A reply to the complaints of the paid professional punditry on the subject of having lost their previously impermeable media monopoly they are just now only realizing hit an immoveable iceberg quite a while ago with the Internet, cell phone, and iPod revolutions.
The Structure of the Professional Versus Amateur World Systems
The Structure of the professional societies, associations, and an assortment of all other professional groups dates back to feudal, Dark Age times, in which everyone had their place and knew it and stayed in that place under threat of severe penalties.
In this system grew the guilds, legal associations of skilled and trained artisans, craftsmen, etc., from The Stationers Guild, who controlled nearly all the written records, to a wide variety of a number of guilds for various crafts in the making of goods of all sorts from leather, wood, metal, etc.
The guilds were an incredibly “insider” system of operation, with years and years of apprenticeship at a subsistence pay level, and then more years and years at the journeyman level, before members were finally allowed to hang out their own shingle and set up the shop of their dreams they had been working towards for decades.
You had to prove yourself worth their investment of training, and worthy of the secrets of their trades. . .years of insidering for the privilege of become one of the guildsmen.
From the highest levels of modern medical associations and levels
of modern professors associations, the legal bar associations and all the rest of elitists, all the way down to the union member of the lowliest garbage collectors union, dog catchers union or what you might call the lowliest sanitation engineering job, etc., all our modern professional associations come from feudal guilds, and this is evident from the first moment you walk in and see sheilds and escutcheons that would be more properly places on the knights of the Dark Ages.
The major premise of these organizations is to keep outsiders out and insiders in. . .let there be no doubt about it.
The worst thing that can happen to these organizations is for any of their members, or even recruits, to decide they could have the benefits of being outside the system rather than inside it.
A current example of this in the sports world is David Beckham of football [soccer] fame, who has jumped ship several times from an assortment of approved English clubs to foreign clubs and finally now to the dreaded Black Hole of sports, Los Angeles.
The world just isn’t the same place when people can abandon their roots like that and simply go where people want them most, rather than staying where they belong.
Of course, sometime the case is just the opposite, as Einstein in great duress emigrated to the United States, not that he was ever really a part of the system from the word go, as mentioned in the previous portions of this series. The world just wasn’t ready to accept an Einstein. . .at least “The Old World.”
The same was true for Craig Venter, who kick-started DNA research after spending 6 years as a surfer, while he waited for the world to catch up far enough that he could demonstrate his thought in a more obvious and undeniable manner to a world of Human Genome who could not understand him, much in the same manner as the world of a century earlier could not understand Einstein, until an obvious “proof” of the curvature of space during the famous solar eclipse preceding 1920 made him a household word, except in Britannica.
Note: it took even took more than one of these eclipses to allow the more hard-boiled critics of Einstein to admit he was right.
In addition, one should note that this defense is still deemed an acceptable defense toward refusing any revolutionary change in an assortment of fields, both in the hard sciences, soft sciences or in the more artistic fields of endeavor.
In the world of music we have Mozart, and a quick look at Amadeus [the movie] gives a look at just how much of an outsider he was.
Not to mention Beethoven, who shocked the world by putting in the scherzo dance where the minuet and trio had been enshrined.
And yet everyone remembers the scherzo in Beethoven’s Ninth but a real expert is required to differentiate all those clones of more minuets and trios of previous eras.
The Facts versus the Propaganda
Propaganda. . .an interesting word. . .simply meaning something a movement has produced to propagate itself. . .advertising. . . .
Look up the roots of The Office of Propaganda the Catholic Church used for centuries. . .try this quotation as a starting point for your searches AFTER you simply look up “Office of Propaganda.”
Extraordinary gifts are not to be rashly desired, nor is it from them that the fruits of apostolic labors are to be presumptuously expected. Those who have charge over the Church should judge the genuineness and proper use of these gifts, through their office not indeed to extinguish the Spirit, but to test all things and hold fast to what is good. (cf. Th. 5:12 and 19-21).”
Indeed, the “extraordinary gifts” given to such persons mentioned above are often the focus of a great deal of jealously in sacred, secular, political, physical, and other arenas. Of all mentioned above, perhaps Isaac Newton was the least persecuted for his.
I won’t even go into such “extraordinary gifts” as Joan of Arc or other more churchly related matters, but it becomes obvious in an all but undeniable manner that when Vatican II comments referred: “not indeed to extinguish the spirit” but “extinguish the spirit” is what indeed what the purpose of said officials actually was.
It becomes equally obvious when/if you do your research that this more modern version of the guilds in existence today via the ALA, AMA, MLA, ABA, and most of the professional organzations, are not merely organs of information, but organs of misinformation and of disinformation. . .and. . .well, just plain propaganda.
Just read the little pamphlets libraries hand out on copyright as provided by the various publishers associations to see the biases these people are willing to state as facts under the seals of the organizations in question.
They should be ashamed to perpetuate such outright misinformation in the name of their members, their organization, or just a plain offense against truth.
What If THEY Got Their Way?
- What if Mozart had bent his talent to the mainstream?
