Thoughts to Vaidhyanathan, S., The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System, Cambridge: Perseus Books, 2004, pp. 1 – 23 & Goetz, Thomas (2003). ‘Open Source Everywhere’. WIRED. 11 reading:
I still could vivdly remember that when I was a kid, my mom always ask me to share candies or toys with my friends, she was trying to teach me that "sharing is always a morality." but somehow...it seems to be changed as I grew up. I start to wondering: Is it always be good thing?
When Vaidhyanathan writes ”..., instead of cyberspace becoming more like the real world, the real world is becoming more like cyberspace.” It seems like we live in an information explosion era and the current change of media forces us to allow our virtual world somehow to invade in our real world. He also explains that Peer to peer communication systems could actually shape what we mean by culture, liberty, democracy and human progress in this new century. I believe that the rise of open sources has driven by not only about the progress of technology, but more about the intricate, sophisticated and complex human deliberations. I mean, people are more eager to share, to express and to participate. That is how we create culture, or that’s say the subculture. Thus, the Internet could be taken as one of the vital elements which enhance the subculture especially to young generations while culture jamming seems to be invading the era of massive loaded information we live with. Thus, we sharing music, movies, books or pictures...etc on line without any restrictions by this free platforms accompany with some benefits that Lawrence Lessig has addressed in his book Remix: making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid Economy, citing "hybrid" economies like YouTube and Wikipedia, that both of them rely on user-generated "remixes" of information, images and sound, so, Lessig (2008) argues in favor of what he calls a "Read/Write (RW)" culture as opposed to "Read/Only (RO)" that allows consumers to "create art as readily as they consume it." It evokes me of ideas of sharing the creativities and it’s more concerned with participation. So, when everyone starts to argue aggressively about copyright, he said “We, as a society, can't kill this new form of creativity. We can only criminalize it. We can't stop our kids from using the technologies we give them to remix the culture around them. We can only drive that remix underground.” (Lessig 2008). Therefore, I start to think about his theory, I could simply called these creativeness as “free culture” which Lessig (2004) has suggested in another book Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, he said, “A free culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a market in which everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a”permission culture”—a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past.“ I could slightly feel that it encourage people could use these free cultures to create and remake the new version of works while it could be well supported by the progress of technology without thinking the copyright issue for a while.
When Vaidhyanathan writes ”..., instead of cyberspace becoming more like the real world, the real world is becoming more like cyberspace.” It seems like we live in an information explosion era and the current change of media forces us to allow our virtual world somehow to invade in our real world. He also explains that Peer to peer communication systems could actually shape what we mean by culture, liberty, democracy and human progress in this new century. I believe that the rise of open sources has driven by not only about the progress of technology, but more about the intricate, sophisticated and complex human deliberations. I mean, people are more eager to share, to express and to participate. That is how we create culture, or that’s say the subculture. Thus, the Internet could be taken as one of the vital elements which enhance the subculture especially to young generations while culture jamming seems to be invading the era of massive loaded information we live with. Thus, we sharing music, movies, books or pictures...etc on line without any restrictions by this free platforms accompany with some benefits that Lawrence Lessig has addressed in his book Remix: making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid Economy, citing "hybrid" economies like YouTube and Wikipedia, that both of them rely on user-generated "remixes" of information, images and sound, so, Lessig (2008) argues in favor of what he calls a "Read/Write (RW)" culture as opposed to "Read/Only (RO)" that allows consumers to "create art as readily as they consume it." It evokes me of ideas of sharing the creativities and it’s more concerned with participation. So, when everyone starts to argue aggressively about copyright, he said “We, as a society, can't kill this new form of creativity. We can only criminalize it. We can't stop our kids from using the technologies we give them to remix the culture around them. We can only drive that remix underground.” (Lessig 2008). Therefore, I start to think about his theory, I could simply called these creativeness as “free culture” which Lessig (2004) has suggested in another book Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, he said, “A free culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a market in which everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a”permission culture”—a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past.“ I could slightly feel that it encourage people could use these free cultures to create and remake the new version of works while it could be well supported by the progress of technology without thinking the copyright issue for a while.
However, in another reading, Thomas Goetz wrote about the rise of open sources is getting powerful because it’s alternative to the status, it solves problem fast enough and ambitious enough. He addressed one of the examples of Wales who create an internet encyclopaedia to make open source as a tool that turn consumers into producers. After that, Wikipedia is also successful that everyone could post and revise something on it easily. In this case, Wales seemed to be quite satisfied with that. However, is it always good to be like that? Since we knew that Internet has become one of the important sources we normally use and share, it’s definitely more accessible to any generations especially teenagers and kids who are born in the great development of technology era. They may somehow stick on it every day as we could know from the news in the newspapers or on TV. For those sources without strong references and reliable credits may easily to be read by them or maybe rewrite a little bit by them. So, how could we control about these “correct” information while people all over the world could revise it whatever they want for each single day or each single moment? It’s controversial to say that Wikipedia is merely one of the open sources I have mentioned here, how about others? I was just wondering that when we are benefited from these open sources in many ways and enjoy the free sources which are provided, what would it be in the future while all of us and our next generations continue to use these changeable sources for the next decades or even longer? I guess maybe we will all believe in these “informative” mistakes until we and our kids passed away.(sorry,I know I am a little bit exaggerated here.:))
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