Octavio Rossell Tabet
From the Paleolithic to the Atomic Age
Human knowledge has been communicated from generation to generation and has been recorded primarily through writing. The line of progress in that knowledge has been slowly drawn, defining several “eras,” which take their names from the natural materials used to make tools: stone, copper, bronze, and iron.
The mastery of fire and agriculture were the milestones that made all of the above possible. No other technological advance had influenced the evolution of the species with equal or greater magnitude… until the last century.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, the term “atom,” from the Greek ἄτομος ( a – without / tomos – section), ceased to mean “indivisible.” The existence of the electron had been demonstrated through direct measurement, accelerating the understanding of physical phenomena such as electromagnetism and the practical use of semiconductors.
This technological advance affected nearly every activity of the human species, with very few exceptions. Medicine gained the ability to study organisms with tools that previously did not exist, such as the X-ray machine. Music could create sounds no longer through the vibration of materials but through synthesis and electronic circuits. Energy could be produced by manipulating different chemical elements, and new elements were even created. The list is immense, but our way of understanding nature and the universe changed forever.
About 5,000 years ago, written language began to be used. Everyday use of information technology and computing is only about 50 years old. In other words, only 0.01% of human history has passed with the use of this technology, and in this field in particular, the computer’s evolutionary growth as a working tool has been exponential.
From the invention of the printing press to the present, the growth curve of communication has experienced an exponential, almost asymptotic rise. None of the previous major technological milestones—not even the mastery of fire or the wheel—achieved such a level of integration as this vast system that interconnects almost all people in the world and operates in every corner of human activity.
The invention of the transistor, a direct offspring of the understanding of quantum physics and semiconductors, was the true ignition point. This tiny device made the miniaturization of electronics possible, leading directly to the integrated circuit, the microprocessor, and therefore to the personal computer and the internet. Thus, the “Atomic Age” became the “Information Age.” However, this new era brought with it a paradox that would have been incomprehensible to the pillars of modern science.
The Information Age
Plato (427–347 BC) defined the concept of the “Idea” (from the Greek: εἶδος – eidos / ἰδέα – idea ), establishing in his philosophy a clear distinction between the world of ideas (the intelligible), which in this context is synonymous with “form,” and the world of the material (or sensory). The world of ideas, as defined by this figure of Ancient Greece, is something eternal (what we might today call “divine”), while everything material (that which is tangible) is a representation or manifestation of the idea. Plato called this “True Knowledge,” an abstract realm accessible through reason and collective dialogue ( maieutics ). Knowledge was a common good, a light that, when shared, illuminated everyone without diminishing for the one who possessed it.
This concept remained in force for more than 2,500 years… until the last century.
From antiquity until very recently, it was considered absurd for any discovery, idea, or even conjecture to be hidden from public view. Louis Pasteur, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Gregor Mendel, James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, and an immense list of others—of whom these are only a few distinguished examples—all shared the same custom and principle: upon arriving at the conclusion of an idea or making a scientific discovery, the first thing they had in mind was to publish and share the conclusions of their work—to share their knowledge.
However, during that same century, an organization whose purpose was oriented toward “protecting” knowledge. Its legal foundation was based on the definition of “patents” as an international agreement designed to guarantee this “protection.”
When a patent registers an “idea” while restricting access to its knowledge—arguing that this privileges the economic profit of the “owner of that idea”—it not only contradicts Plato, but also causes serious harm to scientific progress, particularly in countries that do not belong to the “First World” (nearly 80% of countries are not part of this group).
The very name of this organization (WIPO) contains troubling contradictions that I will not explore in depth in this text, though I will address them in another work that I invite readers to examine carefully.
In summary, the text referenced by the previous link warns us that the term “Intellectual Property” refers to a collection of laws and agreements such as copyright, trademark registration, trade secrets, and patents, without distinction—at least in principle.
Patents and the Absurd
Thus, during the second half of the twentieth century, “ideas” began to be patented, reaching surreal—almost dadaist—limits. Let us look at some examples of patents that remain active today in the field of computing:
Slide to unlock: Apple patented the gesture of sliding a finger to unlock touchscreens, despite the fact that similar functions already existed in earlier devices. This led to lawsuits against competitors such as Samsung.
Tap to call: Apple again patented the action of tapping a phone number in a message to initiate a call. HTC was sued for infringing this patent.
Rectangular tablet: Apple (surprise!) patented the rectangular shape with rounded edges for tablets, disregarding the fact that it was already a generic design.
Page Up/Page Down: Microsoft registered the “Page Up” and “Page Down” navigation keys in 2008 for vertical navigation, despite their existence since the 1980s.
I could extend this list to truly enormous lengths. I have cited examples from computing, but in every field of knowledge there are registered ideas that would scarcely survive a test of coherence. For example, if you build a swing and sway sideways rather than forward and backward, you are infringing a patent. For skeptics, I leave the link to the document.
That example represents the ridiculous extreme of the pyramid, but let us look at others that are less amusing:
The breast cancer gene: Myriad Genetics succeeded in patenting the isolated BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. For years, this meant that no other laboratory in the United States could perform diagnostic tests for these mutations, increasing costs and limiting research. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately revoked the patent in 2013, but the precedent it set was alarming.
Pharmaceutical industry and essential medicines: Patents on drug formulas keep prices artificially high, denying access to life-saving treatments in developing countries. The struggle over generic antiretroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS remains the clearest example.
