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"On the one hand, Wojcicki highlighted her desire to empower consumer-patients by circumventing the medical establishment and making data available; on the other, she insisted on the role of 23andMe as a research platform, arguing that its unique dataset rendered it invaluable as a partner and model for further research.
There's a potential tension here, one increasingly central to the modern biomedical establishment and, more generally, to the longer history of the interaction between patients (or subjects), science (or medicine), and capitalism. Who owns what? What's the impact of information asymmetries? Who is this research (or data) for?"
"In one of our workshops, participants hit upon the idea of colonization as a way to describe how we became separated from the commons. Our culture is saturated in the market paradigm. The concepts of consumer, ownership, private, worth, and profit define how we think about ourselves, our relationship to each other and everything we encounter. It displaces all other ways of making connections and finding meaning. "
"We propose a new method for measuring the relative ideological positions of newspapers, voters, interest groups, and political parties. The method uses data on ballot propositions. We exploit the fact that newspapers, parties, and interest groups take positions on these propositions, and the fact that citizens ultimately vote on them. We find that, on average, newspapers in the U.S. are located almost exactly at the median voter in their states. Newspapers also tend to be centrist relative to interest groups. "
More concerns about publishing, e-books, licensing, ownership, etc.
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Only a small number of ebook vendors (actually, Springer is the only one I know of) allow for any sort of ILL, which means that the more our book collections go digital, the less we will be able to loan to other libraries or borrow from other libraries. That libraries are going in this direction without considering the impact on ILL are really shooting ourselves, our patrons, our profession, in the foot. Just try to imagine your library without interlibrary loan. I know I can’t.
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Look, I get it. We’re in a tough spot. We’re trying to do more with less. We’re trying to justify continued funding in the face of the fact that such a small proportion of what we buy gets used NOW. But I’m not sure that moving a large portion of our acquisitions budget to patron-driven acquisitions is a responsible decision in the long-run. I do think putting some of a library’s collection budget towards patron-driven acquisitions is an excellent idea and that’s what we’re experimenting with this semester with Ebook Library. But I still feel in my bones that it would do a disservice to the long-term health of the collection to rely solely on the taste of today’s patrons. To me, cooperative collection development is a model for sustainable collection-building that makes much more sense.
Detailed discussion of the HarperCollins proposal to limit e-book library checkouts to 26.
"The loss of ownership creates a downward spiral in value, and erodes the very notion of paying for books at all.
Defining ownership down. We used to own our books. With most ebooks we own them in name, but effectively we lease them. As Jane documents, the slide toward more and more attenuated concepts of ownership continues."
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The process is gradual. Mental models change slower than technology. If the Kindle had debuted with an access-based “faucet” model, it would have failed. Consumers would not have traded true ownership for a tethered, metered and monitored product. But we’ll get there soon enough, as each step away from ownership makes the next step more acceptable. Once you realize your Kindle book is not fully yours, you’ll accept it being mostly not yours. Google Ebooks are a further step away from ownership. Eventually you get to a faucet model, as music has done, either low-price (Netflix) or free (Pandora, YouTube).
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As devalued ownership feeds piracy, rising piracy in turn devalues ownership. Anyone with an internet connection can rapidly assemble a “library” of books it would have once taken years to build–so why bother building one?
As the logic churns, content sellers will increasingly seek other ways of “monetizing.” Authors will charge for readings, or merchandise. They’ll try advertisements. They’ll start leveraging all the user data they’re collecting to create even better ads. None of this will replace more than a fraction of the book economy, but they will definitely send a message to consumers: You’re being screwed enough to pay for the privilege.
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the two American dreams - of homeownership and of unfettered economic mobility - may be in conflict, as homeownership, especially in downturns like today, impedes mobility and makes it harder for individuals to move to work and the labor market on the whole to adjust.
in list: Economic Crisis
Review and commentary on book by Robert C. Ellickson, The Household: Informal Order around the Hearth
in list: Economic Crisis
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