Imagined Property - thoughts from out there

Property and ownership - Part 2

I have claimed the idea, that property is produced through ownership, but this claim is not to the words but rather to the concept.  Here I will attempt to explain the concept - which I claim to have thought of... 

My claim to my idea is similar to my claim to my spleen and to my socks.  In each case, the claim seems to make the idea, my spleen and my socks my property.  My idea, however, is that property requires something more than a claim.  And this something is ownership.  In order for there to be property, there must be ownership.  More than this, it is the ownership which produces the property.  In other words, property would not exist if there was no ownership.  

The sense that property is produced through ownership means that property appears with ownership. Property comes into being with ownership.  

So before I can define property, I need to define what I mean by ownership.  This I attempt by way of rough analogy with semiotics - and the idea that meaning is produced through communication and is a triangle of signified and signifier etc.  In brief, this means that what we understand as property exists when there is ownership and in order for there to be ownership there must be an owner, something which can be owned and an activity of owning.   The owner, the ownable (or thing owned) and the activity of owning are the  three elements of ownership.  When all three elements are present, there is property. When only one of the three elements is present, there is something but it is not property.   

And here lies the problem or conundrum presented by property - it exists only as a concept.  Property appears only through the elements of ownership.  Property is only an idea.  Property does not exist in itself.  And as an idea property needs to be imagined - the image I offer is as a diamond with three glimmering aspects - the object, the self and rights.  And each of these three aspects corresponds and can be discussed as property as element of ownership.

My big idea, the concept of property as produced through ownership, suggests that in order to understand whether this idea or those socks are property - and in particular, my property - I need to determine if there is an owner (ie me), a thing capable of being owned and an activity which would allow my ownership to be 'lived' - that is take shape or be over time.  The question as to whether a thing is property poses not one but three questions.  Each of the questions can be answered yea or nay...  and if any one of the elements of ownership is missing then whatever it is, is, but it is not 'property'.

The questions as to whether those socks are my property seems easy to answer: there is a potential owner (me), there are things which are commonly owned (the socks), and there is a whole legal system which sets out rules understood as rights governing my ownership.  The questions as to whether the idea (this concept of property) is my property is more difficult to answer as while I am a potential owner, an idea is not easily owned and the rules governing the activity of owning are not easily understood - I cannot own the idea itself but I can under western copyright law own the expression of the idea.  And while, me as the potential owner seems uncomplicated when thinking about me as the owner of my socks, complications may arise when the idea of the self is examined or when the owner is a group, community or corporation - when the nature of the self who owns is uncertain.  

My idea is, therefore, lies not simply in the words, "property is produced through ownership" but in the use of the concept (for more information on concepts see the related article).  And central to this idea is the idea about theory as strategy.  By offering my concept of property I am offering a strategy for thinking and talking about property.   My idea is, in effect, not about property but about service or as Hannah Arendt might suggest, about "action".  Telling stories and appearing in history.

Property and ownership

My idea is that property is produced through ownership.  Ok.  

Ok.  I have said it.  I have offered my idea to the world.  Even if both of my readers have heard it before, by publishing this blog, my idea is 'out there'.  

Ok.  How do I know that it is my idea?  Well I thought of it...  sure I could offer footnotes.  I had lots of help in thinking this idea up.  For some reason, all of the "great thinkers" thought about property at some point.  And then a guy called Gruebaum was particularly helpful with his views on the need to discuss property as ownership. 

Ok.  So there are others guys with similar ideas.  I can accept that there may be lots and lots of guys out there who have had or even currently hold similar views on the nature of property.  Heck, they may even have had the same idea, but at this moment, this idea, is MINE!!!

It is my idea because if it isn't my idea what do I have?

Ideas ...

I was thinking that this piece could be titled "Ideas - what they mean..." or maybe "Ideas - what they do..."

This morning I read an article by Rachel Cohen in a November 13, 2006 New Yorker magazine about Leonard Woolf.  The article begins quoting from Woolf's autobiography (at page 92):

Looking back at the age of 88 over the fifty-seven years of my political work in England, knowing what I aimed at and the results, meditating on the history of Britain, and the world since 1914, I see clearly that I achieved practically nothing ...  I must have in a long life ground through 150,000 to 200,000 hours of perfectly useless work...

