[00:00:00] Katherine Druckman: Hey everyone. Welcome back to Reality 2.0, I'm Katherine Druckman. Doc Searls is joining me today and we're gonna talk about the idea of ownership, but in this case, as it relates to rather heinous lawsuit targeted at the internet archive, and we have a lot of feelings about that, as you can imagine, but before we get into it, I wanted to say a special, thank you to our newest Patreon patron named Michael Grossman. Thank you, Michael. And I also wanted to remind everyone to check out our website at reality2cast.com. That is the number two, where you will find all sorts of wonderful things, including links to the things that we're gonna talk about today. So this is a topic, you know, we've talked about the idea of ownership before. I think we actually even hinted around at lending content, probably in those conversations, but, but doc brought up, uh, a few articles, which we will link to, and yeah, we have, we have feelings. So a group of publishers has . Yeah. Right. A group of suing the internet archive. [00:01:05] Doc Searls: Yeah, because I'd, I'd love to be expert on the particulars of this thing. Uh, um, but it's one of those things where you start reading and then by the end of you think, what did I start with? What is, what was that thing? I'm no authority. I'm no lawyer. Um, [00:01:19] Katherine Druckman: But the outrage is there [00:01:21] Doc Searls: yeah, well, what, you know, there's, there're the copyright maximalist, which include the publishing industry. And so there's a, a lawsuit leveled against the internet archive by Hachette book group Inc, Harper Collins publishers, LLC, John Wiley, and sons and Penguin random house was the plaintiffs against the internet archive. Um, and, and the, and the electronic frontier foundation has come to its defense. And I think it, you know, the interesting thing is in the physical world, ownership is fairly clear. We all have opposable thumps, we can grab something and you know, this is why you can't teach communism to a three year old. Who's saying it's mine. You know, you, the idea of collective ownership doesn't apply. Um, you know, we. We're a grabby species. And when we own something, you, you buy a book, you own it, you have it. And now there are copyright restrictions on what can be done, quoting from it and stuff like that. But most people, most people's understanding of a book. Uh, especially one that's owned by a library is that you can borrow it. And the internet archive has ways of borrowing books. And I have not done that yet, but I'm starting. Because there are a lot of, I live in literally in four or maybe five places. And I have book scattered all over the place and I don't like Kindle that much in part because I feel like I'm just renting the damn thing. And it's not really mine also. I don't read it as well. I, I much prefer a physical book, but a virtual one you can page through because you borrowed it. Um, I really like, and, and the idea that you return it within a, a given amount of time. So with. Internet archive has done has kind of replicated the experience of having a library. And it is a library. It [00:03:06] Katherine Druckman: And libraries do this too. [00:03:08] Doc Searls: and libraries do this, you know, so, [00:03:10] Katherine Druckman: are actively lending, eBooks, and have been for quite some time. [00:03:13] Doc Searls: yeah. And so the collateral damage here for of this lawsuit, should it. Should it, uh, succeed? Is that it kind of, as I understand it anyway, or as I am told, I should say kind of puts libraries out, out of business there, you know, they, in a way, what, what publishers wanna do, recognizing that we now live in a digital world is bring their, you know, maximize their control over how you, how you use, um, what they publish a similar thing has already happened in. In the recording world, um, where, you know, we don't own music anymore. We haven't owned it for a long time. We've never really owned it. There's no way we thought we did. We owned containers for it and we're thrown away those containers, the CDs and 70 eights and 30 threes and 40 fives and, or put 'em aside. And, um, and instead we, we just go to a subscription service like, uh, Amazon or apple or Spotify. And listen to the music there. Um, and you know, because you pay part of your subscription fee goes to pay those artists and those publishers and tiny, tiny, tiny amounts of money. And in fact, I have a workaround for that, or I, and my colleagues have a workaround for that, but nobody's paid attention to it so far. So it's probably not even worth bringing up here, but, but the idea of ownership is, is you could do it in the physical world and in the digital world. The big question is whether or not the giants can, you know, the giant sources of goods can have their way and reduce our ownership merely to, um, a renter economy where we're just basically renting things for periods of time. I mean, rented from them or from their rep, you know, their representatives and not really for the very