>Or more precisely to maximize the speed at which we acquire knowledge/technology.
Who do you mean by "we"? Because you certainly can not be referring to "we" as in
mankind. Locking away knowledge behind walls of bureaucracy and artificial monopolies
will certainly not speed up progress, but instead slowly grind it to a halt.
Just look at the state of the patent wars. Everyone is suing each other, or claiming
to just collect patents to be able to counter-sue. Microsoft, Google, Apple, and all
the other big players probably each have patents on all technologies all of them use,
a good amount of those more than once and worded as ridiculously over-general claims.
So if by "we" you are referring to the few dozen mega-corps that pretty much control
our shared heritage of knowledge, then yes, you are quite likely correct.
If, on the other hand, you want to maximize the rate of technological advancement for
the "we" as in all of humanity, then embrace Open Access, get rid of patents and
all that other nonsense, and realize that incremental, cooperative development
will speed up progress by magnitudes.
Who do you mean by "we"? Because you certainly can not be referring to "we" as in mankind. Locking away knowledge behind walls of bureaucracy and artificial monopolies will certainly not speed up progress, but instead slowly grind it to a halt.
Just look at the state of the patent wars. Everyone is suing each other, or claiming to just collect patents to be able to counter-sue. Microsoft, Google, Apple, and all the other big players probably each have patents on all technologies all of them use, a good amount of those more than once and worded as ridiculously over-general claims.
So if by "we" you are referring to the few dozen mega-corps that pretty much control our shared heritage of knowledge, then yes, you are quite likely correct.
If, on the other hand, you want to maximize the rate of technological advancement for the "we" as in all of humanity, then embrace Open Access, get rid of patents and all that other nonsense, and realize that incremental, cooperative development will speed up progress by magnitudes.