While pedaling at the gym, I continued with Lewis Lapham's Money and Class in America.  He writes (at page 189):

...a man must be careful about the face he wears on his first appearance in the media.  He seldom gets a chance to put on a different one.  Most actors and politicians remain forever fixed in the role that first placed them in a producer's Rolodex.  Mailer begins and ends as the enfant terrible of American letters.  Richard Nixon as the Machiavelli of American politics.  W.H. Auden once observed that on in Amewricna do so many writers produce, in their youth, one interesting or important book and then, over periods as long as forty years, nothing else except timid imitations of themselves.  He attributed their sterility to their wish to make a sublime product (i.e. a masterpiece) that would eliminate all the competition.

Last week, Rosemary Coombe mentioned that she had recently organized a panel for a legal conference entitled "Intellectual property and the Materiality of Immaterial labour".   I have been struggling to write a paper over the last week.  I have nothing to show for all my angst.  It occurred to me that my problem was the seeming immateriality of my apparently material labour.  

Woolf points out just how is difficult is can be to accomplish anything of enduring - or even fleeting significance by contributing ideas.  And he was during his life a 'star', a god among gods of modern writers. There are many would be writers, as Lapham suggests, who never get off the ground.  The desire to become someone by being someone - someone with great ideas and thousands of words in print - is real enough for millions of people.  

Ideas are, however, as immaterial as the noise and dark marks which makes the words used to express them.  The ideas only materialize when shared - the words take form and meaning which someone else understands and appreciates the thought.  

Sure a thinker may think that their Ideas mean fame and fortune (if attributed).  Ideas may seem to do good things for the thinker.   But this meaning or power of ideas is realized only with the reception, not in conception, of the idea.  And thus, those who are acclaimed as great thinkers may simply be listeners...  

Theory of strategy - strategy as theory

The components of strategy are: description, analysis, vision. Each component is part of a process leading to the development of a new strategy, which may be further action or another attempt at description, analysis or visioning. Strategy is a process but this process does not exist without movement. Strategy can only be ‘observed’ in action or in the thinking about action – the strategy is found in description, analysis and vision. This strategy needs to be understood as an ongoing unending process of thinking and action, of theory and practice – as praxis. As a process strategy begins and ends where researchers decide is appropriate. Both the beginning and the ending may be reasoned decisions or situations imposed by events. The beginning or entry point for research may be marked by a question and the end of a research project may be where the research stops. The research may stop when the money runs out or when answers are found for the research question.  The ‘end’ of a research project may be set out as the discovery of something new as new facts or theory, but the strategic process does not also end with such claim. The research may stop but the process continues. 

 

Strategy is dialectical – a dance of two steps forward and, at times, one step back  - read more under Articles "Strategy as theory".

What gets in the way

I have written a lot since my last post but have not posted anything.  Why?  There are no good reasons for not posting, given that I have committed myself to writing once a week. The bad reasons include distraction.   Since my last post dated October 21, 2008, my sister (and brother) has had a birthday, elections were held in New Zealand, United States and Vancouver (Canada's election was just before that post as well) and I have had a very bad cold.

Birthdays are important, I guess.  I am not sure that I find other folks' days as important as my own so this is not a major reason for failing to write.  The elections were, of course, a much greater distraction.  I spent hours reading stuff on line - in particular about the US election.  Both the Canadian and the New Zealand election campaigns were sad affairs - a seemingly inevitable conclusion with seemingly little passion or reason.  But the US campaign had all the excitement and drama that a billion dollars US can provide.  And then there was the 'financial meltdown'.   How does one measure the cost and loss when there are so many zeros?

And the US state of affairs continues to distract me. The amounts of money being sloshed about is awe inspiring... there is so much money that any real amount (like the amount I might earn in my lifetime) seems too small and pathetic to mention.  But what is most horrific is that the guys spilling the cash seem unaware of the cost of their actions, let alone its value.  They just spend a billion here and a billion there.  The system is broken and soon the pieces will be buried under stacks of useless paper... It would be nice to be able to blame the dismantling of the US economy on guys like Osama bin Laden  - but the guys who made the crisis possible were elected (or appointed) by the American people (which sort of gives new credence to the guy who said that patriotism was the refuge of scoundrels...).  

