Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 455 - 99: Shared Resources

Chapter 455: Chapter 99: Shared Resources

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That must have taken place within the Rama Project District. At that time, there were still a few months before "Zhu Rong" stole the information.

David took a group of people out for a BBQ under the pretext of "building relationships."

Yawgmoth and Xiang Shan were a team. Xiang Shan placed a thick string of bacon on the charcoal fire to grill.

"Yog." Xiang Shan was facing Yawgmoth and began to speak.

Yawgmoth was wearing headphones, rotating the barbecue while nodding his head, seemingly not hearing him.

So Xiang Shan lifted a large metal skewer threaded with chicken wings and tapped it on the edge of the grill: "Yog."

Yawgmoth pulled down one earphone: "Huh?"

"Just asking," Xiang Shan said, "I’m just purely curious, nothing else. You can ponder this riddle yourself. It’s just... those things the FBI is accusing you of, did you... well..."

"Did I do it?" Yawgmoth stared at Xiang Shan, his hand ceasing to turn the meat.

Xiang Shan looked up at the sky: "I understand. These kind of things, it’s best not to say outright, but... I’m just curious."

"What are you curious about?" Yawgmoth countered.

"Just..." Xiang Shan lowered his voice, "pure curiosity, I guess. What kind of mindset is it to do something taboo?"

Yawgmoth rolled his eyes: "Heh."

Then, he turned the chicken wing over, examined the crisp layer forming on the skin, and then sprinkled it with a handful of red powder.

"To view someone else’s ideals through the lens of morbid curiosity... don’t you think it’s impolite?"

"Yes, it’s a bit," Xiang Shan admitted. "But still, I’m curious."

Yawgmoth sighed and then put his headphones back on.

After this batch of meat was ready, two other people took over from Xiang Shan’s group. They even brought large cuts of beef with specific thermometers inserted into them.

Entire cases of beer and sparkling wine were opened and shared.

Xiang Shan hardly drank, so he sat in the corner quietly pulling apart the chicken.

Yawgmoth placed his soda can down next to Xiang Shan and, with bare hands, picked up a chicken wing and took a bite before asking, "From childhood to now, haven’t you ever done something that skirted the edges of the rules?"

Xiang Shan laughed: "I work with materials and hardware; there aren’t many tricks to play, right?"

"There are still plenty of tricks you can play," Yawgmoth sneered, as he picked up another chicken wing. "And besides, I didn’t do it just for the thrill. I had to do it."

"Had to, huh..." Xiang Shan nodded, indicating he sort of understood.

"Sort of my ass," Yawgmoth said. "I think you clearly don’t understand what ’had to do it’ means — knowledge must be shared."

"Right, because sharing knowledge is good..." Xiang Shan remarked.

"Not because ’sharing knowledge is good’," Yawgmoth retorted, "but because only ’sharing’ is just. It’s only fair when knowledge is shared."

Xiang Shan nodded. While he was skilled at argument, at times like this, he usually agreed.

But Yawgmoth continued, "I never understood why some people think knowledge can be privatized..."

"It’s not incomprehensible. Allowing those who discover knowledge to benefit from that encourages explorers," Xiang Shan said. "Although I hate to admit it, the reason science developed so rapidly after the Age of Discovery is that it stood with imperialism. Knowledge helped empires expand and hence, could profit, so humanity directed resources this way."

"I don’t deny that ’knowledge can profit’," Yawgmoth’s tone grew more intense, "I reject that ’knowledge can be privatized.’ That’s the greatest evil."

He posed a question to Xiang Shan: "What do you think knowledge is?"

Xiang Shan swallowed the meat in his mouth, holding a chicken bone: "This... the concept is very broad, hard to explain. I could say ’knowledge’ is a kind of... means of production. Or maybe, the ’result of labor’ for scientists and researchers? This question can be described from many angles."

Yawgmoth nodded: "Well, let me use this language to describe it then. ’Knowledge’ is a special kind of means of production. Its transfer should originally be very simple. In our age, it often just means Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, a process that might only involve the movement of a cluster of electrons, through a few crystals... In this area, you definitely know more than I do, right."

Xiang Shan nodded, that much was true.

"Knowledge should be like this. With just a little bit of resources, it can be replicated on a massive scale. Thus, changing the world in every corner of human society. However, humanity has imagined its own ’constraints,’ limiting this circulation—that is ’intellectual property’!"

Xiang Shan continued to nod, but still said, "Although I agree with this perspective, most people do not, right?"

"Is the view ’agreed upon by most people’ always correct?"

"Ah... probably not," Xiang Shan scratched his head. "But sometimes that’s how things are. If everyone thinks it’s wrong, then no matter how reasonable it might be, it’s still wrong. Moreover, I do know a number of people who think scholars can decide for themselves what to do with their results. It’s noble to share, but one shouldn’t be criticized for not wanting to."

"Heh, traitors," Yawgmoth said.

"But that’s how humanity is."

"That isn’t right," Yawgmoth closed his eyes. "Miners extract ores from the earth, and from then on, in that previously ownerless ore, the labor of the miner solidifies. Humanity hasn’t taken possession of any atoms of nature, only transformed existing things, and in this process, added a human-invented scale to them—value."

"But knowledge is different. All knowledge is created by humanity, from Thales and Democritus, Socrates to Plato, then to Al-Haytham and Farabi in the tenth century, to Paracelsus and Copernicus, Galileo in the sixteenth century... and then all the way to Isaac Newton, to Charles Darwin, what we call ’science’ became what we understand today.

If someone wants to declare a certain piece of knowledge private, then that person should first pay usage fees to all the predecessors for ’reaching that outcome.’ Everything used, all language, all paradigms, they are the knowledge of the ones before."

Yawgmoth looked at Xiang Shan and said, "Using what others have gifted to all of humanity to create one’s own private property, what does that make you?"

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