Computers and software of all kinds have generally been designed and built by engineers for a broader population to use. Computing is becoming ubiquitous, and the skills for using computers are becoming as standard as reading and writing. Yet few of these tools are designed for everyone to modify them. We are teaching read-only computer literacy to the vast majority of students. No one would advocate only teaching people to read without teaching them how to write. We need to think the same way about computer literacy. This means not only providing free access to the source code, but also changing the way we think about designing these tools.

Humans started out making their own tools because there was no one else who could do it. As society progressed and we became more and more specialized in our skills, we find that those of us who want to express ourselves are using tools created by people who we will never even meet. It is therefore difficult to affect the development of these tools in any way. Software has the power to accelerate this trend, with proprietary software locking us out entirely. We could always modify our brush or pen, we cannot modify Macromedia Flash. Software also has the ability to reverse this trend when it is free (as in speech). When the software is free, that means the tools could be built by highly skilled developer, yet it is possible for anyone to modify it.

Everyone should own their tools like traditional artists and craftspeople do. Traditional artists spend a lot of time figuring out the tools they want, usually customizing them, like paintbrushes and chisels, and even making the tools themselves. Sculptors hone their chisels, reed instrument players make their own reeds, wood and metal workers are constantly making new tools to solve unusual problems. Proprietary software makes this quite difficult at best, impossible at worst. Even for the Flash expert, it is not easy to write Flash plugins, and even if they can write plugins, what those plugins can do is limited by Macromedia’s design choices. Digital artist should own their tools just like traditional artists can. Free software is one essential aspect of this, and programming literacy is another that is often forgotten.

The problem is not only that humans need to gain literacy in programming, but also that the tools need to gain fluency with humans. Programming environments are usually designed by and for experts who were educated as engineers. Even though Java, Python, etc. are relatively new languages, they are strongly rooted in languages like C, which were designed for computer efficiency over human efficiency. Even the QWERTY keyboard was designed to hamper the human in order to protect the machine. The ideal tool complements the user’s thought process. The ideal tool is accessible to the beginner yet powerful for the experienced.

At the root of this problem is how most people view programming: a specialized skill that few need to learn. Instead, everyone who uses a computer should be able to program a computer. Programming literacy should be as commonplace as reading ability. Everybody who can read also writes at least sometimes. Anyone using software should be at least able to modify software, if not create their own. Computing devices now are almost always built for one sided interaction: the programer creates it, and the user uses it.

Few users question this, most people think it must be this way. This is what what most of us have experienced, and most of us have been taught. There are a number of different projects such as Pure Data, Processing, and Arduino that are demonstrating that read/write computer literacy is not only feasible but something that people desire. Add together free software, free hardware, and programming literacy, and we should now think of all people as creators and users, and all devices as programming platforms.

This is not a new idea, far from it. In fact, it was one of the driving ideas behind the development SmallTalk at Xerox PARC. Object-oriented programming, the largest advance in programming in the past 30 years, traces its history through SmallTalk. But sadly it is an idea that has been once again cast aside as the product managers embraced the power of Object-oriented programming to produce better software while skipping over the core idea that the whole system should be open to all users to modify and create as well as merely use.

I recently noticed that Creative Commons has dropped all non-Attribution licenses from the “Choose A License” page. That means CC is trying to make all people include Attribution clauses despite well known and long acknowledged problems with them. In the late nineties, people began to realize that the attribution clause in the original BSD license was causing problems with projects that involved large collections of packages, such as GNU/Linux distros (more on this). Basically, the attribution clause required them to have hundreds of attributions on any materials they published, including any small advertisement. Imagine trying to include hundreds of attributions on a banner ad and you get the picture. Then factor in the amount of work that someone would have to do just to keep track of all these attributions.

The current BSD attribution clause is harmless because it clearly defines how attribution is given: just include the license file with the files that you distribute. When releasing software, there are many files that need to be included, and there are already well established techniques of managing files, so they is a minute burden. On the other hand, the Creative Commons’ attribution clause is very broad, making it worse than the original BSD license. (see section 4(b) of Attribution 2.5 Legal Code). The CC licenses are a notable improvement over completely closed licenses, but when compared to the proven free software licenses, there are problems, including some that have been recently solved.