Terminator seeds: Companies such as Monsanto (now Bayer) developed and patented genetically modified seeds designed to become sterile in the second generation, forcing farmers to buy new seeds each season instead of saving part of their harvest. This ties food sovereignty to a commercial contract.
The problem is that today, the discovery of new knowledge is often accompanied by an immediate impulse to “register” the idea under the belief that only a patent can “protect” the commercial rights of products derived from it. Progressively and systematically, the joy of creation and invention—and even the very act of studying, the pleasure of learning and teaching science—becomes a minefield.
It is entirely possible that some element of any idea we conceive may already infringe the terms of an existing patent. For example:
Suppose you decide to develop a program that displays an emoticon when a button is pressed twice. Without even entering into the patent and software licensing complications related to such a simple project, pressing a button twice—a double click—is patented .
I am an enthusiast of the Free Software movement. In the GNU/Linux operating system, there is a well-known image editing program called GIMP. Some people avoid using this remarkable software because it cannot export files using the CMYK color format employed in printing with pigments. If GIMP were to include this functionality, it could no longer remain Free Software due to licensing implications. Likewise, the use of PANTONE colors faces the same restrictions within this software.
Almost every electronic product manufactured today contains hardware and software components whose operation we are forbidden to understand. Sometimes, even the factories assembling these mysterious components do not fully know how they work. Naturally, this knowledge is also unavailable in universities attempting to train serious professionals in these fields.
Without entering into the debate over privacy versus security, let us examine a reality that, after the case involving Edward Snowden, is no longer speculation but a proven fact:
Our mobile phones can listen to conversations from several meters away, identify spoken words and convert them into text, store all sent and received messages, capture geographic location with timestamps and patterns of permanence, and link all of the above to the identity of the device’s owner.
One does not need to develop this argument much further to reach a conclusion that, before Snowden, was reserved for so-called “conspiracy theorists.” Mobile phone manufacturers have openly boasted about location features for lost devices. BlackBerry, for instance, included the capability to turn on a phone remotely—even if it had been switched off—to emit its location signal.
Read that carefully: if the phone was turned off, you could remotely switch it on.
How could it receive the command to turn on if it was off? The logical conclusion is that it was never fully off at all. As a corollary, capturing and storing audio through a microphone can be achieved with a virtually imperceptible battery drain.
Denied Knowledge
Denied Knowledge atrophies the scientific heritage of any nation, because it turns study and creation into activities dangerously subject to violations of the laws of what is misleadingly called “Intellectual Property.”
No expert can study how a large portion of the hardware and software operating in almost all the systems we use today actually work. These technological developments cannot be researched in the universities of our countries: manufacturers prohibit their study, and therefore it becomes impossible to learn how to produce them. Under such conditions, it is impossible to become a true expert in a field of knowledge.
How can any country develop under these conditions, when there is so much weakness and ignorance systematically generated and blindly accepted?
Denied Knowledge creates perpetual technological dependency. Countries that cannot study, modify, and manufacture their own technology are condemned to remain mere consumers and assemblers of finished products. The digital and technological gap is not reduced—it widens.
Moreover, the impossibility of auditing the software and hardware we use—especially proprietary software—has extremely serious implications for national security and individual privacy. How can we trust that an operating system or an application contains no backdoors if its source code is a commercial secret?
Again, I do not tire of repeating it: the Snowden case demonstrated that this is not unfounded paranoia, but a reality. Lack of transparency is the perfect breeding ground for espionage and control.
A Solution to the Problem
If the purpose of registering a patent is to “protect” the rights of the creator of an idea and define the conditions for studying, manufacturing, and using an idea once it is publicly shared, there are licensing models capable of achieving this without contradicting the author’s rights.
If the true objective is to encourage innovation and protect creators without strangling collective progress, alternatives to the current model of restrictive patents already exist:
For Software and Culture
Free Software licenses (compatible with the GNU GPL), Open Source licenses , and Creative Commons licenses.
Far from giving work away, these licenses protect authorship and establish clear conditions of use. The business model shifts away from selling “boxes” containing secret content and instead focuses on customization, technical support, consulting, and value-added services built around open and auditable standards.
Companies such as Red Hat and WordPress have demonstrated that this model is not only viable but highly successful.
For Science and Physical Technology Open Hardware and Open Patents .
Movements such as Open Source Hardware promote the release of blueprints, schematics, and designs so that anyone may study, modify, manufacture, and distribute devices.
Projects such as Arduino, ESP32, and Raspberry Pi illustrate the democratizing power of this approach.
For Academia Open Access.
Research funded with public money should be publicly accessible. Paying to access scientific papers is another form of “Denied Knowledge” that slows scientific progress in countries with fewer resources.
In addition, there are initiatives such as open patents and patent pools , in which patent holders license their patents freely or under reasonable terms for research or specific uses, ensuring that knowledge does not remain blocked.
During the struggle against COVID-19, we saw laboratories temporarily sharing vaccine patents in order to accelerate global production—an implicit admission that closed models fail in emergencies.
“Knowledge is power,” indeed. But in the twenty-first century, whoever controls access to knowledge concentrates that power in unprecedented ways.
The question we must ask ourselves is: are we using that power to illuminate, or to conceal?
The real wars that should be fought in the future should not be over natural resources, but over the right to know. Through that right, we may better discover how those resources can be sufficient for everyone—as they were understood to be… until the last century.
This article is licensed under CC-BY-ND.
