Re: [xmca] copy of Change Lab paper

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Beneath the banter, there are serious issues at stake in the exchange over
trademarking. I did not
mean to hijack that conversation into loyalty oaths, let alone phone-sex
workers with tenure (she should never have dragged in a student).

The original issue DOES seems worth discussion. Everyone is constrained in
what research they can do, what jobs they can hold, etc., for reasons that
could be termed "political-economic." It would be a seriously interesting
undertaking to find out how people manage to fund deviant research in the
way in which one sometimes hears it said that CHAT scholars do. LCHC has
played the artful dodger, but its not easy to remain nimble for many
decades. Lois and her colleagues have an unusual model for funding their
work. I am not sure if "All Starts" can be a trademark, or if the
organization faces such pressures, but i can imagine it. As Finland has
privatized, the initial problematics of the Change Lab (registered
trademark) have changed for researchers there. Etc.

The issue of a needing a trademark to keep from getting ripped off by BIG
CAPITAL seems real, but somehow, to me, unfortunate. Its feels like it
reduces the public sphere.

Perhaps just my limited understanding, but I think that the intersection of
ideas, careers, and the political economic conditions we work under, and
their combined influence on what we can think and say, would be worth trying
to inform each other about. A lot of us are in the same boat and the aquatic
termites are pretty busy eating us into the water.

But maybe its silence that's golden?
mike

mike


On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 10:01 AM, smago <smago@uga.edu> wrote:

> Scroll to the bottom of http://www.busfin.uga.edu/forms/security_oath.pdfto see the loyalty oath required of Georgia System employees. I also had to
> sign one at the U. of Oklahoma where I taught from 1990-8. I don't violate
> the constitutions of Georgia or the USA that I know of, but some cases are
> interesting. See e.g. http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/124369/.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> Behalf Of mike cole
> Sent: Saturday, October 02, 2010 12:55 PM
> To: Yrjö Engeström
> Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] copy of Change Lab paper
>
> Hi Yrjo-- Great that you had time to write.
>
> I guess I just never noticed the trade mark before. It seemed to speak to
> the issue of commercialization that came up a couple of weeks ago.
>
> As to what would happen if some consulting companies copied our ideas, our
> name, and went out to make money on them? Yes, its a problem. Like Jean
> Lave
> developing the idea of community of practice and being told not to use the
> term because Xerox had the trade mark (or so the rumor goes).
>
> The words, 5th Dimension, were not first employed by LCHC, although we used
> them in a somewhat unusual way. Remember the band? Probably their name is
> trademarked and we are infringing... except that we are too insignificant
> to
> bother with.
>
> My own position, having been raised in California, completed a public
> university when it was a public university (now about 80 % privatized), is
> that I am bound by my contract as a faculty member to give away my ideas.
> The University makes me sign some document these days that says if I invent
> something, they get a cut. (Back when i attended UCLA professors had to
> sign
> a loyalty oath... those times may be coming back in addition to
> privatization, unfortunately).
>
> I think a really productive discussion could focus on the differences
> between what is possible in terms of research in different
> socio-political-economic circumstances. The US has gone hyper neoliberal
> capitalist, as if everyone was reading Das Kapital. Finland has moved in
> the
> same direction, but perhaps retains some of its past. Brazil has its
> restrictions, etc. How does this affect the potentials for developing CHAT
> research as a public good? What public?
>
> Meantime, we'll keep trying to give it away. Its all I know how to do, or
> care to do.
>
> mike
> 2010/10/2 Yrjö Engeström <yrjo.engestrom@helsinki.fi>
>
> > Mike, for your information, we got a registered trade mark for the Change
> > Lab already in the 1990s for the simple reason that some consulting
> > companies started to use the name and some elements of the method,
> watered
> > down or mutilated in many ways, for their commercial purposes.
> >
> > What if you saw your 5D being used like that?
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Yrjö
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > mike cole kirjoitti 2.10.2010 kello 2.22:
> >
> >
> >  Mine opened. Thanks very much for sending it, Sarah. I can forward if
> that
> >> helps, Mary.
> >> And guess what?
> >> Its not the Change Lab any more. Its the change lab (registered trade
> >> mark!).
> >> Quick, somone, register lchc before it too goes overseas!!
> >> I am having the devil's own time keeping up with this modern generation.
> >> mike
> >>
> >> On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 3:37 PM, Katerina Plakitsi <kplakits@gmail.com
> >> >wrote:
> >>
> >>  I CANNOT OPEN THE DOC FILE. DO YOU?
> >>>
> >>> --------------------------------------------------
> >>> From: "Sarah Eagle" <s.eagle@bristol.ac.uk>
> >>> Sent: Friday, October 01, 2010 2:23 PM
> >>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> >>> Subject: Re: [xmca] copy of Change Lab paper
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Dear Mary
> >>>
> >>>> The paper is available online at
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/ifi/INF5220/h04/undervisningsmateriale/EngestromEtAl_ChangeLab.doc
> >>>>
> >>>> On 1 October 2010 10:01, Mary van der Riet <vanderriet@ukzn.ac.za>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>  Does anyone have a copy of
> >>>>> Engeström, Y., Virkkunen, J., Helle, M., Pihlaja, J. & Poikela, R.
> >>>>> (1996). The Change laboratory as a tool for transforming work.
> Lifelong
> >>>>> Learning in Europe, 1(2), 10-17.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> thanks
> >>>>> Mary
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Mary van der Riet; School of Psychology; University of KwaZulu-Natal
> >>>>> Private Bag X01, Scottsville, 3209
> >>>>>
> >>>>> email: vanderriet@ukzn.ac.za
> >>>>> tel: 033 260 6163;  fax: 033 2605809
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Please find our Email Disclaimer here:
> >>>>> http://www.ukzn.ac.za/disclaimer/
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