example of the libraries of the world. So that's sort of how I see it. And I invite pushback on that, cuz I'm maybe full of it too. This [00:05:13] Katherine Druckman: know, there, there are a lot of, there are a lot of things, you know, to consider here. So the, there are, there is the free lending model for that, that you would, you would get at a public library or something like the, the, the internet archive, but there are also other lending models that are based on subscriptions. As you, you mentioned, um, Amazon, for example, will have some sort of, it has an unlimited. Program where you can check out and, and return books, but it's part of your, your subscription fee, but you can borrow and they lend. Um, but the publishers don't have a problem with that because they're, you know, they maybe get a half of cent for every time you, you, you do it based on some royalty agreement. I actually have no idea. And then you also have, you know, corporate libraries, uh, will have agreements with publishers, to access. Those things on a, and if in a, in that type of library and they, again, pay for the privilege, but somehow that has worked out to the publisher's advantage in a way that, that they are comfortable with, but yet, free public library lending model that we've all well, most some, some of us, I guess, depending on our age, have grown up with and, and accepted and for, you know, How many, how many, uh, millennia I guess have there been, have there been libraries? Um, [00:06:28] Doc Searls: Yeah. At least since Alexandria. [00:06:31] Katherine Druckman: right, so it, it, yeah, it's just, um, The, the thing that, that gets me is that I thought, well, okay. You know, maybe I could, I could see an argument if the internet archive was saying, okay, well, we purchased a single copy of a book and we're lending it out over and over, over again. And, you know, concurrently to a hundred people at the same time. That's okay. Fine. I can see, I can see the complaint there, but, um, from what I read in my understanding is that it. The exact same model as a print copy. They are lending one to one. It can only be checked out one at a time, just you know, just like the, uh, the, the big, heavy, heavy, uh, printed book. So, so that, to me, that, that just should, that should dismiss this argument immediately, I don't, I don't even understand what the, what the, what the controversy is. Why, why does it matter what format it's in? If you were lending it on a, uh, individual. [00:07:28] Doc Searls: Well, it's, it's about licensing and, and I, I think the idea is that as physical books, Diminish or go away. We have eBooks and eBooks are, are licensed essentially, uh, something that Amazon kind of invented, um, uh, in its way of moving fast and breaking things, um, when they came up with the Kindle approach. Um, but there's so many things at play. I mean, when you think of the way books are used, um, you know, you have. You don't use them constantly, you know, you use them for a period of time and then you store them if you have them. And if you don't store them, you, you know, you have them at a library. Um, and those are limited. I mean, I, I, I, I remember when I did, when I moved from one place to another. In a city, I won't name because I don't wanna shame them. Um, I gave them a bunch of books and a complete collection of a really great magazine called the sun that I, I wrote for once in me again, I don't know, but it's a really sweet magazine out of North Carolina and I was, you know, told, oh, great, we'll have this. And then I went back to check on it. They've gotten rid of it. it's gone. You know? So that was not in that library. Um, it's online and you, the sun has it and they let you, you look, look at parts of it. But, um, the whole, the whole notion of, I mean, I, I guess, I mean, this is a way of looking at it. I don't know if it's the only way of looking at it. I don't think paper books go away. I think the advantage of a paper book and the way it works is something that has stood for hundreds of years for a good reason. A a, and I don't think that goes away, but more and more of our reading is going to be electronic and we need to choose rather carefully what we preserve of semblance to the paper world in the electronic world. And I think the unit internet archive has done an extraordinarily conscientious, um, Job of thinking through how that ought to work. And these guys from the big publishers coming at them is really pretty nasty, basically. You know, they're, they're not part of that. They, you know, kind of like the record industry was like, we're just gonna, we're just gonna hammer you guys and you lose , you know, that's the way it looks to me anyway. [00:09:57] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. And I, you know, it's, uh, there, there, there are more, there's more to it too from my reading and it's, you know, it's not just. The fact that they're going after the idea of lending content. It's also the fact that they're doing it at a time when there is, um, I