If the Alphabet was Patented

Elon Musk, CEO, Tesla Motors was in the news some time back for announcing that his company is going to hand over the keys to hundreds of its patents so as to help the electric vehicle technology develop faster, globally.

This is reminiscent of Tim Berners-Lee who refused to patent the World Wide Web. Or before him, Linus.

And even before that Alexander Fleming who, when asked why he didn’t want to patent penicillin, asked, “Can you patent the sun?”

This note is in a way a continuation of one of my previous posts which revolves around using and controlling knowledge for personal wealth augmentation.

The debate around patents isn’t new. Patenting incentivises research, believes the pro-group. It prevents the development of knowledge that can help humanity at large, says the anti-group.

While we comprehend the patenting of newer, modern technologies in India, we stop agreeing with the concept when a western entity wants to patent say, turmeric. We believe that that is ridiculous because the benefits of turmeric have always been in the public knowledge domain. At this moment we could sit for a moment and think – what if those ‘vedic’ people had laws that helped binding their knowledge into arrangements whereby their future generations would be paid every time someone used a turmeric paste to heal a wound or cure a bad cough.

And as a colleague- a vociferous believer of a non-patented world argues- what of the alphabet you use to write this blog was patented? And you had to pay a fee every time you wrote? Or you paid every time you used numbers? It seems ludicrous when we think of paying for everything we use simply because when this was high technology or higher learning, no one thought of ‘owning’ this knowledge.

The concept of knowledge belonging to the world at large comes from older civilizations where society was above the individual. I recall reading the lines in the book, My Name is Red where it is said- to paraphrase loosely- the ancient cultures have left behind unmatched art because the artist was nameless and egoless. It was the art he created, mostly in the name of his God that made it so spiritual and pure. Individualism, a concept that was incubated in Western societies, he indicates, has lessened the sheen of the nameless beauty in art. The character says that art will no longer be as great if it is recognised by the name of the artist because it involves the individual ego.

There is enough material to read on older, tribal societies that yet follow ancient norms of living as a community above living as individual. The joys and benefits of that living are easy to understand. But of course, it is impossible for us living as we are today to imagine changing our surroundings on their head.

So is there a way to incorporate these ideas in our lives? A simple suggestion was made by a 92-year old Japanese doctor when he was asked the secret of his active and happy life. He said simply: Before the age of 60, work for yourself; after that work for society. The element of looking away from the self and focusing on the greater, common good is suggested one way or the other by all these wise men and civilizations. Maybe it’s time we bring in the element of community service in small ways in our lives. Ironically, this would serve a greater selfish end of probably locating happiness and peace.

IDENTITY AND CRISIS

Who are you?

I posed this question to myself and tried to answer it. The response was something like this- female, Indian, Kashimiri, ex-corporate executive now an entrepreneur…..Other things like age and characteristics followed. I then did a dip stick survey. I asked a few people the question: Who are you? Explain to an alien.

Their responses were interesting. Some people halted at defining their professions if they had changed track or were on a sabbatical. Others fumbled over their religion if they had parents from different religions. But no one doubted themselves at the first descriptor: their gender.

Most of us live in a convenient space where people are neatly divided under two, completely separate genders. While we know the issues of belonging to our gender, we have never given a thought to how it must be to have our gender under a scanner.

This is something Dutee Chand, 18, has been dealing with. And has had the biggest shocks of her life connected to. This June, she won two gold medals at the Junior Athletics Championships. She was set to compete in the IAAF and Commonwealth Games when on July 12 her world began to crumble. The doctor at the Sports Authority of India called her, conducted some tests over three days and told her, without giving any explanation, that she couldn’t compete. She first thought she may not have cleared the drugs tests. But she knew she had never taken any drugs.

What she didn’t know is that she had a condition medically known as hyperandrogenism. Due to this, she produces more of testosterone, the ‘male’ hormone, than the average woman. So she was barred from competing as a woman.

It would feel strange if your gender identity was questioned, even more if you were not allowed to do your work due to it. Interestingly, in science there isn’t even one marker that conclusively separates male from female. Every woman produces male hormones, men produce female hormones. The gender as we recognise is a blend of many factors in many nuances. Let’s say, there’s no litmus test for defining a person’s gender. Most of us fall in the range where we ‘appear’ like men or women to everyone else. But in sports this is put under the scanner quite intrusively.

Does an unclear, gender-specific appearance of a person make us judge them beyond their work and behaviour?


Do leave behind your answer.