then we will be open for as long as humanly possible.

> (doesnt many people are already suspicious about it? I
> read something along those lines these days)

You mean, in the sense of trust and authority? This just means that we 
need to create more social communities around the research itself. 
Well, not the research, but the topics, and then sometimes the 
implementations to figure out new meaning and information about the 
topics (like experiments).

>   I would suggest a more organized community, but i
> guess that will eventually come about. When people
> need a satellite to conduct some experiment maybe :)
> lol

Yes. The community will be naturally self-organizing, like any other 
community.

> 4) Any big issues im missing here? Somehow the idea
> backfiring?: Monopolization of knowledge?

I don't see any problems.

- Bryan
________________________________________
Bryan Bishop
http://heybryan.org/



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