think, I think an increased concern about publishing monopolies, you know, larger companies are gobbling up. The smaller ones is, you know, that's nothing new, but, but, um, but I think, I think there have been a few particularly noteworthy one. Maybe I can pull some of those up really quickly, but, but, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's certainly troubling. And, and what is this really? You know, what is this gonna mean long term that I think that's obviously why we're, we're talking about it. And a lot of people are talking about it. I understand you were, you were in, on a, in a Berkman center conversation and [00:10:50] doc_searls: Well, I, I, I watched some of it I wasn't in it. [00:10:54] Katherine Druckman: well, okay. In on it receiving the [00:10:57] doc_searls: we would love to point to it. We could point to where it was not where will be because the recording isn't up yet. it's interesting. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm sort of scanning as we're talking through. You know what the internet archive's argument is. And of course it's, you know, 40 some pages of stuff, you know, that put together with the FF. I mean, this is an a ho argument on my part, but I generally believe almost everything that EFF is for is good. [00:11:22] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. I, I, I actually, I tend to, tend to, uh, it's easier. , it's easier to just accept that, they, they, they have a great track record. So [00:11:31] doc_searls: yeah, there [00:11:33] Katherine Druckman: that they're concerned about something, I, I, I raise my internal red flag. Right. Um, [00:11:38] doc_searls: Yeah. Yeah. And, and when, when something as, uh, sweet, gracious and well meaning and conscientious and thoughtful and careful as the internet archive, um, gets hammered by, you know, A bunch of tall buildings, um, filled with lawyers. That's, you know, that makes you want to rise to the defense of the defendant. And that's sort of how I'm feeling about it right now. And libraries in general, cuz that's part of, that's part of the, you know, the, as I understand it, anyway, the collateral damage here is going to [00:12:17] Track 1: yeah, exactly. And I mean, [00:12:19] doc_searls: we knew. [00:12:20] Katherine Druckman: we, we don't as a culture need to get any dumber. I mean, , you know, we gotta the libraries. [00:12:26] doc_searls: a great, that's a great, that's a great one line. one line right there. [00:12:29] Katherine Druckman: I mean, it's, it's already, oh gosh, I watched a, the most horrible video by some idiot preaching, literally preaching. I think it was a religious thing that, uh, you know, the COVID vaccine explaining to everybody how you were being injected with some substance that was going to, um, connect you to the internet of things. And , uh, something about 5g signals and somehow they throw in throw in AI in there. So I'm like, oh, all they, you know, the most interesting topics in technology, all a single shot. Cool. Uh, if only I could learn about those by injecting them. I don't know. Um, [00:13:02] Doc Searls: been bill gates of George Soros and the, you [00:13:05] Katherine Druckman: Yeah, exactly. So I don't, you know, I, I think education, uh, definitely needs to be EDU education via public libraries is something we need to pro preserve lest any more people start to believe that crap, but [00:13:18] Doc Searls: Yeah. And, and I'm yeah, I, and I'm sure you are too. I mean, I'm, I have, you know, my own education. I was not good in school, but I went to the library all the [00:13:30] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. [00:13:30] Doc Searls: know, in the little town, little suburb, it wasn't, you [00:13:33] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. [00:13:33] Doc Searls: just [00:13:34] Katherine Druckman: what you, that's what [00:13:35] Doc Searls: small rectangle of New Jersey that was, you know, Called Maywood, but they had a, they had this Victorian house that was the library. And then later that was replaced by something to look more normal and modern. But, um, you know, I'd go by there almost every day. I mean that, and I'd borrow stuff from there and I'd go bring it back. And for that matter, the school library, you know, um, I remember the name of the, the librarian Mrs. Hunter. You know, she was the librarian in our, you know, this is our grade school through junior high, you know, they were, you know, they lived one street over my mother also taught in the same school system and I had a crush on her daughter too, by the way. So it was all . I remember there monos involved here, but the, you know, that's what, um, It's a huge part of my life. And, and even here, like I'm in, I'm in Bloomington, Indiana, uh, um, we made a decision yesterday actually to like become members of the Monroe county public library system, because we want to, and we're finding out an awful lot of good things happen there. Um, just like we are, you know, in Santa Barbara, in New York and we were in Boston as part