Information Renaissance: Free vs. Freedom
I started out on a quest to research a topic for the Information Renaissance. I plucked a book off my shelf titled A World Lit Only By Fire, by William Manchester. It seemed an obvious choice at the time.
Manchester essentially concludes that Ferdinand Magellan was the most important figure of the Renaissance, and I thought this would be an excellent point to show, since we often forget that the world at the time was undergoing much more than a revolution in art.
Magellan’s revolution took him around the world.
And if the Renaissance masters tried to continually redefine the world, this circumnavigatory event actually defined physically the world in which we live.
But, while trying to figure out how to put this down appropriately, I found this quote: “It is a terrific decree in life that they must act who would prevail,” (Manchester, 1993 p. 226).
This seemed to sum it all together; however, I couldn’t figure out if Magellan actually said it. It seemed by the way it was written that really George Meredith receives credit for that line, and Magellan simply would have agreed with it--albeit 300+ years later. And the references/index weren’t much help. (This is why we cite sources).
Well, you know that I had to figure out who Meredith was in order to solve this. After looking up a couple of things—as often happens online—I found something more interesting: Meredith’s works are available on Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg is an online repository of over 19,000 (and growing) free ebooks. And although that’s awesome in itself, here’s what they say about the price of those books:
The word free in the English language does not distinguish between free of charge and freedom.
Free of charge means that you don't have to pay for the book you received.
Freedom denotes that you may do as you like with the book you received.
This distinction is immaterial if you just want to read a book privately, but it becomes of utmost importance if you want to work with the book:
you are a teacher and want to use the book in class,
you wrote a thesis about the book and want to distribute the book along with your thesis,
you have a literary web site and want to distribute the book to your audience,
or you are a writer and want to adapt the book for the stage.
If the book you got is just free of charge, you may do none of the above things. You may not even make a copy of the book and give it to your best friend. But if the book you got is free as in freedom you may do anything you like with that book.
Clearly free as in freedom beats free of charge.
Fortunately almost all Project Gutenberg ebooks are free of charge and free as in freedom.
(http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:No_Cost_or_Freedom%3F)
What a distinction! And what a concept. Freedom of usage. Freedom of passage. Freedom of distribution and movement. Making the world a more enlightened place through the sharing of knowledge, one free book at a time.
Sometimes you have to sail around the world to find knowledge; sometimes knowledge can sail to you.
If I could find any quotes attributable to Magellan, I am sure he would approve of this revolutionary idea. If so, I'll write about it later.