A personal update and the next chapter of this newsletter
Getting the word out via public speaking, podcasts, and a new conference.
Hello to all my readers, and especially warm greeting to the new readers who joined in the past two weeks. Some folks have asked me about the recent interruption in my writing, so let me begin with an explanation about what is happening here.
Good news: two projects that I have been preparing for more than year as a part of my strategic planning business have gained tremendous momentum in the past two months. This means that I must travel more frequently, and that means I am not able to publish this newsletter as frequently as I’d like. These two projects involve the application of AI, big data, IoT, and real-time 3D to solve real-world problems at massive scale. Both projects required that I assemble a coalition of partners that span public sector, private industry, universities and colleges. That took time and effort. Both coalitions are actively working now. That is highly gratifying. I will be writing about both projects in this newsletter later this year after we make a bit more progress. But in the meantime, these projects will continue to consume the time that I need to research and write articles, which means this newsletter will be sporadic.
I’ve also been busy with my podcast, The Futurists, which I launched with co-host Brett King one year ago. Happy to report that it is now the top-ranked podcast on all platforms on the topic of the future. We recently interviewed Jeff Jarvis, the author of the Gutenberg Parenthesis, to get his views on AI, copyright and new technology. And we also interviewed Amir Ghavi, the IP attorney who is defending some of the leading generative AI companies against lawsuits from copyright owners. Both interviews are tightly linked to the topics in this newsletter. They consist of lively discussions that will entertain and enlighten listeners. You can find The Futurists on all podcast platforms and here.
Also, I am happy to share with you that I have been invited to share my perspectives on the future at some conferences this Autumn. I enjoy speaking because it gives me the opportunity to “road test” new ideas in front of a live audience. The pandemic put a damper on most conferences and events for the past couple of years. I am delighted that conferences are happening again.
I will be making an hour-long keynote speech about the future at the New Mexico Tech Summit in Albuquerque on Friday this week. In October I will be give a talk about decentralized governance and Web3 at a university event in Minneapolis, Minnesota and a talk about applied creativity and innovation process at the annual conference for a regulatory body in the Washington DC area. Also in October, I make a keynote speech in Amman, Jordan, about the very near future of artificial intelligence.
The thing I am most excited to share with you is that I am producing a new event, called CXSF 2023 (for “Creative Experience Santa Fe”) in collaboration with an inspiring New Mexico non-profit called Creative Startups. This will be a unique event focusing on how to apply new technology to real problems and construct a better future. We’ve assembled a diverse group of excellent speakers from many fields who will address some useful topics: the conundrums presented by new technology; ethical investing in an evolving context; world-building; how to unpack meta reality; and the future of communities (real and online). But mainly, CXSF is an experiential program, focused on doing and making, rather than sitting back and listening to guest speakers. Attendees will come away with useful skills and insights as well as practical experience in applying collaborative creativity techniques to problem-solving. This program is for a small group of super-imaginative attendees from the VR/AR/XR industry, media, education, public sector, community organizing groups and venture investment firms. Contact me if you want to learn more about CXSF 2023.
Now, back to the newsletter. During the past six weeks in these articles, I’ve turned my attention to the brewing conflict between generative artificial intelligence and copyright law.
This conflict pits the defenders of the past against the people who are constructing the future.
We all have a stake in the future, but only a few of us have a big stake in preserving the past. What caught my interest is how frequently the past prevails over the future. But that’s just a speed bump on the path to progress. It never lasts.
Neither will the flurry of lawsuits against generative AI. This technology is here to stay, even though we are likely to witness a lot of litigation, some of it deeply flawed.
In order to understand what’s at stake, I took a long detour into the history of copyright law. I wanted to understand what the world was like before copyright (TL;DR: it was brutal, violent, stagnant and repressed) and how it began to change after the invention of moveable type made the mechanical reproduction of documents cheaper and faster.
In this series, I covered the role of the Catholic Church in maintaining information hygiene; the disruptive challenge presented by the Reformation; the ensuing century of war and chaos that reshaped all of Europe; the emergence of the nation-state after the 30 Years’ War; and the struggle to separate the power of secular government away from a single absolute ruler. All of this led ultimately to the modern republics and representative democracies that we recognize today, but society only got there after long conflicts and civil wars.
