Comments on: Pomo Periscope XVII: Intellectual Property as Narrative http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2007/12/09/pomo-periscope-xvii-intellectual-property-as-narrative/ Economics of organizations, strategy, entrepreneurship, innovation, and more Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:28:06 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=MU By: twofish http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2007/12/09/pomo-periscope-xvii-intellectual-property-as-narrative/#comment-64518 twofish Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:09:01 +0000 http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2007/12/09/pomo-periscope-xvii-intellectual-property-as-narrative/#comment-64518 It's brilliant papers that this that make me a fan of postmodernism. To rephrase Theodore Sturgeon, eighty percent of postmodernism is crap, but that's because eighty percent of everything is crap. Silkey's paper is right on the money, because it agrees with my observation that how people think innovation happens isn't how it actually does happen. My main disagreement with postmodernism and critical theory lies with the idea that the power structures that they see forming are inherently unjust. Power structures are what you get when you put a bunch of human beings together, and the very unhealthy power relations you find in academic departments makes me think that while the insights that critical theorists haven't anything better to offer than the situations they are criticizing. But in the case of Silbey, what she is arguing is that intellectual property is based on false mythology rather than economic rationality, which makes a lot of sense to me. As a software developer, you'd think that it would be in my interests to support strong intellectual property rights, but I don't because its very obvious to me that I economically benefit from weak protections, and that a lot of the assumptions and myths that support strong protections are hokum..... It’s brilliant papers that this that make me a fan of postmodernism. To rephrase Theodore Sturgeon, eighty percent of postmodernism is crap, but that’s because eighty percent of everything is crap. Silkey’s paper is right on the money, because it agrees with my observation that how people think innovation happens isn’t how it actually does happen.

My main disagreement with postmodernism and critical theory lies with the idea that the power structures that they see forming are inherently unjust. Power structures are what you get when you put a bunch of human beings together, and the very unhealthy power relations you find in academic departments makes me think that while the insights that critical theorists haven’t anything better to offer than the situations they are criticizing.

But in the case of Silbey, what she is arguing is that intellectual property is based on false mythology rather than economic rationality, which makes a lot of sense to me. As a software developer, you’d think that it would be in my interests to support strong intellectual property rights, but I don’t because its very obvious to me that I economically benefit from weak protections, and that a lot of the assumptions and myths that support strong protections are hokum…..

]]>