[rp-ml] free STL Files and other (free) things we wish for in the new year

Adrian, you're really stirring the pot here. I won't bite on your first
assertion, since we could go round and round on the definition of
"really worthwhile", but I didn't know you'd invented a
(self-replicating?) time machine capable of going back in time and
plumbing the motivations of Rembrandt and Beethoven. Congratulations on
that!

However, even granting that "art for art's sake" really was what they
were working for, do you think they would have achieved anything like
what they did if they'd had to work full-time at day-jobs doing
something else, in order to support their art and music habits? Maybe
they would have kept at it (Rembrandt might have done graffiti art, and
Beethoven could have been a busker), but plenty of very talented people
give up on the arts when they realize they can't make a living at it.
I'm not sure that the current crop of musicians, for example, living as
they do in the era of free downloads, will be able to attain the heights
that their predecessors achieved as beneficiaries of a better support
system - why don't you put your time machine into forward gear and find
out for us?

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com

Adrian Bowyer wrote:
> No really worthwhile human achievement has ever been instigated on the
> basis of demonstrable cost-effectiveness. I wouldn't go so far as to
> say also that nothing worthwhile has ever been done in the pursuit of
> money - Rembrandt and Beethoven accepted commissions, after all - but
> most things that are really worth doing involve little or no financial
> reward.
>
> And, of course, with no commissions Rembrandt and Beethoven would
> still have painted and composed, because their primary motivation was
> a desire to create something worthwhile regardless of the reward...
>
> Best wishes
>
> Adrian
>
> Dr Adrian Bowyer
> http://people.bath.ac.uk/ensab
> http://reprap.org
>
>
> John Morewood wrote:
>> If everything is free then where is the incentive to move forward
>> - we will just stagnate - not much fun in that ?
>
>
>
>
>
Received on Fri Jan 08 09:48:32 2010