[Commons-Law] Are U.S. Innovators Losing Their Competitive Edge?

[avinash jha]

On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 Hasit seth wrote :
>Hi,
>
>Just a restatement of what invention is all about. A person with an
>new and sufficiently new idea.  Invention seems to have strong roots
>in individualsim and freedom, both of which are core of a free
>society. Hence, can we link invention and existence of free societies
>as symbiotic elements?  or is a "commune or community" model of
>invention more effective? which one is more "natural" than other? what
>model of invention has succeded in practice?     is the choice between
>models an "either-or" or "both"?


Here is a response:

INVENTION,  INNOVATION,   AND   FREEDOM




‘Necessity is the mother of invention’

Yearning for freedom in a situation, which seems closed, we come up with inventions. When we are up against a problem or a dilemma and all available solutions are either unacceptable or unworkable, the necessity of finding a new solution often inspires an invention.

Freedom is not a condition of invention. It is rather a consequence of invention. 

Is this the reason that a large number of technological developments of the post Second World War era are rooted in the inventions made during the war in the industrial world?

Even the desire of an elite of a country to conceive of a possible nuclear war and work for a communication system that would survive such war, their desire for that relative degree of freedom in the case of a nuclear showdown between two superpowers and their allies equipped with vast arsenals of what are now selectively called weapons of mass destruction, desire of this elite for such freedom can lead to the invention of the Internet. 

Maybe it is because of this intrinsic quality of inventions, that they embody an yearning for freedom, maybe it is for this reason that any invention however evil ends they might have been invented for, there is a possibility of their being used for other ends.

We can use Internet technology for a variety of ends. But such a thing may not be possible for all inventions. I doubt whether the invention of nuclear bomb can be used for any end other than war, unless in an unlikely situation when an asteroid is hurtling towards the earth and we send a missile with a nuclear warhead to explode and scatter it. But it nuclear bombs were to be used for this purpose, they would be administered by astronomers, engineers through a transparent mechanism.



Innovations as the sphere of applications of invention:

Innovation is based on established inventions. We innovate when we produce variations in the process of applying it in different contexts for different purposes. We play around with invention, we try changing it in different ways, reverse it, and so on.

Take electronic mailing lists as a neat innovation to carry out dialogue among many. Of course, it could also be used merely as a reporting mechanism. It is based on other inventions. Invention of the letter-form (I mean the letters that we write and post and reply to) which was translated upon invention of the Internet into email. Mailing list combines this with the idea of a public meeting, consultation or debate. 

We need not absolutise the distinction between invention and innovation. Because innovations are, in ultimate analysis, little inventions. But these little inventions are made when the background is already ripe for such inventions. Sooner or later, someone or the other, is going to stumble upon it. These inventions have virtually arrived before they are actually made. 

Discoveries (or inventions) of science also result from a necessity which is generated conceptually or experimentally during scientific practice. An anomaly appears which begins to grow and a gulp opens up in the understanding. Then a new understanding dawns.

In the industrial economy, scientific discoveries led to inventions which were then made into innovative products by the business.


Innovations and the dynamic of global knowledge economy:

In the global knowledge economy of the Internet age, inventions are drawn from a wider pool. Then the process of innovation begins – of converting them into capital, products, and then into brands. The global economy seems to be based on appropriation of inventions combined with the dynamic of innovations. 

The Internet referred to here is not the Internet infrastructure but that realm of virtuality- the connected world. War, finance, knowledge, media are all reconstituted in this world and they are meshed together.

Inventions of the public sphere are taken and the power of capital and organization are put into it to produce innovations. There is a competition in innovations. By public sphere is simply meant the sphere outside the control of big capital. We can also call it the independent sector.

When innovations of the virtual sector are taken by the independent sector and further innovations are produced – like the thriving gray market of media products in India and several other countries, the so-called copy culture – it is called ‘piracy’.

Intellectual property regime is to protect the innovations by the big capital and to contain and kill the innovative culture of the independent sector. 

This is obvious from the fact that the same big capital is not keen to apply intellectual property ownership to the inventions of natural knowledge traditions in many parts of the world. The appropriation of this knowledge has been termed ‘biopiracy’ in a counter move. This is often termed the question of traditional knowledge, or TK, in the intellectual property debates. The main obstruction in providing intellectual ownership rights for this kind of knowledge and inventions is supposed to be the fact that this knowledge does not belong to individuals, but to communities. Corporations are treated as legal personalities, i.e., as individuals in some sense in the matters of property, but it has proved difficult to treat communities as individuals.


Knowledge systems of the people:

The fact remains that with each new wave of technology coming, for whatever geopolitical and national compulsions, a kind of knowledge and variety of skills developed to assimilate it, to adapt it and to innovate upon it. 

Farmers in India did not use the tools of modern agriculture in the way prescribed by the accredited experts. They developed their own ways in conditions where odds were against them and the degree of freedom quite restricted. The use of pepsicola as pesticide has been cited as a recent example of farmers’ innovation. But I am sure this is only the most dramatic one. Unlike the gray market of media products these innovations in agriculture were not in the form of products with their markets. They were producing food in a system where both market forces and state were not favorable to them, because they were producing food for the national population and not just for themselves. 

Despite the onset of modern agriculture, a great deal of indigenous seed economy, seed science, and seed sociality continued to thrive and modern seeds were part of this complex. This knowledge of modern seeds and their use could be very different from the conclusions of agricultural experts. Intellectual property regime intervenes here to stop the exchange and production of seeds as is taking place and restructure the seed sector.

Similarly many other knowledge traditions of non-modern origins are surviving. We are all familiar with medical knowledge traditions, much beyond the few well-known systems like Ayurveda, Siddha and Yunani. In fact, there are a myriad of knowledge traditions of  different kinds undergoing change, development, transformations and producing hybrid traditions. 

These myriad of knowledge systems that have survived in different forms did not do so because of any advocacy to save traditional knowledge, or because of the recognition they were accorded. As a matter of fact, the normative framework of modern science which was the dominant knowledge system of last two centuries had little place for these knowledge systems, if any. 

These knowledge systems survived because the people, whose knowledge systems these were, survived. With the slow crumbling of the authority of Science to institute knowledge organization in the society, there is a greater recognition now for these knowledge systems. 

But what framework of knowledge is being constituted now in the age of the Internet? Have we escaped the devil only to find a precipice on the other side?

Maybe the answer lies in exploring how knowledge is being reconstituted in the virtual world. Software is central to this, both in itself and as a means of reconstituting knowledge.


In Conclusion:

In the light of the above, I believe that statements like "Invention seems to have strong roots in individualsim and freedom, both of which are core of a free society.", by their apparent commonsense, serve to conceal the actual dynamics of society.

Moreover, the terms in which the issue of knowledge, and of intellectual property, is framed whether in terms of 'traditional knowledge' or in terms of community ownership of knowledge, is inadequate to address the dynamics of knowledge and domination in our times. At least, that is the argument offered here.



Avinash Jha



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