of the minute man public library system there, and they're all kind of tied together. Um, it's. You know, I mean, what cultural institutions do we wish to preserve? And in what ways, I mean, there's some things that I, I mean, you and I have talked about this before, but, um, you know, I'm busy, you know, the internet, basically the internet and digital technology have, have obsolesce, so many things. Um, I'm, I've, I've been watching this photography, you know, uh, cameras, you know, big cameras get replaced by. By, uh, by phones, you know, vacuum tube TVs get replaced by flat screens. Um, you know, and radio is just something beloved by me is being eaten by, by podcasting on one side and, and streaming on the other. And, and it's, it's, it's a waste some degrees, it's a wasteland now, or it's, it's being wasted. And, but what do we wanna save? You know, what, what do we save of this? And. You know, I, I think, I think libraries are, are crucial. We we've lost newspapers for the most part. Newspapers really aren't an acronym and probably, you know, the reference section of sections of libraries, which, um, know, where the archives are now, all they were microfilm now they're, there are other forms of, of, um, digital. Recollections. Um, but they don't, but even those don't touch the originals. I mean, the, the New York times, for example, I used to love going into the, um, William round Wilson library at the university of North Carolina, where the stacks had bound two weeks of the New York times bound in these giant heavy, um, Things, they were the size of the New York times. I mean, they were gigantic all the advertising sections in them, the magazine, all of it was bound in there. And this is back in the seventies that UNC threw all these away. And there was a recycling outfit before recycling was cool called ECOS E C O S in chapel hill, one guy ran it. And he brought all of these, you know, 40 50 years worth of these things. They filled up half a house, uh, cuz he didn't wanna take 'em to the, to the dump. And I've got three of them in storage in North Carolina that are like from 1963. It didn't make sense to continue binding those. But if I, the New York times has done a great job for subscribers anyway of making that stuff available. But, and it's in pretty high res, but it's very. Kind of monotonal doesn't look great. It looks okay. You know, so I don't know. I mean, we, you know, I, I think we need to save the institution, I guess that's where it goes. And, and, and the internet archive is the front of it. [00:17:42] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. The, all the other thing that occured to me is, um, I mentioned earlier the monopoly concerns, the acquisition concerns of. So one of the things that strikes me is how bold this is right now, because, um, apparently also the justice department is suing to, uh, stop penguin from penguin, penguin, random house, which used to be two separate companies. If I recall correctly, uh, from acquiring Simon and Schuster. So, so they're already, you know, the, the publishers are already under, under a microscope a bit. And, and yet still they're, they're, they're taking this rather bold action and that that's interesting. Like, you know, it seems like an awfully, uh, strange time to, but maybe that's part of the strategy. Maybe you just, you know, go full steam ahead into the, into the brick wall and hope that you break through it. I don't, I don't know's um, [00:18:40] Doc Searls: well, it, you know, there's sort of two worldviews that, you know, one is. There are many more than that, but there's sort of two, we could typify one, one seeks to equalize everything by, you know, being fair and, and kind, and forgiving and, and preserving of, of, of culture. And, um, and the other is kind of a might makes right. And what's good for what's good for business is good for America and what's good for big business is really best for America and, and, um, You know, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm worried that in November, the latter will take over and, and then will have a different, you know, or another, another round will have a different justice department that would never go after big business, you know, I don't know. Uh, see. And I'm trying not to make that too political because I think they're, I think business is good for the country. So. [00:19:39] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. [00:19:40] Doc Searls: think a lot of the political left don't have any comprehension of it. So, um, [00:19:46] Katherine Druckman: That is fair, but you know, there is, uh, something to be said for, uh, uh, retaining more options [00:19:57] Doc Searls: yeah, I guess that's the way of putting it. [00:19:58] Katherine Druckman: industries. [00:19:59] Doc Searls: Well, it, it's kind of interesting. We, you know, what wast a conversation the other day about this, that we are, I mean, many years ago, John Updyke um, the great writer is back in the sixties. He said just offhandedly. We live in the age of full