2076-03-14 Libraries
Today, almost everyone has access.
La science n'a pas de patrie, parce que le savoir est le patrimoine de l'humanité, le flambeau qui éclaire le monde. [Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.]—Louis Pasteur
The Digital Bodleian. Alexandria Reconstructed. HathiTrust. The Internet Archive. Franklin Free Public Virtual. ThingiMultiVerse. Libraries, in all forms, are some of my favorite places in the world. I am relaxed and happy when enveloped by the sight and smell of books, but equally so in front of the search screen for a massive online catalog. I believe libraries are the true centers of civilization. If a place has no libraries, it's not civilized; it's just a clump of ignorant or isolated humans separated from what should be their common heritage. From Anchorage to Zanzibar and everywhere in between, access to information is a crucial part of being human in the late 21st century.
I have been pleased to observe the trend toward free access even as crowdfunding and public sponsorship increased the support for both library infrastructure and compensation for creative contributors. In the early days of this century, 'starving artist' was still a common phrase with all too many living exemplars, and "Don't quit your day job" was regarded as sound advice. Today, an artist can live quite comfortably on royalties from public library accesses of their works, on top of their universal basic income. These ideas were already being tried out in a few places, but it took decades for them to become global minimum standards.
I did my bit. I still do, in small ways. This memoir will go into the archives as soon as it is complete. My early nonfiction works were available in physical libraries as soon as they were published. I believe several of those early paper editions were also scanned and uploaded as pirate e-book versions before they went out of print. Of course, as soon as the copyrights reverted to me, I granted official permissions for Hathi and other online archives to distribute authorized e-editions. By then, the books were mostly of historical interest.
About the same time as my CAD-CAM work was developing a following, enthusiasts were building, trading, and combining libraries of CAD object files. The first entries were 3D objects used as standards or tests for early software, such as Martin Newell's Utah teapot. The collections grew, slowly at first, then taking off at exponential rates with the development of LIDAR scanners and surfacing software. Within a few decades, everything from architectural landmarks to historic jewelry, masterpieces of sculptural art to essential mechanical devices, was available for study or duplication. The sciences joined the arts in swelling the collections. Deep radar scans of prehistoric ruins, MRIs of human and animal bodies, electron micrographs of many tiny things, and planetary imaging data of Earth and other planets all went into the public caches.
The design libraries were of special interest and utility to me. With my personal CAD/CAM system, any 3D file was easy to manipulate, modify, and produce. The more objects, devices, and system components went online, the more complex tools I could assemble for myself.
Today, almost everyone has access. Electrical power and internet access are too cheap to meter and in most jurisdictions are a fundamental human right. A persistent child can download all the designs to build a sophisticated robot playmate, print out the components on the household or community fabricator, and learn a bit about robotics by assembling and programming, again using the resources of public libraries.
In the second decade of the century, it wasn't quite so simple or so cheap. I had my own design and 3D print shop. However, the state of the art in robotics was still a matter of proprietary expertise and closely held patents.
I could have tried to license or purchase the information I needed. Instead, I traveled to Esslingen am Neckar and negotiated a trade: I presented my own skills in materials science to make their existing designs stronger, lighter, and easier to produce, and in exchange I received a personal use license to their design and code databases. It remained a mutually profitable partnership for many years.
Come to think of it, I believe two or three of those first robots are still in my service. Their surfaces are worn and stained, and some of the wearing components have been replaced a dozen or so times, but the essential designs have proved durable. It is no exaggeration to say that those little robots have saved many lives and contributed much to human flourishing and quality of life. I could not have achieved most of my later works without my minions' assistance.