Musings & Meanderings

I followed Matt’s post titled Should poetry be open source?

…to a post in which Dave Bonta thoughtfully discusses the issue of copyright versus open source in terms of his own writing

…and from within the comments on Dave’s post, I was led to and enraptured by the Poem Dancing category on Sharon Brogan’s poetry blog.

If there had been a current poem dance taking place I would have joined in, and very much hope to come across one in future.

I do believe that copyright protections still have a place, and will continue to, given the structure of the society we inhabit. I also believe in a future order in which our understanding of rights and responsibilities would be redefined in many ways. Open source is symbolic of a free internet, and a collaborative culture, where value is contributed, received and shared through means other than money. This ‘gift’ economy has grown to represent an entire sub culture, one in which free exchange greatly enhances value for all. Meanwhile, though, participants still require income in dollars to pay the rent, and most projects of any size require financial investment to achieve fruition. The frictions between open sharing and collaboration, private interests, and individual needs are many and, as we know, not easily resolved. I have come to understand that the demonstration of what can be accomplished with free is an important key to unlocking the rhythms and formulas of new orders and understandings.

A year ago I was wandering around here wondering, “Where is the public trust?”. Now my intent is to contribute to the evolution of new definitions of it.

Since today is my birthday, though, my pleasure is to release the following song fragment, which I wrote in response to the development zeitgeist, into the collaborative space…

i want fast
cars
purring like panthers
a nuclear power that sings in my veins

i want pure
lightning
unleashed by my fingertips
all destinations forever attained

the song
speeds
with a million hearts beating
unique synchronicity linking all planes

in our fast
cars

I’ve read that code is poetry. My own comprehension of code has advanced to the point where I can recognize some of it as elegant or beautiful, but the full understanding of it as poetry, well, so far I can only make this association through analogy. Becoming a parent or creating a successful business can be similar to both writing and experiencing poetry. Both are acts of creation and also, or therefore, more than a simple sum of our experiences, actions and selves.

Successful collaborative creation as greater than the sum of the individuals’ contributions… a defining element of the richest cultures?

Thoughts?
Poetry?

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 1st, 2007 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Poetry, Open Source, Happy, Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.