I started to type this as a response to the gracious comment Ismael left me on the Stallman post, but it quickly got big, so I am putting it here:

Ismael writes:

The rationale behind my quote of his about art (not actually a literal quote, but actually faithful to what he said) was that:
- if we’re talking about content/works/software that are needed, as tools, to reach other goals, they should be free
- art did not fall in the previous category
- art, as a subjective expression of one’s ideas/feelings, should not be changed by any means (e.g. Richard M. Stallman would not allow any derivative works of his writings not to go out of context, or find he’s being attributed things he did not actually said ;)

First I want to thank Ismael for taking both the initial time to transcribe this lecture of Stallman, and to clarify it. (And I agree with him that from the point of view of most people, the medical patents statement is the most interesting — just not my area)

So to the point —

I think the “practical=tool” clarification helps, but ultimately does not rescue Stallman’s argument. To me, at least, it embraces a Romantic and Early Modern view of art. And it’s a view I’ve found quite interesting — I have always thought, for example, that Jakobson’s “Poetic Function”, which defines art as essentially as a message that turns in on itself — that is, as a message that does not direct itself toward externalities — that analysis (and the way he gets there — “the projection of the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection to the axis of combination”) is one of the genius moments in 20th century intellectual history. Tellingly, the other name for the Poetic function it the “autotelic” — that which is an end in itself — and this jives nicely with Stallman’s distinction.

Yet even in 1961, Jakobson saw this as a *function* — that is, there is no such thing as poetry in a sense — there’s a poetic element in everything. And the things we call poetry and art are traditionally things which are constructed to highlight the relation of the message to itself. But while the function has clear abstract boundaries, the artifacts that function illuminates do not. And we now have about 40 years of post-structuralist theory showing us that is indeed the case.

So back to the point — to the average person, I suppose, art is not a tool — because they enjoy it as readers. They revel in the autotelic. But to the artist, new art is always demonstrating ways to solve their own artistic problems. It’s no different in some ways than physical invention. Camera obscura, a tool, had a profound effect on Rennaisance Art — but so did Giotto’s realism. To the artist, and even to the astute viewer, art is always a set of tools, characters, plot devices and the like that they can rip out and use.

And of course it does not stop there. Fan fiction is a good example, but we don’t have to go twentieth century on this…here’s Giampetrino’s Last Supper:

And here’s DaVinci’s:

Similarly, many of my wife’s friends use photos taken by someone else to make paintings from. To the photographer, the photograph may be meant to be autotelic, but to the painter who uses it, it is another tool in completing their own ends. Likewise, the painting one creates from the photograph could end up as a piece of website layout, or the background of a WordPress theme.

There’s a solution to this, but Stallman can’t use it. The solution is to say that the photographer gets to decide whether his photographs are meant to be tools for graphic designers and artists (in which case he gives up his freedom) or art (in which case he preserves his rights).

But that rests the division in the intentionality of the producer, not in any attribute of the object. And if we vest that distinction in intentionality, we might as well all go home — to say that the producer should determine how his own work should be used is to say that the concept of Free Software is dead. I choose to see my code as my personal self-expression, therefore you can’t copy it.

I don’t mean to minimize the massive problems in Art here, with everything from compensation to attribution. It’s not an easy subject — it’s far more difficult than coming to terms with whether printer drivers should be free and open. And I’m guessing that’s why Stallman wants to wall it off from his more core concerns.

It seems every year for the past several years there’s been a couple of weeks where there is a flurry of intelligent articles about the dangers of multitasking and the hivemind. Then the inevitable blowhardization of the subject sets in, the intelligent voices fade and the Grandpa Simpsons come out of the woodwork. And we wait another year for the subject to get back on track, hoping next year will be the year that we can sustain a rational discussion about these core issues without falling into techno-utopianism or decline of civilization hyperbole.

I’m not sure that year is upon us yet, but the latest crop of articles out has made for one of the more enjoyable weekends of reading I’ve had in some time.

Nick Carr, my favorite IT contrarian, writes one of the best summaries of the issues of the hivemind I’ve seen, and offers some new insights to boot.

Get past the title (for some reason Carr is addicted to titles that undercut the nuance of his articles). The article is actually strongest when it is not focussing on Google, and in fact the discussion of Google’s particular influence is the one place where the article almost comes off the rails. In particular, I’m not completely sure the argument that the CPM/CPC structure of web financing exhibits a uniquely pernicious influence on the structure of the web is correct. Haven’t print media in general, and magazines in particular, been using similar models for a century now? I’m willing to buy the argument in a smaller dose, I suppose — I have to guess that the advent of the magazine (as replacing the journal) had some deletorious effects on attention, and began the reward system for page flipping that we now see in spades on the Internet.

But as for the rest of the article, it’s very good, and models precisely the sort of end-to-end depth of argument that the web may be eroding. Get past the title and read it, it’s the sort of article you’ll love even if you disagree with it (and I do disagree with quite a bit of it).

Christine Rosen’s essay is more pedestrian fare, but as an example of the argument that seems to emerge once a year on multitasking it’s a wonderfully compact iteration. There’s a good layperson level overview of some of the recent science, some discussion of the cost to business, and of course, some talk about the effect on our personal lives.

And among other things, it contains this little nugget:

In one recent study, Russell Poldrack, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that “multitasking adversely affects how you learn. Even if you learn while multitasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized, so you cannot retrieve the information as easily.” His research demonstrates that people use different areas of the brain for learning and storing new information when they are distracted: brain scans of people who are distracted or multitasking show activity in the striatum, a region of the brain involved in learning new skills; brain scans of people who are not distracted show activity in the hippocampus, a region involved in storing and recalling information. Discussing his research on National Public Radio recently, Poldrack warned, “We have to be aware that there is a cost to the way that our society is changing, that humans are not built to work this way. We’re really built to focus. And when we sort of force ourselves to multitask, we’re driving ourselves to perhaps be less efficient in the long run even though it sometimes feels like we’re being more efficient.”

It’s always tempting to riff off of science nuggets like this in inappropriate ways. But that skills vs. knowledge distinction in evaluating multitasking seems fertile ground, even apart from what the fMRIs may say.

It’s worth noting The New Atlantis is tied to the conservative think-tank the Ethics and Public Policy Center — worth noting because although Rosen’s article is pretty clean of conservative baggage, these things very quickly fall into specific political ruts. There is a larger frame that some would like to advance — that if we just go back to reading what we’re told, maybe the Great Books front to back, everything’s going to come up roses. That is, the question of multitasking ultimately plugs into some people’s lack of comfortability with the hoi polloi being in the driver’s seat, and an uncomfortability with hierarchical lines disappearing in general.

I’m not sure why that has to be, but it’s inevitable that the Sean Hannity’s of the world will be gloating in the coming month over the Myth of Multitasking, as if this is some victory for God, guns, and Reagan. I’d like to figure out why — if we could peel that part of the debate off, we’d get a lot further with this…