Imagined Property - thoughts from out there

Travels with myself

It has been almost a month since I last posted anything.  In that month I travelled from Auckland through Vancouver to Copenhagen (Helsingor) and back.  It is strange to travel with such ease...  I admit that I found the trip exhausting.  The long flights despite the in-flight entertainment and sleeping pills were tedious (to say the least).  But it was so easy to get from one end of the world to the other.  I just paid my money and put my mind into neutral.

And I arrived at a place where my ancestors surely began their travels - but thousands of years ago.  I had not been in Scandinavia for 30 years.  When I was last there, I felt that I 'looked local' and assumed that it was because I was young and the young dressed the same no matter where they were in the western world. This time I am not so young and again I blended in ...  

My ancestors left - likely first for England or maybe Scotland and then, as the story is told, for Ireland before leaving for Canada eventually after hundreds of years ending up in the West.  I suspect their travels were much harder both physically and mentally - the journeys were long and one way.  How many hours or days were spent in regret for the land and people left behind?  How many days were spent in anticipation of the New World which awaited them?

I wonder if I would understand these my ancestors if I was ever to meet them - understand why they left and what they found...  and would they understand me, how I too feel when it takes hours rather than years to travel away and back again.  

Reading stuff

Ok I mainly read easy stuff.  I like having the radio on (CBC or BBC or if in NZ National Radio) ... and a newspaper with me for breakfast.  Lately I have given up on newspapers, magazines keep me company at meal times.  There is the Guardian Weekly and the Economist for easy informative chatter ...  for lazy tired mornings there may be a biking magazine ...  and then there are books.  I buy lots of books but the only ones I know that I'll read are the mystery novels.   In the next few days I am going to write about reading... but I begin with my pleasure - murder mysteries ...

I have a theory , or thinking about my theory or theory, a description of  the murder mystery which may explain why I like them...

First, I suspect that reading is like exercise - if you get exposed to it early it takes...  and one style of easy reading to which many get attached are murder mysteries.  One of my best ever Christmas presents was a collection of Trixie Beldon (sp?) mystery novels.   We used to get one 'good' present each year and one year Trixie was mine.  Ever since some of my best times have been with murder mysteries. 

Second, it is about  comforting habits.  Read one mystery novel and you have, in a way, read all of them.  I like murder mysteries, but they have to follow the format.  So, I do not like violence but I can read murder mysteries because the violence is off screen.  A friend once asked me why I persist in reading about murders.  The reason is the format.  The format provides for the treatment of violence, the nature of the protagonist (ie the detective), the movement of time and the conclusion... As long as the writer sticks to the format for the story, the book provides a comforting read.  

With respect to the violence, the format requires that the death occurs very early in the story, before the reader "knows" the victim and the story is about the why of the violence and not the what, then it seems ok.  

Then the basic structure of the narrative requires the protagonist to go forward in time as they work their way, in terms of their understanding, backwards in time to understand what happened.  The detective investigates the crime and, in effect, provides an historical account looking backward to the event.  The past and present meeting in the final pages of 'yes now we know' who did it and why'.

And then there is the protagonist...  the protagonist is always something of a girl. Perhaps because women created the genre, the main character, usually a detective, is gendered female.  By this I don't mean that they are women.  What I mean is that they have characteristics thought generally to be characteristics of women rather than men.  Of course, here we enter gender stereotyping.  Some of the best detectives (Hercule Poirot, Adam Dalgliesh) are men...  but if the protagonist is a guy, then they are described in terms which make them very sympathetic to women.  They are, in effect, special kinds of guys.  They are guys who like poetry, opera or cooking.  They have friends and are troubles by issues of intimacy... they are not part of the brotherhood of manly things (ex soldiers, hard men have their own genre - thrillers).  They are so special that, for me, they are rarely well portrayed on tv.  ...  but if the protagonists is a women, then they can be very, to be blunt, butch.  The woman as detective is a tough chick.  She can kick ass. Of course, this raises another problem with tv portrayal...  how do you portray a woman who can fly a plane, fire a gun, fight her way out of a bar look tough with a pocket knife without making her look too tough (dare I mention the word 'dyke'?)  The standard female on tv is so well made up that anything less than vogue standard looks like a suspect heteo - thinking of that even lesbians on tv look straight... ok this is another story ... back to mystery novels, the point here is that when I read the story, I relate to the action...  because in my dreams I am the detective.

And of course the murder mystery always ends... there is a conclusion sometimes happy, sometimes ambiguous, but alway providing that "ah yes, now I see" moment.

But this "aha" moment is possible when reading other stuff...  just not so easily.

Back again

When I started this in May I planned to write one column a week.  I have not published anything since June 20... so I thought that I would start again.

Starting again.  Life is about starting again.  What is spring - other than starting again.  For those who try to meditate starting again is what it is all about.  Starting without judgment - allowing for the innocence of birth.  Of course, it is a re birth without judgment - beginning without regret or recriminations for having failed to keep going.  

Hanna Arendt talks a lot about starting again in the Human Condition.  In this book she draws an abstract and, rather bleak, picture of for human activity.  For Arendt modern society is a society of labourers. Consumption is the flip side of production.  Labour is the name she give to the endless cycle of toil and tears needed to produce the stuff we need to live.  Labour is activity compelled by necessity.  If you work only to live, then you labour.  The problem is that a society of labourers is society of slaves.  Everyone is caught in the web of endless and ultimately meaningless activity. Of course as humans we have options.  

Someday I will finish my paper on this - but for now the point is that there is starting again and then there is starting again...  there is the starting again as part of the endless and mindless cycle of toil and then there is the starting again involved in work and action  But the difference is not in the doing but in the knowing...

