OPEN

While thinking about how roles of content and brand owners will change this morning, I happened to read a passage in The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (which I think should have a new edition sub-titled: It’s all happened before!: A 15th Century Guide to Web 2.0) quoting a Franciscan Monk, who became St Bonventura talking about the four ways of making a book (before print came along):

A man might write the works of others, adding and changing nothing, in which case he is simply called a “scribe” (scriptor). Another writes the work of others with additions which are not his own; and he is called a “compiler” (compilator). Another writes both others’ work and his won, but with others’ work in principal place, adding his own for purposes of explanation; and he is called a “commentator” (commentator)… Another writes both his own work and others’ but with his own work in principle place adding others’ for purposes of confirmation; and such a man should be an “author” (auctor).

Fascinating to see how in the age before print, before channel media, notions of authorship and of copyright were utterly different to they are now.

Or are they? Don’t those four labels sound like different kinds of bloggers or blog posts? Commenting on other posts, referencing news, linking to interesting posts without comment, adding one’s own thoughts to a debate elsewhere on the web…

Eisenstein points out that among those four definitions there is not a category that refers to completely original composition. The monk who wrote that couldn’t conceive of a type of writing and thinking that was not based on the work of others – which is a very honest way of looking at things.

With open networks replacing the industrial channel media of the past, perhaps our ideas about writing and thinking will reflect those pre-print models. Certainly it reminds us that the idea of copyright and intellectual property are “legal fictions” that were created to support the economic models around print production.