This is like a Heinlein Novel!

I recently enjoyed a recorded talk by Christine Peterson, co-founder of the Foresight Nanotech Institute, on open-source security and politics.

The basic point is to get alpha geeks to think about what they can contribute to basically polticial questions--to better, less invasive physical national security but also to stand up and fight against absurdities like polling machines running proprietary software, when everyone in software knows open source would provide a much better check on potential hacks.

She has a section that mirrors how I feel about the new OCLC Policy and librarians' and library technologists' responsibility to get engaged and do heroic things, to keep libraries "free to all" and not the cornerstone of a perpetual monopoly:

So you may be sitting there going, "God, the Constitution! Franklin, Jefferson... this is like a Heinlein novel! She's trying to convince me I'm in a Heinlein novel, where there's heroic action to take."

Well, guess what, you are! You really are. This is a critical time. And there's going to be huge decisions and a lot of work to be done. And you're the best ones to do it. I hate to tell you that. I know you have other things to do.