Legitimised Theft: Distributed Apprenticeship in Weblog Networks

Lilia Efimova et al. "Legitimised Theft: Distributed Apprenticeship in Weblog Networks." Paper presented at I-KNOW04, 30 June - 2 July 2004, Graz, Austria. The idea here is that a person can blog their thought process (thinking out loud on their blog)... or decision making process... and the reader can learn how to do something.... so it forms kind of an apprenticeship... It's legitimized theft because you're taking someone's idea that they've published for their own benefit.... We actually see this all the time. For example, someone blogged how they had figured out how to add a google search block and offered up the code. I read the blog, applied for my own api key, installed search. Sean Carroll added it to his site after seeing it on my site. Yes, it's a meme, but it's more than that because it's learning how to do something. Another example: say you're figuring out a physics problem... you offer your thought process... are corrected in comments ... an third person reads it and learns how to do the problem. Much quicker than publishing a paper.