These chapters in history were written in blood. The forces that resisted the future rely frequently on murder to silence critics and to stifle dissenting views. Beheadings, auto-da-fe, and mass slaughter were common. But nevertheless progress persisted, slowly, in the face of resolute opposition.
Some takeaway insights from this short historical detour:
There are and will always be forces opposed to truly disruptive innovation. These forces will deploy every weapon in their arsenal to stop innovation. This is as true today as it was 500 years ago. The reason this happens is not complicated: some privileged groups have more to lose than they stand to gain. We see this tug-of-war play out in the headlines every day.
Just about every idea you can think of to control the spread of novel ideas has been tried by some government or another: censorship, pre-publication approval, mass indoctrination, co-opting publishers and turning them into information police, doling out private monopolies to favorites, burning books, killing defiant authors. None of it works. All of it leads to corruption, every time.
The spread of innovative ideas is like rising water. It cannot be stopped for long but it can be channeled in certain directions. Attempts to bottle it up merely lead to a big catastrophe later when the dam bursts.
The best tool to govern novel ideas that humanity has devised so far was borrowed from feudal land grants made during the Dark Ages. Today these take the shape of laws that treat ideas like real physical property, an impossibility that explains a great deal about the defects in such legal constructs. Intellectual property laws were intended to give the author or inventor exclusive control over the use of their creative ideas. But these laws are so far from perfect that they always lead to unintended consequences. As we’ve already seen, any system by any government that bestows a monopoly — even a time-limited monopoly —on one party at the expense of the public is doomed to abuse and regulatory capture. So it is with copyright law. This is as true today as it was in 1710 when the English Parliament enacted the Statue of Anne.
Next in our tour of copyright history, we will visit 18th century North America, where a republic constructed from laws that were printed on paper was about to be born… after yet another bloody uprising. (I’m beginning to notice a pattern).
Copyright law went through intense period of rapid evolution in the United States during the 19th century. This process was heavily influenced by technological innovation. In many respects the laws that we still have today were shaped in response to the challenges presented by 19th century technological breakthroughs.
And that’s the point of this series. I feel the urge to remind readers that the ultimate goal of this series is to consider how copyright laws may be affected by machine learning, particularly generative artificial intelligence. What I am hoping to demonstrate is that copyright law has always been a reaction to the technological innovations that accelerate and expand creative expression.
Reactive, not pro-active
Copyright advocates often cloak their designs in the garments of artistic expression but that is never their priority.
The first proto-copyrights were introduced to protect the emerging business model of printer-publisher in Venice in the late 15th century. The Privilege was intended for authors but it was quickly co-opted by publishers. Later, repressive censorship and pre-publication approvals were introduced in response to the unambiguous threat presented by the free press to tyranny. It was a quid pro quo: in order to gain the privilege of an exclusive monopoly, publishers were obliged to do the King’s dirty work of suppressing dissent and ratting out rogue publishers. None of this had anything to do with author’s rights or income.
This pattern remains true today: whenever technology threatens to destabilize some aspect of the existing order, new laws are introduced in response. These laws are intended to preserve order by governing the use of technology to disseminate novel ideas.
Intentionally or not, IP laws preserve the past at the expense of the future. I expect that the laws to govern generative AI will perform a similar function.
I’ve had some interesting responses from readers. Thanks. I love to read your emails and comments. Let me address two complaints. One reader complained that I am asking readers to do too much work by making them trek through history. One reader objected to the loose analogy that I drew between the Stuart Kings of England and Donald Trump.
I agree, this is not easy. This subject matter is dense. That’s why I do my best to lighten it up where I can. I make no apology for showing how modern Presidents are capable of making the same blunders as 17th century kings. Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. We need to do much more of this, not less, even if it requires a modicum of effort. Otherwise we will unconsciously replicate the bad decisions and undesirable outcomes that characterized the 15th to 17th centuries.
In the next newsletter, I will talk about an interesting news story in the world of generative AI and copyright. After that, we will resume our tour of history! Thanks for joining me as we do the hard work together.
Note: All images in this edition were generated by Midjourney. As such, they cannot be copyrighted under current US law.