Many, if not all, primates share food. The extent to which they share outside of their immediate offspring (a behaviour known as parental investment) is varied and there is much speculation as to what complex social hierarchies are at work. According to Jaeggi and Van Schaik’s research, there are two key factors that have been identified that encourage proactive food sharing. Firstly, primates who are using “extractive foraging” are more likely to share. Essentially, tool use encourages sharing. For example, if I have a tool or a skill with that tool - perhaps I am a chimpanzee with a stick to extract termites - that you do not, I am more likely to share my termites with my offspring or other members of my group. It might be easy to overlay a very human feeling of pity or “feeling sorry” for the individual without the tool on the situation, but that would be a very human centric oversimplification. Contrary to initial logic, they also found that it doesn’t matter how high quality (nutrient rich, etc) the food is, just how comparatively hard it is to get.

Secondly, and possibly less surprisingly, adults shared food with each other “in exchange” - though I think this term is an oversimplification - for companionship and to increase mating potential. Romance via fruit exchange. Though, as with humans, reciprocal altruism is not just about sex. On a broader level it helps to form coalitions and support among non-mating individual as well.

When we get over to the idea of humans-as-primates there are many more complexities that we, as humans, are privy to. As an academic I see the contents of JSTOR as some very hard-won academic brain food. Just one of the above referenced primate studies had Andrew King and his team following a group of 14 baboons through the Namib desert for almost two years. That is what I call one hell of a termite stick that most of us don’t have. It is easy to understand why one would want to share the results of a study that takes such an investment of time and resources. I also feel that sharing research like this helps bring us all together in our global understanding of ourselves and our world, or in other words, “form coalitions and support among non-mating individuals.” I believe Aaron Swartz did too.

I don’t know enough about Aaron as an individual to comment on the sad circumstances surrounding his death. I’m happy though, that this terrible news has sparked anew questions about internet piracy and access to information. There are plenty of good social and economic arguments for the widespread access to academic information. The most logical of which (to me) stems from the enormous investment governments make in their institutions of higher learning. Surveying the bylines of academic articles, you would be hard pressed to find an individual or institution who has not benefited from access to public or tax-based funding. From small subsidised student loans to large research and development grants, so much is aided by We the People, with a capital P, only to be put under lock and key in it's metaphorical ivory tower, accessible only to the small-p-privileged to have access to it. By making millions of academic articles widely accessible, Aaron Swartz was practising his very own primate reciprocal altruism.

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, under which Aaron was being prosecuted, was put in place in a vastly different era and under entirely different circumstances. While the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was being passed through Congress in 1986, I was playing Oregon Trail on my Apple IIe. In my wildest dreams I could not have imagined the global state of computing today. Information is no longer something to be regulated through the machine on which it exists, computers are now merely the tools we use to form our world community and all the complex information in it. It is one hell of a termite stick, now lets start sharing.

Gabe Scelta is the Innovation Director at Ethicodes. A fellow at the Emerge Venture Lab, Gabe’s deep knowledge of the technology industry keeps Ethicodes pushing the frontiers of the fair trade industry. He holds a master’s degree from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and a bachelor’s degree from Boston University. He lives in New York City.

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