But what has this to do with property.  Well - the financial crisis involves the destruction of property - the end of maybe a trillion dollars worth of assets.   Reminds me of the line from March (and the book title) "all that is solid melts into air".   One could ask where did it go?  The better question is "Where did it come from?".  And this I would argue is from "ownership".   My definition of property begins with a sense that property is produced through ownership.

Getting ready

Ok now I am going to write about property.  I have written a lot about property over the last ten years.  And writing about property seems important.

Why do I want is to write about property?  Well, my hope is to some day have a book published - a book written by me on the subject of property. In my dreams my book on property will be an important book that many people will read or at least claim to have read.  But it is not the book or even the ideas which matter.   The point about all this is 'me'.

In Cantebury's Tales Chaucer told the stories of pilgrims heading from London to Cantebury.  The story telling was a contest - the prize for the best story was the costs of the journey.   The idea of a religious pilgrimage is foreign to Westerners living in this 21st century.  Still the idea of life as a spiritual journey has meaning, if only as a metaphor.  Most people at some point in their lives wonder, if only for a few moments, about 'why'.  Why is it that we are alive, what is it that we are supposed to do and so on.    The question is, if not a pilgrimage, then what?  For me and, I suspect for many other people of my age culture and class, it is about being published.  

But what, you may ask does this have to do with property?

Well, in my concept of property the "self" takes centre stage.  Property begins and ends with me, myself and mine.  In the middle there are many other bits and pieces, details about ownership. But that is where is start next time.  With "ownership". 

I was thinking - again

It has been over a week since I wrote "Playing with spiders".  I have great plans for an longer version of that bit of writing - in which I set out Hanna Arendt's vision of human activity.   The lesson in the myth seemed to mesh with Arendt's ideas about the state of "human activity" these days.  To make a long story short - she is not really upbeat about the human condition.

I too am worried.  I guess maybe that is why the story of Arachne was, in a way, comforting.  The story is very old and yet it fits...  only my gods are my own demons.  Like so many I want to succeed - to be master of my  fate and maybe to create something amazing ...  something that will allow me to live in the realm of the gods (and so on...)  But then this idea of being caught - the metaphor of the spider's web is often used to describe the human condition - that we are caught up in conditions and meanings which we create for ourselves. 

Arendt linked the ideas of activity with creativity and freedom.  Arachne was, we are told, deprived of freedom because her creativity challenged the gods.  These days many people (certainly bourgeouis intellectuals in western states etc) live like gods and maybe even think that they are gods...  but I wonder if any ever escape the fate of Arachne. The problem is that the so called creative, whether musicians, artists, academics or writers, keep seeming to accept Athene's challenge - they agree to create something new and wondrous... but how many escape the trap of working for a living.  Arendt showed the problem - that a society of labourers was a society of slaves.  For her, in order to be truly creative, one had to be free and in order to be free, one had to escape both labour and work. 

Of course, to understand her argument you have to read the book, see the movie or find my article (which is coming soon!)...  the point is that there are problems, big problems, for a society organized around the 'job".  Contemporary society with all of its toys (the new MacBook is pretty cool etc) may not be richer than the ancient world of stories and roughly woven carpets. 

And this does fit with my overall theme of intellectual property - because creativity may not be about making a better mouse trap or even getting rich (or famous).  It may be about freedom - being free to enjoy the game.

The old story in new times - the myth of Arachne (and playing with spiders)

Zeus, father of the gods and men, stormed up and down.  His head was killing him. With every step a crashing headache hammered inside his skull.  He called the other gods.   Hermes immediately saw what had to be done and got Hepaestus (the god of smithies) to split Zeus’s head open.  And out sprang Athene, fully grown holding a golden spear.  

With Athene’s impatient leap from her father’s head a new age began.  Born of a patriarch, Athene heralded the defeat of the timeless and ancient reign of the mother-goddess who Zeus had challenged for supremacy.  

