The Knowledge Barrier
Knowledge is what keeps the human race moving forward, it leads to creation, innovation and development. Before modernity, ideas expanded by trade or interaction and they helped societies build civilizations. Powerful knowledge from Darwin, Confucius, Simone de Beauvoir or Thoreau, which lead to great innovations, is now being locked up by big business. The world’s scholarly heritage is blocked off from the public, leaving only those who are affiliated with a university or pay for a subscription, access to the vast library of knowledge. However, what does that mean for the human race? As whole, modern people and societies strive to attain equality among races, genders and ages. Socioeconomic status plays a key role in preventing equality. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing, causing a large decline of the middle class and consequently, making it extremely difficult for an individual to jump the gap. Massive databases, such as ProQuest or a University’s library database, require a hefty subscription that can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars a year. This automatically disqualifies a mass amount of citizens who want to access these databases. Individuals who do not have the resources to afford these databases may never have the ability to advance in an academic field, once again, dividing the poor from the wealthy.
Solutions
Is there a way to stop this barrier from getting to extreme? Or will big businesses continue to dominate the knowledge sphere? There has been numerous attempts to break down this barrier. An important figure that was a major contributor to this movement was Aaron Swartz, American programmer and creator of Reddit.com. Swartz’s ultimate demise came when he was caught using the M.I.T. mainframe to download scholarly articles and documents, it was believed that his intention was to then later release this documents for free to the public, however, the FBI caught him before he could. Swartz was able to make an impact on this fight, his website has a subsection called Reddit scholar, an area dedicated for other users to post prominent scholarly articles for others to use. Reddit scholar is exactly what Aaron wanted, in the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto he states, “Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientist — you have been given a privilege…You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.” Swartz’s strong words led to a movement, a way for students, and teachers to take the initiative in fighting this injustice. Another effort that is very active on twitter, is the hashtag #icanhazpdf. Similar to Reddit Scholar, this is intended for individuals to connect all around the world and share their downloaded documents. Individuals tweet the specific document they need and use the hashtag #icanhazpdf to hopefully generate a result. Although this process is very basic and is not that effective, it is a foot in the right direction. The fight to liberate is not going to be easy, modernity has created greedy monsters that while no stop until they have soaked up everyone’s money. The best way to defeat these beast is to expose them for their wrong doings and to constantly chip away at the knowledge barrier. Like I mentioned before, Reddit Scholar and #icanhazpdf, may be very basic, but its little acts of social justice that will eventually bring the wall down.
Every aspect of modernity came from the combination of ideas and knowledge. Before databases, documents and scholarly research were available for individuals to read and study. This helped progress society as a whole, rather than limiting it to the elite. Now informational privilege is alive and thriving, limiting information to only the wealthy. As a college student, I am very fortunate to have access to databases and scholarly research, these documents supplement my learning in the class room. However, I am sickened to know that some of the research I look at cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. If this expensive information was in the right hands than maybe some individuals could interpret it differently, which could lead to a new discovery. This is a social injustice, informational privilege contributes to the division of people and effects social development. What can one do to stop this? How can informational privilege be confronted? This is where the true problem lies, finding a starting point. The first step is to raise awareness, illustrate how big businesses are limiting what the public sees. The next step is to organize peaceful social movements, like Reddit Scholar, Wikipedia or #icanhazpdf. From here the movement will hopefully gain momentum and liberate information for everyone.
