Não detesto todos os "gurus", como minha paródia pode fazer crer. Há os legais: gente honesta que REALMENTE tem o q dizer. Prefiro aqueles que chamo "Provocadores" (tanto que no meu site há uma seção só pr'eles). Pr'eu, um guru de verdade só faz provocar.

Não vou perder tempo detonando os falsos profetas. Prefiro mostrar um trabalho sério. Uma grande provocação. Saca só:

Message: 19
Date: 1.1.95
From: nicholas@media.mit.edu
To: lr@wired.com
Subject: Bits and Atoms

The $400 Limit Applies to Atoms Only
When returning from abroad, you must complete a customs declaration form. But have you ever declared the value of the bits you acquired while traveling? Have customs officers inquired whether you have a diskette that is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars? No. To them, the value of any diskette is the same - full or empty - only a few dollars, or the value of the atoms.

I recently visited the headquarters of one of the United States's top five integrated-circuit manufacturers. I was asked to sign in and, in the process, was asked whether I had a laptop computer with me. Of course I did. The receptionist asked for the model, serial number, and the computer's value. "Roughly US$1 to $2 million," I said. "Oh, that cannot be, sir," she replied. "What do you mean? Let me see it."

I showed her my old PowerBook (whose PowerPlate makes it an impressive 4 inches thick), and she estimated its value at $2,000. She wrote down that amount and I was allowed to enter.

Our mind-set about value is driven by atoms. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is about atoms. Even new movies and music are shipped as atoms. Companies declare their atoms on a balance sheet and depreciate them according to rigorous schedules. But their bits, often far more valuable, do not appear. Strange.

Hehe. É Nicholas Negroponte, do MIT. Reparem a data do e-mail (artigo da Wired): 1/Jan/95! Daí minha homenagem. "Vida Digital" vai fazer 10 anos!!



Mais um trechinho, 'profecia' dos últimos passos do Google:

Library of the Future
Thomas Jefferson introduced public libraries as a fundamental American right. What this forefather never considered was that every citizen could enter every library and borrow every book simultaneously, with a keystroke, not a hike. All of a sudden, those library atoms become library bits and are potentially accessible to anyone on the Net. This is not what Jefferson imagined. This is not what authors imagine. Worst of all, this is not what publishers imagine.

The problem is simple. When information is embodied in atoms, there is a need for all sorts of industrial-age means and huge corporations for delivery. But suddenly, when the focus shifts to bits, the traditional big guys are no longer needed. Do-it-yourself publishing on the Internet makes sense. It does not for paper copy.

Uma última provocação, agora de 01/Fev/95:

Bits Are Bits
But I did learn a few things as Imined my columns for the themes that run throughout Being Digital. The first is that bits are bits, but all bits are not created equal. The entire economic model of telecommunications -based on charging per minute, per mile, or per bit - is about to fall apart. As human-to-human communications become increasingly asynchronous, time will be meaningless (five hours of music will be delivered to you in less than five seconds). Distance is irrelevant: New York to London is only five miles further than New York to Newark via satellite. Sure, a bit of Gone with the Wind cannot be priced the same as a bit of e-mail. In fact, the expression "a bit of something" has new and enormous double meaning.

Furthermore, we are clueless about the ownership of bits. Copyright law will disintegrate. In the United States, copyrights and patents are not even in the same branch of government. Copyright has very little logic: you can hum "Happy Birthday" in public to your heart's delight, but if you sing the words, you owe a royalty. Bits are bits indeed. But what they cost, who owns them, and how we interact with them are all up for grabs.

O negrito é meu. Prá lembrar q em 95 ainda não existiam Napsters, Kazaas e eDonkeys da vida... Ele já questionava copyrights e patentes bem antes do CC e dos movimentos de Software Livre. Como Negroponte é coerente pracas, dá prá se deliciar com todas as colunas q ele escreveu prá Wired aqui. Aproveite!