Athene became the god of wisdom, industry and the arts of peace and war.  The armed virgin, neither quite female nor certainly male, Athene was patron of the useful and ornamental arts of both men and women.  Among her gifts to men were inventions, such as the plough and the flute and the arts of taming animals, ship building, and shoe making.  To women she gave the crafts of spinning, needlework, and weaving.  While she was also a god of war, her battles were defensive war.  She was the god of civil defense and would have nothing to do with Mar’s mad and blood thirsty battles.  Her wisdom was symbolized by her golden splendour and grace.  Her allies included the wise and skilful, including birds such as the owl.  Her temple was the Parthenon, found in Athens her chosen city which she had won in a contest with Poseidon as to who could offer the most useful gift to mortals.  The god of the oceans offered the horse; Athene gave the olive tree and won.  Athene was wise and generous, but she demanded respect.  For while Athene had given mortals the useful arts to do with as they could, she was offended if they presumed these inventions were human creations.  She was impatient with mortals who thought they did as they did without divine intervention.  

One such mortal was the young maid Arachne, who had attained great fame in the art of weaving and embroidery.  Her skill became renowned, so much so that even the nymphs would leave their forests to watch her work.  Her weaving was not only beautiful, but it beautiful in the doing.  To watch her, as she worked, was said to be like watching Athene herself.  Not surprisingly Arachne was very proud her accomplishments and denied any assistance or debt to Athene.  Then one day she boasted that she was as good as the gods and said “Let Athene try her skill with mine.”  When Athene heard this, she was displeased and took the form of an old woman to go to see Arachne for herself.  When she saw her obvious youth, Athene decided to offer her some friendly advice – in essence to warn her about competing with the gods and to suggest that she acknowledge her skill was a gift.  Arachne, being young, was having none of such advice.  She told the old woman that she was not afraid of matching her skill with that of the god.  Her challenge stunned Athene who dropped her disguise.  

All the nymphs and other bystanders were horrified and fell to the ground to pay reverence, but Arachne seemed not to care. She seemed hardened in her resolve to prove herself and accepted the god’s offer of a contest.  Athene, still attempting to teach the girl, wove into her cloth further warning about the dangers of hubris, but Arachne failed to take heed.  Instead she filled her web with stories of the gods, which deliberately showed the failings of the gods.  The girl’s weavings were extraordinarily beautiful, with colour that no one had ever seen before.  Even Athene was impressed by the work and moved by the girl’s talent.  But the god was also indignant, even insulted, by Arachne’s obvious impiety. In anger Athene struck Arachne’s web with her shuttle renting the loom and then touched Arachne making her realize the error of her ways and to feel great guilt and shame.  Arachne became so distraught that she could only think of hanging herself. When Athene found the young girl’s body she had hung herself.  Seeing Arachne suspended by the rope, Athene’s anger left her and she restored the girl’s life, transforming her into a spider who could continue to weave beautiful and intricate webs forever. But, of course, as a spider Arachne held in the webs she wove.  And one web would be like the next.  Arachne would spin forever but without creating or inventing anything new.  Athene gave Arachne life, but a life which would preserve for all time the moral lesson about the foolishness of competing with the gods. 

Playing with spiders

If there was to be a contest for the god of the modern age, Athene would be a leading contender.  The ancients had credited her with the gifts of self-reflection, invention and industry.  Athene provided the steady and practical skills needed by modern science.  It was Athene who gave mankind agriculture and weaving – the basic technologies of the ancient world.  And then she was the great defender of hearth and home.  For the ancients she was present in the every aspect of everyday life.  

And the myth of Arachne reflects rather contemporary concerns about technology.  The weaving began as a contest, a game, but for Athene it quickly became much more.  Athene claimed the technology of weaving as her own and her gift was not to be used without appropriate acknowledgement of such.  For the ancients, the central lesson offered by the myth of Arachne was likely one about impiety – the need for humility and respect for the creative powers of the gods.  Arachne’s hubris, her fearless creativity, led to her downfall; she challenged the gods by claiming creativity as her own and was punished.  A number of lessons would have been drawn from Arachne’s fate.  Arachne was given freedom, but this freedom was limited to creating her web and thus the limits of her own freedom.  Arachne was condemned to live trapped in the web which she endlessly and compulsively wove.  For us more modern types, the problem can also been seen as Athene’s pride.  She felt challenged by Arachne’s creativity.  She "owned" weaving. Weaving was her invention and no one else had any right to claim it.  Another more modern problem involved teh sense of weaving as important.  After all Athene was also the god of industry. Today most people would agree that the economy is not something that one played with.  So perhaps part of the problem was that Athene took the contest too seriously.  She was unable to enjoy just weaving. Aranche was just playing around with new colours and techniques. But Athene forgot to have fun and got annoyed when it looked like she might lose.  So she did not play fairly with Arachne.  She used her special powers and condemned Arachne to a fate of endless work.  

