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What does it mean to live in the new global economy of ideas?
Owning the Future warns that freely shared knowledge is fast becoming an
endangered species. As knowledge becomes a valuable commodity, we face impending
threats to innovation and new monopolies that concentrate vital information in
the hands of the few. Veteran science journalist Seth
Shulman takes us on a shocking journey through today's battles for control over
the intangible new asserts -- genes, software, databases, and scientific information
-- that make up the lifeblood of the new economy. We meet doctors who sue colleagues
for using new medical procedures they claim to own. We find university researchers
thrown in jail for "stealing" their own ideas; software firms holding
the entire industry for ransom over basic, widely used programming techniques;
and life-saving cancer treatments kept from dying patients by legal wrangles over
the underlying technology. While we comfort ourselves
with lofty rhetoric about the free exchange of information, essential knowledge
is being hoarded, fought over, and controlled as never before. In vivid detail,
Owning the Future shows that, in the rush to stake claims in the knowledge
economy, we risk auctioning off our technological and cultural heritage. We are
eroding the public education and public access that are the bedrock of our democratic
society. With insight and vision, Shulman provides the vital tools and necessary
perspective to address the problem before it is too late. Seth
Shulman is an award-winning journalist and the author of The Threat at Home:
Confronting the Toxic Legacy of the U.S. Military. He is a former Knight Science
Fellow at MIT, and his writing has appeared in many publications, including The
Atlantic, Smithsonian, Nature, Parade, The Progressive,
and Technology Review. |
