This video might make an interesting final examination question.
H/T to IO9.com. Vid from CollegeHumor.com.
Star Trek & Star Wars similarities
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Category Archives: Intellectual Property
Abe Lincoln, inventor
In connection with this week’s bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, U.S. News and World Report has a great article on Lincoln’s interest in technology such as the telegraph. Suggests the article, were Lincoln alive today, “he would fight just as hard to keep his BlackBerry as President Barack Obama did.” Also turns out that Lincoln was an inventor, apparently the only president to get a U.S. patent. The patent, for a manner of buoying vessels, is, shown below.
Change.gov and Open-Government.us: an open Web 2.0 approach to the Obama transition
A new website, Open-Government.us, proposes three “open transition” principles for President-elect Obama’s transition to the office of the President. The site, set up by Lawrence Lessig and others, notes the importance of openness and accessibility for the transition process. For example, although Obama’s Change.gov transition site is generally subject to a Creative Commons license, his videos are made available through his Transition Project YouTube account. In turn, YouTube is a proprietary site that does not permit downloading of user content. As noted in the principles, open government requires that citizens be able to copy, remix, and excerpt such materials unfettered from undue proprietary or format restraints.
Here’s a short explanatory video from http://open-government.us/:
Below the break is text with the three principles, also from http://open-government.us/:
James Gleick on the future of books
The great science writer James Gleick writes in today’s NYT about the future of books:
As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers can be tweaked and varied but will never go obsolete. Even when builders pound nails by the thousand with pneumatic nail guns, every household needs a hammer. Likewise, the bicycle is alive and well. It was invented in a world without automobiles, and for speed and range it was quickly surpassed by motorcycles and all kinds of powered scooters. But there is nothing quaint about bicycles. They outsell cars.
The op-ed is a thoughtful take on the future of books, including the significance of the recent settlement of the Google Book Search litigation, in which Gleick played a role as a negotiator for the authors.