But who knows what might have happened if Athene had allowed Arachne to play?

The myth of Athene and Arachne offers answers to questions about work and, yes, creative activity. As a modern myth the story prompts questions about the nature of work and the place for play.  The story is about ideas, inventions, and, most importantly, ownership.  Given modern reluctance to believe in gods, the contemporary lesson is more about ownership of creativity than its source.  These days invention, even creation, is a human activity at best requiring "genius" or 'inspiration'. The gods of even God are usually not credited with any involvement.  

But despite very different world views, the worries remain the same. The ancients believed that invention was a gift of the gods, while folks today see innovation as a product of clever people.   Few contemporary researchers worry about being turned into a spider, but they do worry about getting credit and about owning what their invention.  These days esearchers share Athene’s, not Arachne’s worries.  Their concerns involve pride and identity - about being given credit and being paid for good ideas - respect!   And like Athene, contemporary researchers likely view their activities as a serious business.  These days creativity is sometimes seen as THE most important economic activity.  Creativity is seen as the source of innovation and capitalism, the source of our material wealth, is seen as dependent on innovation.  

Creativity is SOOO important that some people almost seem to think that the creative are the new immortals.  They believe that creativity will be rewarded with the freedom that money can buy – creative activity is a way of escaping the drudgery of ordinary life.  The contest continues but these days everyone wants to be Athene and no one sees Arachne or the web.

The things I own... more bikes

Jan sent me this article about bikes.  It is a good article.  I read it with pride - as a Canadian and as someone who owns a Cervelo (and I would really like to own an Argon 18 Gallium).

She also asked what bikes have to do with property. Good question

I own a number of bikes.  I refer to them by brand and model rather than any 'name'. For example, the road bike I ride here is a Cervelo Superprodigy  My road bike in Vancouver is an Orbea Lobular II.  What does this mean to say that I own these bikes?

Well, this kind of question might take me down a very tortuous linguistic path.  If I was smart enough, I might even arrive at chez Wittgenstein.  While language "games" are interesting to some, my interest is in the idea of property.  When I say that I own these bikes, I am saying that these bikes are my property.  But what does this mean?

Some might say that it means something about me.  As I am writing in this blog, my blog, the first thing I think of when I reflect on my lovely bikes, is what the bikes say about me.  What message is contained in my bikes.   For some of my friends who know about my bikes, owning them might be a sign that I am perhaps a bit eccentric.  Some might even think it an indication that I have too much money.  Or whatever. Frankly, they would all be wrong. I just like bikes. I like the look of them and I like riding them. The point, however, is that at some level what we own, our property, says something rightly or wrongly about who we are!  

But it isn't all about ME. It is also about the bike. ( Lance Armstrong might even agree even though his book was called It is not about the bike.)  The bike is an object. A wonder of technology - a meeting of form and function.  In philosophical terms it has an existence separate from me... and has value as a bike which for some might be as transport and for others as an objet d'art...  and part of this bike remains beyond my ownership. I only own the object - I don't own the underlying art, the brand or, in short, the intellectual property which remains somehow part of the bike.  

And then, owning these bikes mean that I get to use them.  Owning is also an activity.  I can ride the bike, I can hang the bike on the wall (for my friends to see and wonder at), I can lend it to my sister, or I can sell it... I can even trash it.  

Ok. These bikes are my property.  This means I own them.  But to understand this ownership, I need to think about me as the owner, the bike as the thing owned and then the uses to which I can put the bike (the activities of ownership).  Thinking about ownership in terms of the owner, the object owned and the activity of ownership allows one to sort through and talk about property.  

I wrote about bikes because I like bikes.  And my blog is about property.  I have bikes but I also have some really good ideas about property.  And as I write over the next few weeks I will try to explain why it is that my ideas are as much my property as my bikes...