Xanadu

I still have my Newton and use it mostly as a wireless browser when I'm in bed. Over the years I've accumulated notes about stuff I read about that deserves some attention. As I was reading the latest Wired, I came across an article referring to Xanadu, which immediately made me react: I had a very old note in my Newton saying that I should check that precise same research project because of its potential to organize information.
This got me interested in following other threads I had initiated in the Newton just in case some of the ideas had any value today:

• In an economy that assigns so much value into ideas, we should have an algorithm to make sure we can track who had a particular idea first. I have a proposal based on certificate servers and digital signatures to resolve that.
• An essay on why the term "idea factory" is wrong and how the "idea farm" is more accurate.
• A comment on a book by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on the Noosphere.
• A proposal to build an ethics framework for the future based on science fiction.

Current economic models are having a hard time trying to figure out how movements such Creative Commons will impact their ability to maintain a system that charges for ideas to flow. Large media companies pretend to be idea factories, when in fact they are only farming ideas from bright people with no resources to distribute their work successfully. A lot of work has been done to counteract that trend and although the precise strategy is still not devised, I'm certain the battle will eventually be won by those who support the free flow of information. In just the same way that Project Xanadu was overthrown by another little project called "the world wide web" based on open standards. After all, we've been shown the dark future when large corporations manipulate knowledge to profit from it.