Every morning we start again - with breakfast maybe a shower...  we then go to work and then come home and on Friday we begin the weekend.  Some days we may notice the passage of time.  We may notice that this morning is different from yesterday and different from tomorrow.  We may even notice the possibilities offered by this morning.  When we notice the possibilities, we may also see or feel out freedom - our capacity to start again.  But to see this, we may also have to relax and get on with the task at hand.  

So I here I am.   

Still starting

As Vladimir put it the real question is what to do?  What now?   A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.  So just start?  It is easier said than done.  As the Irishman said, "If I was going to Dublin, I wouldn't start here?   So why here? And why Dublin? 

So I would  suggest that any project begins with questions.  But it has to be the right question.  The question shapes the answer and a good question is a great place to begin!  So how do you find the right question?  Well, it takes time.  And a number of false starts.

Over the years I have had a large number of questions - but several questions keep returning.  The obvious question was, What is intellectual property?  When I say "intellectual property" what am I talking about?  Some, especially the legally trained, have answers - intellectual property includes copyright, patents, and trademarks.  Often intellectual property is referred to as a 'right'.  In the business world, a  discussion of intellectual property is often a discussion of intellectual property rights (IPR's).  But what is intellectual property apart from the law.  But this prompts the question, Does intellectual property exist apart from the law? 

And here, the journey may take a long detour.  What is law?  Are law merely instrumental, superstructural, autonomous, systemic, or what?  And thinking about rights, where do they fit into a concept of law?  Nonsense on stilts?  And, having taken that detour, I must say that even if all one's questions about the law are answered, questions about intellectual property remain?  At some point I explain why, but for now, I will only say that I believe that intellectual property exists apart from the law.  And thus the question remains, What is intellectual property?

So again where to begin.  Well.  Why not with the question:  What is property?  Define property and then show how intellectual property is different.  But property unmodified is also a tricky topic. Philosophers and lawyers have answered this question many times and in many different ways over the years.  Thousands of pages have been written and still an easy definition of property seems illusive.  I believe it is because property itself is a very slippery thing.  You think that you have a firm grasp of the concept and then you try to explain it and, well, you find problems with your easy defintion...

Property is often thought of as things.  Take your socks.  Now these socks are your property. Then you lend your socks to your sister.  They are still your socks but when she wears them, they appear as her socks to everyone - except you and presumably she know that they remain your socks. Possession has long been recognized as an important part of property but at some point ownership was distinguished from mere possession.  Of course, possession may still be 9/10th of the law, it is not everything.  The distinction between possession and ownership is hard to describe these days without using the language of rights (try it!) ... your sister may be wearing your socks as if they were her socks, but they are your socks because you have certain rights to those socks - such you may have the right to have your sister returm them to you.  The idea of a "right" makes it easier to talk about your ownership of things you do not or cannot possess, but not a lot easier to understand.  Because if the property is just "the right", the obvious question is, What is a right?.  The problem is that this might lead the discussion away from property into the realm of rights.

And here the investigation into property can take several different routes. One might be a philosophical inquiry into the nature of things.  For example, one could read up on Aristotle, Kant and so on.  Another is into the the nature of this right to something.

But then this means that I am well started on my investigation.  My question, What is property? Intellectual property will have to wait... 

Where to now?

Where to now?

I have written a lot over the years. I have several boxes of papers and letters from the 1970's, unreadable floppies and mini drives from the 1980's and 1990's and zip drives from the new millenium. Words. Only words. Hardly more real for being written down. But still, in my dreams I own all those words.

My mother is a painter. Her imagined property seems more solid. It certainly takes more space. And it is harder to lose. My words are more fragile. But is her property more real?

Hannah Arendt wrote about labour, work and action in her book, "The Human Condition". In her lexicon, labour comprised the necessary and unending activity of survival, work involved making things while action was about telling stories. Her different use of the words make the Human Condition like an abstract painting - a different way of seeing the world. She pointed out that under capitalism work and action both tend to be reduced to labour - that human activity under capitalism is dedicated to earning a living. For Arendt work was an activity that resulted in the something more enduring than labour... and action required something else altogether.

For writing to be more than labour, the words to be more than simply words. To be "work" they need to take some tangible form - like a book - and to be "action" they need to be heard and quoted. This can be seen as what I call the "Oprah" effect - the more people who hear and repeat the words, the more real the work and, possibly, the greater the action... but my point here is not to discuss Arendt's idea but to write about imagined property.

Arendt's trilogy is useful because it is as "work" that imagined property becomes real... writing can be work if the words are capable of being used to build something or say something? Using Arendt's idea of work, arguably, a word in a poem or a book can be a "work". And as intellectual property tells us, as work the words can be owned by the author (the person who wrote them first). But even as intellectual property, the property is still imagined. There is nothing there.

My plan is to define intellectual property - to map out my imagined property. I will begin, however, with property itself...

April 24, 2008

Well.  After many years of thinking about it and some help from my sister, I have started to write.  Over the next few months I am going to build a web site, intellectual property lessons, but for now, I am going to blog.  Like millions of people out there, I am going to post my thoughts on the web.

Why blog?  The short answer involves ownership and the idea that in writing (and being read) a person can create a place of their own and a space in which to be someone.  The longer answer involves concepts of soul and self, identity and property - the idea of self actualization and being.... what it means to be to be  someone in the early part of the second millenium.  Of course, blogging, or writing for that matter, has not been as important.  Dreams were different.  I suspect in Chaucer's day people went on Pilgimages for much the same kind of reasons that people today dream of a book deal and 15 minutes on Oprah. 

But I am not going to write about blogging.  I will be writing about the imagined land - the ideas and concepts which make intellectual property real.  There is a lot to cover, but at least I have started.