Lawrence Lessig and company are most definitely lawyers. Lawyers generally believe that the law works while forgetting that the law is really expensive. So when it comes down to it, are you going to spend $5000 to $10,000 suing someone who didn’t give you attribution? If it was free content, they would still be able to distribute it for free. What I am saying is that yes, I believe that we should give credit where credit is due, but attribution clauses don’t really help with the problem while adding a real cost to using media with such a license.

The cost is that you have to track down and ensure the attribution information and make sure you get it correct. The CC licenses makes it even worse because it does not even specify how you must give attribution, but instead says that its up to the author. So if you were making something like Debian, you would have to track the specific attribution requests of thousands of different authors. Same goes for a track that uses a lot of samples, or a movie built from footage of many sources. That takes a lot of time, and the person has to be educated in the specifics of the license issues.

Another cost is for works whose author can not be found. If you stumble upon a 50 year old work with a CC-BY-SA license, and you want sample from it. You will need to track down that author in order to find out how you must attribute the work. Unlike the BSD licenses, the CC-BY-SA license does not specify how you should make the attribution, it leaves it up to the author. This is the exact same problem with current copyrights and will lead to lots of abandoned work being left in limbo. The CC license is an improvement over more restrictive licenses since the work would still be able to be viewed and distributed, it would not be legal to sample from it or modify it.

There are more and more examples of unforeseen problems that are cropping up as we find new uses for collections of human knowledge, and new methods for searching through them. One example that was recently brought to my attention is scientific data sets. As scientists post their data in common repositories, more people can search through them using and ever expanding selection of tools. Now consider a search that returns data from 50,000 different data sets. If those data sets were released with a license that used an attribution clause, you would now have to track down how 50,000 different authors want to be attributed. That is serious work which would seriously curtail research.

There are some attempts to deal with these issues in the CC-By clauses in the licenses by discussing how the attribution needs to be handled when included in a “Collective Work”, but it is still very murky, and there is not a “Human Readable Code” version of this text for those of us who just want to put our work out there rather than try to comprehend thick legalese. For more discussion on the problems of CC licenses, check out the reports Debian-legal workgroups on this topic:

debian-legal Summary of Creative Commons 2.0 Licenses
Debian Creative Commons Workgroup report
Debian and the Creative Commons

As for the other side of this debate, this blog post covers some of the possible advantages of attribution clauses:

Attribution and full-blooded open sourceness

I am a product of two “experimental” learning environments. First I did my BA in the Music Program Zero, aka MPZ, at Bard College, which was a splinter music department with notoriously lax structure and perhaps standards too. MPZ was infamous among the students as the place to just hang out and get credit, but a number of professors held the core goals of MPZ in high regard. I did my Masters at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. ITP is far better at PR that MPZ ever was, and even though the ratio of diligent students to hangers-on might be worse than MPZ, ITP manages to keep a good reputation. I speak about my personal experience, but I think that basically all “media labs” and other such experimental programs suffer from the same problems.

There seems to be a common thread in these environments. They are very open and supportive, with little or no criticism. Grading is basically non-existent (i.e. basically everyone gets A’s). People are allowed to get away with just about anything in terms of the work they do or don’t do. On one hand, I think some of this is essential to creating an environment where people are free to try out new ideas. As with any experiments, most of the ideas turn out to be crap, but a precious few ideas make it through, and perhaps in a way that would have not otherwise occured. There are many derivations on this model, from famous research labs like Xerox PARC to various art groups.

In the academic environment, there seems to be a lot of chaff, hangers on, people just going thru the motions. At MPZ it was an extreme split, half worked very hard, the other half did almost nothing, barely even going through the motions. At ITP, the lows were not as low, but I’d say about 60% of the students just go through the motions. Other alumni I have discussed this with were less generous, saying that figure is closer to 90%. In any case, we all agreed that there was at least 10% that was working hard and actually producing interesting work. What I wonder is whether having a large body of slackers is an essential element, or whether there is some way of having an environment of free creativity where the majority of those involved are working hard.

