A2K Access to Knowledge

A2K, i.e. Access To Knowledge = open access to knowledge and knowledge tools for the broadest number of people

A2K is a meme which tries to unify various approaches such as Open Access, Open Content, Open Knowledge, Creative Commons,Free Software, under one umbrella.

Definition

Access to knowledge refers to four different things.

"* 1. Human knowledge-- education, know-how, and the creation of human capital through learning new skills.

• 2. Information-- like news, medical information, data, and weather reports.

• 3. Knowledge-embedded goods (KEG's)-- goods where the inputs to production involve significant amounts of scientific and technical knowledge, often but not exclusively protected by intellectual property rights. Some key examples are drugs, electronic hardware, and computer software, but in contemporary economic life, information and intellectual property provide an increasingly important share of almost all valuable goods.

• 4. Tools for the production of KEG's-- examples include scientific and research tools, materials and compounds for experimentation, computer programs and computer hardware.

The goal of access to knowledge is to improve access to all four of these components of the knowledge economy:

• 1. Access to human knowledge

• 2. Access to information

• 3. Access to KEG's

• 4. Access to tools for producing KEG's"

(http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/04/what-is-access-to-knowledge.html)

Why Access to Knowledge is an important goal

Jack M. Balkin:

"First, if you can produce the same or greater amounts of these four components and distribute them more widely and equitably both within countries and across national borders, justice demands this.

Second, if you can spur additional innovation and information production in areas that existing market structures currently do not serve-- e.g., drugs for diseases in the third world, educational materials for persons in the poorest countries-- justice also demands this.

Let me put it another way: Access to knowledge means that the right policies for information and knowledge production can increase both the total production of information and knowledge goods, and can distribute them in a more equitable fashion. The goal is first, promoting economic efficiency and development, and second, widespread distribution of those knowledge and informational goods necessary to human flourishing in our particular historical moment� the global networked information economy.

I repeat: It's not just a trade off between equity and efficiency. We are not simply fighting about how to divide up a pie. Access to knowledge is about making a larger pie and distributing it more fairly. Or, at the risk of extending this pie metaphor well beyond its appropriate scope, access to knowledge means giving everyone the skills to make their own pies and share them widely with others." (http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/04/what-is-access-to-knowledge.html)

A2K and P2P

Jack M. Balkin:

"A2K is about promoting human development by promoting decentralized access to information tools and by encouraging participation in the production of information goods by large numbers of people.

Access to knowledge is about whether information production will be primarily centralized and proprietary or whether large parts of it should be decentralized and participatory. What we've been trying to show in our seminar here at Yale is that a vast range of information policies, ranging from free and open source software to universal service policies in telecom to networks of farmers sharing agricultural information aren't just about stuffing people's Christmas stockings with more information goods, but rather giving individual people tools to think with, build with, form communities with, and then watch these communities take off, enabling people to make their own knowledge and information goods either individually or through peer production models." (http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/04/what-is-access-to-knowledge.html)