convenience. We barely had copiers then and didn't have facts yet. I don't even think, um, the internet wasn't even close. And now we don't think we live in the age of full convenience. We live in the age of immense optionality, um, about a lot of things. We don't have much optionality in, in some, you know, these older cultural institutions, you know, like, like, like libraries. I mean, I'm really afraid that we lose that. Having them in the world is a good thing, you know? [00:20:53] Katherine Druckman: it's. Yeah, it's funny. I guess I'm dating myself, but yeah, I mean, and as a kid, that, that, it's, it's what you did. And, you know, especially, you know, I spent a summer in a, in a small town with, with, uh, some relatives once, and then that's really what you did as a kid. You, you go to the library because that's really the only interesting thing there was do, but, and, and it wasn't, and it, there were. It was, it was a really good library cuz that it was long enough ago that, you know, they had a pretty fantastic selection. And uh, you know, as a kid, you, you, you worked through your, your very long reading list and you earned your gold stars and and you, uh, you expanded your brain hopefully. [00:21:34] Doc Searls: I also see like, um, our younger son, who's now 26, but when he. Starting when he was about six or seven, he just got into books and lived at libraries, um, and lived in bookstores and consumed them, nonstop the physical kind. Now to be fair, when he got into his teens, he did a lot more reading on his phone. Like when we lived in Boston, there's a fantastic private library there called the Atheneum. It's one of the oldest libraries. I think it's the largest private library in the country, you know, the better way, better part of a million. Um, Volumes in it, a, a huge collection of archival stuff. That's just amazing. And, and they, and they had like a reading club there we'd go there and he would go to that thing. And the result of that is he, I don't think he ever got less than a perfect verbal S a T score. And it's not because he's brilliant. It's because he's, he steeped himself in books [00:22:35] Katherine Druckman: Hm. [00:22:36] Doc Searls: and it was the physical kind, you know, that, that matters. It matters a lot. It matters for our brains. I, I mean, obviously humans were not evolved to read, or maybe they were, and we don't know it. Um, we don't have, you know, we know what some people painted in caves. We don't know what they wrote on paper or whatever served for paper way back when, cause it all rotted. But there's, um, there's something about being a verbal species that requires that we're also writers and readers. And that's, you know, and, and teachers and students, and we need to be all those things. And I think that's best done with physical things because I'm an old guy [00:23:22] Katherine Druckman: This. Yeah. Well, I'm, I think I'm turning into an old woman. Cause I'm, as you're talking, I'm reminiscing, I'm thinking about things that, that maybe don't even happen anymore. I'm thinking about when I was in college and, and researching, I was always, you know, if I, first of like art history and stuff like that, I was always, always trying to research the most obscure thing with the most difficult to find sources. Right. So, the hunting, I mean, It was computerized. I'm not . I at least had the benefit of being able to search databases with a computer, but, uh, tracking down the, the most obscure sources and requesting them on inter library loan is it was a process. I don't know if I wonder if that happens still, like getting waiting potentially weeks for a hard copy of something with maybe photographs of, uh, Some objects of art that, that are, you know, hard, hard to get a hand a hold of or something like that. And the, the excitement of waiting for it and checking and coming back and getting your package that had this book from, know, some library across the country. Um, I don't know that that's an experience that, uh, I, I would hate for people to miss out on, but I don't know if it's, if it's still relevant. I mean, surely there must be an occasion here and there for something that defines some old printed only, uh, thing that hasn't been digitized or something, you know, I have no idea. I'm so out of touch [00:24:46] Doc Searls: sure. There's a lot [00:24:46] Katherine Druckman: thing, but, [00:24:48] Doc Searls: Well, I've looked for, I mean, you know, so my father has. I'm looking for it here. I have it. I think I may have it on a shelf here. Um, a book about, um, the Robling company, the Robling company was the one that built that built, that made all of the cabling. That's in suspension bridges for many years, including the George Washington bridge, which he helped build. As a cable Rigg, you know, 600 feet over the water hanging onto cables from Robling. And it was a book about Robling by Robling. That was self-published. And far as I know, I have the only one in existence, you know, I've looked for it online. It's not there. So I have it , you know, and maybe I should just send it to the internet archive. I wanted to give it. The, uh, the museum in Fort Lee, New Jersey, which is where the George Washington bridges anchored on the New Jersey side. But they were closed through most of the pandemic and maybe even earlier. So it's probably better to just send it to the internet archive. They actually keep some of these things. I think they don't just digitize them. I think they keep them. Um, I'll have to check on that. I really don't know. Maybe somebody from there will correct me on. [00:26:02] Katherine Druckman: Maybe. I mean, I hope so. I hope they're keeping the things So I'm wondering if we can tie this into, uh, to something broader than just libraries. I mean, I wonder what else, what else does this [00:26:14] Doc Searls: well there's so there's a, um, I'm I'm a, a fellow, they say with the, um, something small, but significant, I think called a center for the study study of digital life. That starts with the premise that we live digital lives now. And, and, um, and that this matters and deserve study and they actually wanna start. An Institute of higher education of some sort in a way zero basing it on how we learn now, um, versus the old way we did. But the main point there is that we really need to think about as much as we can. It, it's kind of like, this is a metaphor I came up with this morning that, you know, in the physically, the physical world we're in is kind of like the watery world. All creatures were in before some of them got legs and lungs and crawled up on land and, and now they're on land and they have to figure this place out and that's kind of, to me where we're at with the digital world, you know, we've been in it's the water out of which we've started to crawl on our four legs into the digital world that we are not just experiencing, but we're also creating. What do we wanna have from the, from the physical world? How, what do we wanna keep there? How can the digital, what can we do in the digital world? That'll help keep alive the things in the physical world that we actually treasure for. Good reason. You know, it's, it's a tough one, but I think to me, there's this, there's this transition point where we become digital as well as physical beings, but we never stop being physical. there are, there are some things that just don't translate unfortunately, or maybe but well, as a collector of very old things, I I, uh, as a very old thing, [00:28:11] Katherine Druckman: find that hard to, uh, to digitize, but yeah. [00:28:15] Doc Searls: Well, well, that's another thing too, is that if you look at time, um, You know when you're young. I remember thinking old people were, had been on earth for like thousand years. It looked like, you know, because they're old and I am old now. And let me tell you, 75 years goes by really fast. I mean it's time flies. Life is short. It really is short at its longest. It's short. I mean, I try to find out things about like, my grandmother was born in 1882. She died in 1990. That's 108 years later. And she told all these stories about horse, horse, drawn everything in New York city, cobblestone streets, gas lights, um, the arrival of electricity, um, swimming in the Bronx in the in long island sound. A world where as a Catholic girl growing up, like half the women were nuns, I mean all kinds of stuff. And when I go back and look at what her father did, he was the head of the steel and copper plat in graves, union in New York and, or at least worked there. I dunno what his job was because of, there's almost no record of this. you know, of him much less of. Union what it did. I just know that steel and copper played engraving went away. it went away. I'm not sure it was worth it saving or maybe there's still some of it, you know, but it, it, ain't what it was. And I'm not sure if you wanna go back and make a movie about that time, you're gonna, if you're gonna even find a lot of the things that were parts of daily life back then, you know, [00:29:55] Katherine Druckman: It's. Yeah, it's, it's weird how, you know, in our short lives, we seem to be able to change a lot pretty quickly. [00:30:04] Doc Searls: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, [00:30:07] Katherine Druckman: Anyway. Um, I, uh, yeah, sorry. I'm looking around at all of my old crap that I'm sitting right next to, I guess you can't see it. We're we are on a video call, but it is not [00:30:17] Doc Searls: yeah. I could, I could see you have [00:30:19] Katherine Druckman: We have a whole cabinet full of stuff [00:30:21] Doc Searls: place. [00:30:22] Katherine Druckman: here. [00:30:22] Doc Searls: Yeah. Well, I have a lot too, and I, and there's a lot of dumped and, and more I need to because I'm not taking it with me. And I have errors that have no interest in them. So what do you keep, where do you give it? That's a good question. You know? [00:30:41] Katherine Druckman: No museums of all of our, the things we leave behind. [00:30:45] Doc Searls: Well, there's, there's what I, what I might