The other day, I downloaded an entire book from the internet. For free. It was an incredibly empowering act.
In a society where knowledge is costly and education requires financial sacrifice, it was refreshing to find that someone had decided the value of a product lay not in the money one paid for it, but in the decision to make use of it. As a relatively well-off South African, I prefer to shop at second-hand book shops and reserve Exclusive Books for gifts and “must-haves” I can’t source anywhere else. If I feel that way about the books I read for leisure, it’s not surprising that academic books — often priced at R700 plus, each — are far too expensive for most students. Trying to protect copyright becomes an irrelevant issue when you’re trying to get an education.
Book publishing is an expensive business with little return in South Africa. Someone has to edit the manuscript, pay for the paper and ink and binding, design the cover art, market the book to potential buyers and so on. And of course the author deserves to be paid for his or her hard work.
But downloading an entire book for free (it’s also available for sale on Amazon) was a symbolic gesture that pointed to a world where the free exchange of information is itself valued. Now that the internet is becoming increasingly commercialised, it was refreshing to feel that not everything of value needs to be paid for.
From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food can be downloaded here.
By the way, there’s more free stuff out there. MIT has made course material available online, for free, for 1 700 of its courses, including lecture notes, videos, problem sets and some reading material. Everything from humanities and social sciences to maths and chemistry is available. You can’t get credit for your courses, but it looks like a great way to study for personal fulfilment or to complement a current university course. More information here
And thanks to Real Simple magazine for the great tip!
Hi,
I enjoy your commentary, interesting reading. I absolutely despise capitalism, and for good reason, I used to be a business man and made my first million at 22. Subsequently I spent it on, well fun. Money is easier to make and more overrated than you think.
Nowadays I do the 9-5 thing and I am pretty much broke. Funny enough, I am happier than I used to be and I spend my time learning about the world.
Money = Stress.
People do not realise how rotten the system really is, the so-called “middlemen” have been raping society for decades, and it’s coming to a head, very quickly.
If you want a frightening example, the price of the contents of a box of breakfast cereal is only 15% of the asking price. The rest? Advertising and profit!
We all share in the guilt, we want nice pictures and nice slogans, it’s our animal nature. But, we aren’t animals, we have the choice to be something more. And really, paying someone R17 to sell you R3′s worth of rather low grade corn by-products is really stupid.
Personally, I believe the only way to destroy the lies of democracy and capitalism is through non-involvement. We need to decentralise, move production home. Read up on synthetic meat growth and fourth generation bio-fuels.
We are on the verge of absolute true freedom through technology. This means having to rely on no-one for your basic needs. I envision a future where you can grow everything you need in a vat in your kitchen. This isn’t sci-fi, it’s really possible. But it will mean that the people in power will lose their power and the petty little baubles they cling to like BMWs and Armani suits.
People are stuck on silly things like competition, we aren’t monkeys in a tree, all we need to do is have smaller families and grow/produce what we need.
It just takes some thought, some planning, a lot of self control and determination. Although I doubt that Africa has got the political will to implement any kind of plan, or any kind of vision. I am waiting with baited breath for 2009, the west will no longer be able to wipe Africa’s nose for it. There simply isn’t enough money for aid anymore. Perhaps with hardship we’ll get some real leaders who’ll have the courage and intellect to drag us out of the modern dark ages of cryptic economics and a debt laden society.
I am rambling, sorry, thanks for some interesting blogs.