Responsible Nanotechnology: Experiments in Brazil

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I considered attending the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, this year, where I was invited to speak on a panel. It was a tough decision, but I finally decided that the time, expense, and hassle in getting there probably wouldn't be worth it. Maybe next year.

But I'm pleased that one of our favorite thinkers, Lawrence Lessig, whom we have quoted before on this blog, did make the trip. He is reporting his adventures on his own blog, and it's so inspiring that I wanted to pass some of it along.

Referring to an event where Brazilian musician-turned-politician Gilberto Gil gave an impromptu speech, Lessig writes:

Here's a Minister of the government, face to face with supporters, and opponents. He speaks, people protest, and he engages their protest. Passionately and directly, he stands at their level. There is no distance. There is no "free speech zone." Or rather, Brazil is the free speech zone. Gil practices zone rules. . .
I remember reading about Jefferson's complaints about the early White House. Ordinary people would knock on the door, and demand to see the President. Often they did. The presumption of that democracy lives in a sense here. And you never quite see how far from that presumption our democracy has become until you see it, live, here. "This is what democracy looks like." Or at least, a democracy where the leaders can stand packed in the middle of a crowd, with protesters yelling angry criticism yet without "security" silencing the noise. No guns, no men in black uniform, no panic, and plenty of press. Just imagine.

Some other activities Lessig observed:

I visited the Youth Camp at the WSF, where 50,000 tents, and 80,000 kids are participating in WSF events. At the core was a Free Software lab, with about 50 machines, all running GNU/Linux, and constant lessons about how to set the systems up, how do to audio, and video editing, how to participate in free software communities. This was organized totally by the kids who ran it. Machines in shacks, hay on the ground, wires and boxes everywhere.
I got to talk to the organizers of at least one part of the lab for about an hour. JP Barlow and I peppered them with questions as they described their "Thousand points of culture" project -- to build a thousand places around Brazil where free software tools exist for people to make, and remix, culture. The focus is video and audio; no one's much worried about Office applications, or the like. It is an extraordinary, grass roots movement devoted first to an ideal (free software) and second to a practice (making it real).

They have the culture to do it. Again, there were geeks, but not only. There were men, but plenty of women (and lots of kids). They were instructing each other -- some about code, some about culture, some about organizing, some about dealing with the government -- as they built this infrastructure out. Think Woodstock, without the mud, and where the audience makes the music.

As we all know, arguments and conflicts (and lawsuits or worse) over intellectual property rights and patent law will only be exacerbated by exponential general-purpose molecular manufacturing. Imagine being able to make copies of physical products almost as as easily and cheaply as you make copies of computer files!

So the experiments going on now with Open Source, Free Software, and Creative Commons (which Lessig founded) may be important proving grounds for principles that could be applied to make the eventual proliferation of nanofactories less disruptive.

Mike Treder