Before starting at ITP, I was working at a lot with the art combine Madagascar Institute. This was, and still is, a very inspirational group to work with. Anyone can show up and join, there is no application, or membership, no fraternity trials. Yet this group works very hard, and shows a lot of talent in building and organizing amazing creations with very few resources. There is also a educational aspect to it. There are regular classes and workshops, and people come to work in order to learn various skills, and apply newly found skills. Many people arrive with few of the skills needed, and through the years of working there have become quite accomplished.

At ITP, there were quite a few resources, yet easily a third of the people where just there to hang out, not really doing anything at all. It was really only about 10% of the students at ITP that I felt compared to the level of the Madagascar Institute people that I worked with. I found this extremely frustrating, here was an environment with resources to offer, but most people just want to go get plastered every “Thursday Night Out” as a warm-up for their weekend of partying. This seemed to me to be a spectacular waste of resources, and I cannot stop from thinking what the Madagascar Institute would pull off with a fraction of those resources.

One thing I noticed is that a lot of ITP students came from families with quite a bit of money, and many of them would be supported by their family completely if they were in school. So they could go to ITP, and just do the bare minimum to make it thru, and they would otherwise have their lives paid for. Sounds like a built-in motivation to slack off and go get drunk. Another problem is that many people want the degree as a stamp of approval on their resume, so they maintain their full time jobs, and go to ITP on the side. These are really just some guesses. I am largely mystified at what would otherwise motivate people to to spend lots of money if they did not intend to fully take advantage of it.

Music Program Zero at Bard College was a similar environment. Of course the rich parents are going to pay for Bard College! So what if you are majoring in DJing, yet only really spin some records for a few hours a week, and spend most of your time partying and buying records and used clothes (you can’t look rich, that just would not be very artsy). There were two DJing majors at MPZ when I was there. One of them just hung out and bought records, the other actually worked very hard and gave some inspired concerts of turntablism.

Now compare this to Madagascar Institute. Undoubtedly, there are a few who have mysterious sources of funding, that’s always the case in the art world. But chances are, you won’t get any credit from the rich family for hanging out with a bunch of broke artist types making events and contraptions out of scraps and garbage. So there is the natural self-selection. There is a long list of people who come and go, helping and learning little bits here and there, then fading away. There is also a solid core, many who came with substantial skills, but all learned a substantial amount through working at Madagascar Institute, both through workshops and classes, and through working on all sorts of projects.

So now, Madagascar Institute is very strapped for cash (in fact, I think you should donate money now), so what would happen if you have the resources of NYU combined with the inspired, driven work of Madagascar Institute? That would be the place to be. The hard part of the question is how to make that happen. I aim to start to answer this question in continuing posts to this here blog thing.

I’ll start now with some quick observations. One of the realities of ITP is that tuition actually pays a lot of the bills to keep the program running, so there needs to be quite a few students who pay full tuition. Funding is the unavoidable question, the money has to come from somewhere, and many (most?) art programs are funded this way. Also, there is a hidden benefit to having a bunch of people just hanging out. Since there is a large body of the ITP population who are not working hard, they are often interested in playing with other people’s projects. Quite a few people are willing to try out whatever you might post up, and that kind of feedback can be very helpful.

The other thing that I can see is the structure of the university setting. It is limited access: you must apply, be accepted, and pay a lot of money to participate in this community. Part of this is unavoidable because of the funding question. If people can freely come participate in the community, a lot of people wouldn’t pay for privilege. It seems that many believe that restricting access to a precious few is a benefit. My experience at Madagascar Institute made me unlikely to believe that any more. All sorts of people showed up, those who didn’t work just stood by the wayside and watched, but didn’t get in the way. Those who knew nothing but wanted to learn and were willing to work were rapidly sucked in and put to work. Sure, first they had to start as a “monkey”, doing menial tasks, but opportunities were plentiful for people to step up and take on new challenges with guidance from skilled people.

Perhaps Madagascar Institute does not produce anything like the kinds of focused learning like a university setting, and this could be recognized as a shortcoming of that environment. But then you have to consider that it is also an extremely low budget organization. The amount spent on one student at Bard College or NYU ITP in a year would cover the annual budget of the whole of Madagascar Institute many times over.