USING PUBLIC MONEY TO FORM A SECRET SOCIETY. HOW INTELLECTUALS ARE ALLOWED TO TURN INTO A NEW CLASS OF STATE PRIESTS, OR IS THAT AS PROSTITUTES FOR THE ELITE?
Recently, only personel of rich universities have been allowed access to scientific and intellectual research product. This is done by requiring the public to pay hefty fees to just have a glance to an article.
It's outrageous that scientific research would be withdrawn from public scrutiny and access. Most scientific research is funded by the PUBLIC. Thus the public ought to be the ultimate owner of the information gathered by scientists. In Britain, for example, the universities are now all public (Oxford and Cambridge are not private anymore). So it is in continental Europe. US universities, even private ones, are hugely financed by taxpayer money in various ways. To grab other people's property for one's profit is thievery. To do it to the public defiles and attacks the REPUBLIC (res Publica).
Besides, science, and intellectual activities are public utilities, thus should provide with public access, just like the high seas, the moon, or the air one breathes.
Should this grabbing of collective resources by a small self-selected elite and rich universities be allowed to go on, it is to be feared that a new priesthood will rise. Meanwhile, most of the public will get ever more ignorant, antiscientific, anti-intellectual, and resentful (of that new priesthood). New Dark Ages would be here. (Apparently, even the present administration has expressed alarm, and took corrective action in some biological areas.)
In a way, allowing only members of rich universities to have access to intellectual product, is similar to what happened at the criminal root of the present financial crisis: a small elite grabs for itself, and its personal enrichment, vast global, public resources.
Indeed, more globally the question is that, if it takes several hundred dollars to look at a just one issue of one journal financed by the public, who has that kind of money? Who has that kind of access? The plutocracy, those at the root of the world financial and economic mess.
As Obama claims that he wants to provide better internet access to the population, one guesses that he means better access to information, and, in particular, to publicly financed information. So he should look at this injustice.
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Patrice Ayme
Patriceayme.wordpress.com
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P/S: Here is how Dr. Olivia Judson describes the access to intellectual product problem in the New York Times (Dec. 16, 2008):
"One caveat. I say “access to information is easier and faster than ever before.” With respect to scientific information, this is true for people within universities, but not for those without them. One of the consequences of the scientific journals going digital is that it has become harder for members of the public to get access to original scientific information. It used to be the case, for example, that anyone could get permission to spend a day at the library at Imperial College; once there, they could read any of the journals on the library shelves. Now, subscriptions to the paper editions of many journals have been stopped — the journals are no longer physically there — and only members of the university are allowed access to the online versions. Some journals give free access, at least to back-issues; but many do not. Then, if you are not a member of a university and you want to read some articles, they may cost you as much as $30 each. I think this is a pity. Perhaps not many people want to read original scientific research; but somehow, it seems against the spirit of the enterprise."
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