- What if Galileo had be silenced by The Roman Catholic Church?
- What if Martin Luther’s 95 Theses had never been published?
- What if Gutenberg had not invented interchangeable type?
- What if Newton had followed in Aristotle’s footsteps?
- What if Einstein had followed in Newton’s footsteps?
- What if Woz and Jobs believed only 6 computers were needed?
- What if everyone believed in Bill Gates 640K?
- What if Tim Berners-Lee had followed Archie and Veronica?
The oxymoronic truth of all this is that each of these guilds was started by someone who lived outside the box, who created the new revolutionary idea or ideal that founded the new field.
In fact, the term “revolutionary” dates back hardly any further a date than Galileo, to his immediate predecessor, Copernicus, whom we have now enshrined for his “Revolution of the Celestial Orbs,” but who was not so well received in his own day, even though that day coincided with Martin Luther, The Gutenberg Press, etc.
Each of the persons listed previously, and hundreds, or thousands more we own an incredible debt to, were pretty much ostracized in their own time for their incredible gifts. . .not only the gifts, as it were, of their own, but for their gifts to humanity.
Thus we see “revolutionary” works have created the world in which we are living, step by step, throughout the ages against the will of whatever “powers-that-be” have ruled against them, from early, to middle, to modern history.
Each age thinks it is the “end all, be all” of all civilizations, and wants to freeze everything in the current mold, defeating all attempts possible to make change, since any change is likely from the perspective of the “powers-that-be” to be a threat to them in the sense that they made it to the top under the current laws for making it to the top, and usually these laws have been redrafted, rewritten, even originated, by these “powers-that-be,” to benefit themselves at the expense of all others.
Remember: the goal of the guilds was always their own benefits– not the benefits to the world at large.
The same is true of their descendants.
You would be surprised at just how many of our organizations from the modern perspective have not changed in essence from those now in our ancient history.
The basic idea/ideal is US VERSUS THEM, and there is never enough for the membership, there are no objective standards as to ENOUGH IS ENOUGH as in the case of “The Stationers Guild” and copyright.
I have written about copyright extensively elsewhere, so I should only mention the broadest outline of that history here.
A Brief History of Copyright Law
The general idea/ideal of copyright is that it is always legal to copy until the power to own copies trickles down to the masses.
Before The Gutenberg Press there were no restrictions to copying, other than the fact that only the most elite of the wealthy, and, the most elite of the educated, were capable of making copies, so no laws were passed against their right to do so, just as no laws were written against the VCR when only millionaires had them.
The Gutenberg Press changed the world as much as any invention of the last millennium, particularly from the perspective of elitist versus the masses. . .most inventions before this targeted a rich portion of a population, usually only the top 1%, and the effects only related directly to that top 1% and perhaps only that 1%.
However, unlike most previous inventions, The Gutenberg Press had an effect on the rest of the world much greater than any previous inventions other than the basics of fire, leverage, agriculture– things that almost anyone could take advantage of.
The Gutenberg Press changed books from something that cost a lot, the average books cost as much as the average family farm, to the price that allowed wagonloads of books to arrive at marketplaces.
The result was far greater than anything anyone imagined!
For one, the literacy rate escaped from that top 1%, and suddenly control of information that had been kept secret with low effort, and just one result was “The Protestant Revolution” in which that most powerful single entity of The Western World, “The Holy Roman Catholic Church,” was toppled from its peak of power by the works of just one person, Martin Luther, multiplied by the power of The Gutenberg Press.
However, the ones who made the biggest stink about disempowerment of the previous monopoly power was not The Roman catholic Church, but rather The Stationers Guild, who had held a virtual monopoly, since time immemorial, down through their various incarnations.
The result was, after 250 years of lobbying, “The Copyright Law.”
250 years of failures. . .and finally one became law, written for and by The Stationers Guild.
Galileo’s predecessor, Giordano Bruno, was burned at the stake in response to his astronomical observations and reports.
Galileo, at the age of 70, was commanded to appear before “Office of the Inquisition” in Rome, notwithstanding his age or infirmity and at his own expense. He was tried in one day, with “evidence” that had been assembled for over 30 years, and twice shown racks, and other instruments of torture as they were to be used on him.
He was found guilty, sentenced to the harshest house arrest, with no ability to publish, or even speak to Protestants.
As a result Descartes stopped publishing in France, moved himself to Sweden, while Galileo decided to continue writing his book the Inquisition had interrupted. . .it was only published years later and many countries away.
Thus ended The Scientific Revolution in the Mediterranean and the course of this history would continue only in Northern Europe.
The same year Galileo died, still under house arrest, was born in England a child named Isaac Newton.
by Michael S. Hart
Internet User #199
Founding Member of
Project Gutenberg,
World eBook Fair &
General Cyberspace
There are four parts to this article by Michael Hart. Follow the links below to continue reading.
The Cult of the Amateur – Part I
The Cult of the Amateur – Part II
The Cult of the Amateur – Part III
The Cult of the Amateur – Part IV