Very interesting post, Niyam. Thanks for sharing those links. Sudev, thanks for that original post.
Venky On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 3:32 AM, Linux Lingam <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 4:54 PM, Sudev Barar <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 24 August 2010 12:35, sajan venniyoor <[email protected]> wrote: > >> The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion? > >> By Frank Thadeusz, Der Spiegel, 18 Aug 2010 > >> http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,710976,00.html > > [SNIP] > > > > Very interesting line of thought. > > Is there any study / paper that compares the Indian habit of reading > > and sharing newspapers with any other country? Or compare daily > > publications stats vis other countries? > > thanks for the link. > in all my visits to germany have always been struck by how much people > just love to read in that country, whether in cities or in small villages. > > during my college days, had also read that france too was a thriving > hub of intellectual explosion through books, journals, and famous > discussions held over coffee at parisian cafes. > > much later, discovered the same was true for vienna. > > it's too simplistic to apply the same yardsticks for india, > our focus in our intellectual movements have tended to strongly > veer towards arts and culture rather than science and technology. > hence you see so many cultural movements in music, > dance, poetry (urdu, hindi, bengali...), literature, arts > and especially philosophy and mysticism happening concurrently > throughout our multi-cultural country. > > anyways, no one paused to think about copyrights here, > but control over knowledge has always been exerted, > not through the law, but something far more sinister and adamantine: > a strong caste system, where knowledge became the privilege > and prerogative of the brahmin-class and an entire class was > banned to even have access to knowledge. > plus, through self-selection communities. > knowledge would only be shared with you, > if you belonged to a particular 'gharana' or a lineage > of 'pundits' or artists. > > a counter-culture throughout indian history of freedom in knowledge > also pervaded and still pervades. this is the grand oral tradition of > knowledge, > where entire tomes of literature and knowledge can be handed down > generation-to-generation verbally and through memory, without > using any written systems. > > anyways. > > a third line of thought, incongruent with western-thought, > states that knowledge has intangible origins and is 'channelled' to humans. > nearly 100 years after his death, Ramanujan's brilliant mathematics > is still being analyzed and adopted by leading researchers across the > world, > and some of his theorams and equations are yet to be solved or deciphered. > however, he never officially claimed anything as his own. > read the book on his life "the man who knew infiinity". > > eventually, the tough legal-system and draconian laws like DRM and DMCA > are going to break down when confronted by another ramanujan who belongs > to the IT industry. some day. > > we just need to shift the focus from 'owner' of knowledge, > to the 'origins' of knowledge. > > incidentally, how many are aware that newton's so-called ground-breaking > work > actually has a precedent of 700 years by an arab-persian scholar, Alhazen, > who correctly explained the nature of light, rays, optics, and apart > form all this > even pioneered the modern scientific method? > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Haytham > > > > regards > niyam > > > > > -- > > Regards, > > Sudev Barar > > Read http://blog.sudev.in for topics ranging from here to there. > > > > PS: Replying using bottom post/in-line post makes email conversations > > whole lot easier for meaningful dialogue. Snip out what is not > > relevant. Adopt this and spread the message. > > _______________________________________________ > > network mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in > > > > > > -- > niyam bhushan > _______________________________________________ > network mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in >
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