call the, and this actually applies, I think, to this particular. Um, It's the, the line between stuff and shit. And this is what, George Carlin talked about, which is, have you ever noticed that your shit is stuff and everybody else's stuff is shit. And that's really what this lawsuit's about in a way it's kind of like, once it's saying what you're doing is shit and what we're doing is. And, and you know, the other side is saying, no, we're doing, we're doing what we're doing is stuff. And what you're doing to us is shit and that's wrong. [00:31:24] Katherine Druckman: I, I, I sometimes wonder what, what, you know, people who like me like to collect, you know, old stuff. I wonder what it says about us. I, I, you know, I, I, I, there, I have a lot of thoughts. I had an art professor once that. Made the statement that all photography is about death and he doesn't matter what it is, but it's all about death because ultimately that's, you know, that's a moment in time and eventually everything in it is dead, um, which is very morbid, but it's not untrue. Uh, and you know, and I've often I thought, well, maybe, maybe you were just people who are obsessed with time. The idea of time and the passage of it. And we're having an existential crisis about, like you say, it, it flies by and, you know, I start to, I'll blink in a week passes and I'll blink again in a year passes and it's, you know, and I wonder if, if, if it's our human need to grab a hold of it and slow it down, you know, I, I, I surround myself with things that are maybe old and obsolete, but occasionally beautiful. And, and, uh, maybe that's our way of kind of. Reaching in and, and slowing our own, uh, perception of time down a bit. I know it's a weird [00:32:30] Doc Searls: don't know. There's a, um, a, a friend of a friend of mine who's who has been a guest on our other podcast, Andre KRA. He's very big. He's in Germany, in the demo scene. The demo scene is. Doing stuff with old computers, as I understand it, I've never been to one, but it's a, it's a happening thing, especially in Europe. I mean, bring out your apple two, your [00:32:54] Katherine Druckman: Mm. [00:32:55] Doc Searls: 2,400, your, you know, these old things and hacking with them doing, doing stuff with them. Um, uh, they, they matter. I mean, I, I remember, I mean, what was it like to try to get an app? We call an, an app. We call programs back then. Into 48. K I, I, I worked with a, a guy on a, uh, on a blackjack counting program. They tried to get into 48 K and run on and it ran first on the, on the apple two. And then later when they, when the IBM PC. Came with 60 4k, they oh, wow, great. We can write it in. I don't know whether they're writing it then in fourth or some, some language of the time and could get it into 6 64 K whatever it was. Um, and now that's just, you know, a nothing it's it's but there was, it was a working game and it, and it, it helped you count cards in, in Las Vegas or. I'm sure there's no way to run it. Now, if you could find, even find a floppy, a truly floppy, those F floppies really were floppy, you know, uh, the five inch F floppies or whatever they were. So I don't know. I mean, we're losing stuff all the time, you know, but [00:34:13] Katherine Druckman: Hopefully not libraries. [00:34:15] Doc Searls: hopefully libraries. It [00:34:16] Katherine Druckman: sorry, bringing it, bringing it back to the beginning. I really [00:34:19] Doc Searls: back, bring home. [00:34:21] Katherine Druckman: talked for about 37 minutes, I [00:34:23] Doc Searls: That's probably. [00:34:24] Katherine Druckman: um, yeah, I mean, what more is there to say about, Hey, but maybe, maybe we, we need those libraries. [00:34:31] Doc Searls: We do. [00:34:32] Katherine Druckman: I'm, I'm glad you sent, sent the links at least because I I'm glad to have been clued. I had no idea this was going on until you, until you sent me the links. So, uh, you know, [00:34:42] Doc Searls: welcome, but now I have to look closely. [00:34:48] Katherine Druckman: Well, I hope, uh, I will include all of these links in our, uh, episode notes. I hope. Uh, yeah, if you, whatever thoughts, if y'all are still listening, whatever you have. I [00:34:58] Doc Searls: you away yet. [00:34:59] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. Whatever, whatever thoughts you have, uh, we would love to hear them, um, you know, Hey, and you know what support the EF F while we're, while [00:35:06] Doc Searls: Yeah. Yeah. Send some money to [00:35:07] Katherine Druckman: Because somebody's gotta defend [00:35:09] Doc Searls: And the, and the internet archive. [00:35:11] Katherine Druckman: know? Geez. Yeah. support the internet archive, where would we be without them? Um, yeah, we couldn't reminisce about my, my poor, uh, web design skills from 15 years ago without the internet archive. So Hey, let's uh, [00:35:24] doc_searls: I've kept those skills alive. They're [00:35:27] Katherine Druckman: Yep. Cool. Well, thanks everyone for joining us. Uh, and we'll see what we have for you next time.