Comments on: The limits of knowledge http://snarkmarket.com/2012/7647 The stomping grounds of Tim Carmody, Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson. It's a long-running conversation about media, journalism, technology, cities, culture, design, books, music, movies, the future and the past. Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:20:47 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 By: Gavin Craig http://snarkmarket.com/2012/7647/comment-page-1#comment-82701 Gavin Craig Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:19:33 +0000 http://snarkmarket.com/?p=7647#comment-82701 We actually talked a little bit about this at THAT Camp Games a couple of weeks ago, in the context of archiving video games, and building an archive/history of the process of game development. The two biggest challenges are a.) that a great deal of that information is proprietary, and thus developers have a vested interest in NOT sharing it, and b.) that smaller developers (you know, anyone without the resources of Microsoft or Sony) simply don't keep that sort of information, so by the time it isn't a competitive secret anymore, it's largely lost. As more and more of our culture is tied up in technology, this becomes an incredible challenge. And resources like patent filings simply won't serve the same historical purpose as technology shifts from objects and mechanisms to software and intellectual property. Maybe, just maybe, this is another reason to revisit our painfully outdated patent and copyright process. Making things more open may not only mean more and broader development, it may mean that entire segments of history aren't lost. We actually talked a little bit about this at THAT Camp Games a couple of weeks ago, in the context of archiving video games, and building an archive/history of the process of game development. The two biggest challenges are a.) that a great deal of that information is proprietary, and thus developers have a vested interest in NOT sharing it, and b.) that smaller developers (you know, anyone without the resources of Microsoft or Sony) simply don’t keep that sort of information, so by the time it isn’t a competitive secret anymore, it’s largely lost.

As more and more of our culture is tied up in technology, this becomes an incredible challenge. And resources like patent filings simply won’t serve the same historical purpose as technology shifts from objects and mechanisms to software and intellectual property.

Maybe, just maybe, this is another reason to revisit our painfully outdated patent and copyright process. Making things more open may not only mean more and broader development, it may mean that entire segments of history aren’t lost.

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