stamp out book fencing!!!!

Written by Andrew Rens on September 10th, 2008

We all know its a big problem in South Africa. Hijacking, theft, even murder by book gangs who make millions re-selling blood novels. That is why South African authorities have added “books” to the list of second hand goods subject to stringent regulation intended to prevent the sale of stolen goods.

Barry Ronge has written an excellent article about the proposal to add books to the list.

It might of course make more sense just to ban books altogether, after all people might read them and start thinking, a process which the proponents of this change clearly don’t believe in.

 

LHC and A2K3

Written by Andrew Rens on September 10th, 2008

I am at the A2K3 conference in Geneva, Switzerland not far from CERN where earlier today the LHC, the large Hadron collider, was scheduled for start up.

It is an interesting juxtaposition, the LHC is classic example of standard knowledge practises, a single massively expensive installation run by technocrats largely opaque to the public. Commendably CERN has tried to communicate what it is doing to the wider world, one senses though that it is not a natural or entirely comfortable feat.

It is these issues of knowledge structure/configuration/values embedded in technology andpractises which are being critiqued at the 3rd Access to Knowledge Conference. Held during 2006 and 2007 at Yale University its being held this year in Geneva, site of the World Intellectual Property Organisation, the International Telecommunications Union and non governmental International Standards Organisation.

The presentations are being blogged at www.a2k3.org

The posts are a close representation of what we are hearing here. You can also post comments, questions and challenges so that you can have access to the knowledge being shared here.