The ExI Lending Library [was: book availability and cost]

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Jan 14 2003 - 11:28:48 MST


Nathanael wrote an interesting comment about the cost of books.

> The local libraries don't have any of the books I've been trying to get. I
> don't have the extra cash to constantly buy books at like $20-$30
> a piece. If anyone has any other solution to this email me.
> I was wandering if anyone has a bunch of books sitting on a shelf somewhere
> that they would get rid of at a reasonable price.

This, and perhaps Anders' comments on altruism, started me thinking.
Of course one of the barriers to transhumanistic development is a
lack of access to the resources required to develop thinking in
these areas. After all, look at what was required to spread
"religions" (*not* that I am comparing Extropianism or Transhumanism
to "religions"). It required widespread availability of books like
the Bible or the Koran. [One could probably counter-argue that
Catholicism and/or Islam were spread mostly by the "keepers of the
faith", but for this discussion lets assume that having access to
"the word" promotes its dissemination.]

Now, most town or city libraries are going to have relatively few of
the works we consider important (see for example many of the books
on the ExI reading list or my personal reading list). University
Libraries may be somewhat better, but many fewer people have access
to them. It would be a highly interesting exercise to determine what
fraction of perhaps several thousand college or university libraries
in the U.S. have copies of either Nanosystems or Nanomedicine.
[Someone who considers themself a hot-shot programmer, could whip
up a perl script that could query all of the online catalogs and
answer this question and *really* impress me!]. Now I happen to
own 3 and 2 copies of these books respectively, though 1 copy of
each happens to be in Moscow where I don't have easy access to
them currently. But the point remains that I have copies of many
extropic/transhumanist books, some read, some unread, that I would
be more than happy to share on a temporary basis if the costs can
be made low enough.

Enter [stage left] National and International ExI Lending Libraries...

What I am thinking is something like this:

We try to develop a system that strikes a balance between the people
who are resource (e.g. book) rich, but time poor with the people who
are relatively cost constrained but time rich.

I have a lot of books (really more than most people can imagine
quantities of books). Many of these are elements of the extropic
reading list, others are scientific & technical as well as college
textbooks (unfortunately it would probably take weeks for me to
create a complete online list). In addition, at least in the U.S.
there is a 4th class book shipment rate that is relatively inexpensive.
Books don't ship fast, but they get there eventually. Finally, since
I send and receive most of my mail via a P.O. Box (a very good strategy
for people prominent in the extropic/transhumanist community who think
there is even a slight chance that they might become targets for any
loony-toons luddite who can get their home mailing address out of
easily accessed credit records). So I'm frequently at the post office
and picking something up or dropping something off isn't a significant
additional [time] cost to me (at least while I continue to live in Seattle).

So, how would this work? It looks to me like someone who wants to borrow
a book, should:
a) be willing to pay the postage (to send/receive the book).
b) probably be willing to send a "sticky" mailing label with the request
   for a book.
c) agree to a period for the book "loan" (1-2 months perhaps based on
   book page count/technical difficulty?).
d) agree to pay fines to ExI if they do not return the book on time.
   ($0.10/day?). [Without negative consequences some of us may not
   behave properly.]

Now, the interesting thing about this is that I suspect without too
much difficulty, it ought to be possible to develop a distributed
lending library system. The only thing I see as potentially difficult
is lowering international shipping costs/bureaucracy such that it becomes
feasible to do this across country borders.

Now, one of the interesting things about this, that might have to be
discussed, is the fact that one may receive the high-lighting, margin
notes, etc. of the owner of the circulating copy of a text. Then there
is the problem of how one contributes to this. What I have read of
Greg Stock's "Redesigining Humans" was in the copy Carol Tilly loaned
to me. I had to read it with an extra pad where I could note pages
and comments such as -- no/wrong/short-sighted/etc. to avoid defacing
Carol's copy. But I would like to think that some people would be
interested in what I think is important in a text -- at the same time
I'd be fascinated by comments that Anders, Damien, Max, Greg, Robin, etc.
would make on a text (since their perspectives are quite orthogonal to mine).
Obviously this gets problematic after a text has been sent out 10+ times.

Normal "reviews" don't cut the mustard. You have to be able to delve
down into the specific points of an argument and point out precisely
*where* it is on swampy ground. Reading an article or book so annotated
is *much* more educational. It raises the interesting question as
to whether the extropic/transhumanist vector should be to read a
"virginal" book or an "annotated" book.

I do not know if the implementation of something like this is feasible.
I do know I'm willing to help explore it if others are.

Robert



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