The most powerful institutions in our society don’t like the Net much. Oh, they like their reduced IT costs and they like their delusion that they can use it to market their messages to billions of us essentially for free, but they don’t like what so many of us feel is the liberating, connected value of the Internet. These institutions look at the Internet and see a mix of threat and opportunity. We — some goodly set of us — look at the Internet and see hope.

But one large institution may turn out to be special, as Charlie Nesson of the Berkman argued against my despair a couple of weeks ago: Universities. And here’s a little sign of hope: According to the NY Times, seven American univerisites have agreed to make freely available software they develop collaboratively. Janice Brand, who blogged the NYT report at CIO, says:

Peter A. Freeman, assistant director for computer and information science and engineering at the National Science Foundation, came up with today’s best quote: “It’s the science, stupid.’ It’s not the intellectual property.”

Bingo. And it’s the culture, stupid, not the copyright.

(Thanks to Kurt Starsnic for the link. Kurt also makes a good point about the Web coverage of the NYC transit strike.) [Tags: universities internet]

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