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The Anarchist in the Library.

Slashdot directed me to an interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan about “Cultural Democracy” and, namely, his new book, The Anarchist in the Library. Vaidhyanathan’s two books are on my must-read list now (they sound in a similar vein to Lessig’s The Future of Ideas, which is absolutely required reading for understanding the current plight of IP).

Basically, Vaidhyanathan is talking about how P2P networks resemble plain old-fashioned culture—social networks where I tell you something and you tell someone else and suddenly someone else is telling me all about it. Culture is sharing, and that’s what the internet is all about—unless the greedy corporate dastards have their say. And that’s where the librarians come into it, because as I posted before, the librarians are getting restless about the whole thing. You see, in social networks, libraries are major hubs in the cultural sharing thing—libraries are (quasi)free, available to anyone regardless of social class. And that’s important, and the librarians wish to protect that.

By the way, I do disagree with Vaidhyanathan on one minor point: he calls culture anarchistic, that is, having no structure. While this might sell books, it’s bad science. Social networks like “cassette culture”, the used book market, P2P, the Internet, and other human systems are actually highly structured, systems of hubs and connectors often following power laws. I wish I knew of a good word to describe this sort of structure, that is neither anarchy nor hierarchy, but I don’t. But if you’re interested in this stuff, go read Linked: the New Science of Networks, by Albert-László Barabási.

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