by Jack Seay
May 15, 2003One of Xanadu's (and token_word's) strong points is that is will give every viewpoint an equal opportunity to be heard. Every minority opinion, regardless of how few agree with it, can at least be heard. This is in sharp contrast with other forms of mass media, where either the commercial sponsors and/or the subscribers narrow the number of allowed points-of-view to fit in a narrowed bandwidth.
Books also have many limitations. You can publish one on nearly any topic, but will be constrained in many ways: who you can quote and how much, the whims and demands of editors, and financial resources. If you want to make minor changes and corrections, you may have to wait a few years until the book can be re-typeset, if that even happens.
Xanadu and token_word allow unlimited and unhindered quotation of all it's published documents. So if you think you have a refutation of a nearly universally accepted scientific, philosophical, religious, economic, political, or sociological theory, law, doctrine, convention, or opinion; you have complete freedom to publish your refutation. You can freely and to any amount quote, without asking permission, any of the documents you want to refute (as long as they have been published on Xanadu or token_word). You must however, accept the fact that anyone can now have the freedom to publish a refutation of your refutation, freely and fully quoting you, and without asking your permission. You can, of course, respond, quoting them. You can also fully and freely quote anyone in support of your thesis, or even write a slightly modified version of some document you mostly agree with. You will get paid for each word you write and everyone you quote will get paid for every word they write - every time anyone reads it.
Xanadu will have free documents as well, especially public domain and those produced by businesses. But even the not-free documents can be very cheap, due to the low costs of publishing. token_word now keeps track of every single character of text you purchase. If you read it again in another document that quotes it, you won't pay for it again. such attention to minute detail is easy for a computer.
Since royalty payments in Xanadu can be so simply and fairly handled; writers, musicians, movie-makers, and artists will wish for their works to be reused as much as possible.
The strong cross-pollination of subjects supported by being able to quote in depth and link in many dimensions may help make some much-needed changes in the way we educate ourselves. Rather than each "subject" or "discipline" being treated as an isolated island of knowledge, the rich linkages of cause and effect across all of them can be shown and seen from many viewpoints. Like seeing the intricate symbiotic relationships of an ecosystem from the vantage points of many locations, at many times, and at many size scales (everything from a satellite view to a microscope).