GOOD ARTISTS BORROW, GREAT ARTISTS STEAL

There is a blurred line between ‘creating original content’ and ‘appropriating past content,’ after all, nothing is original, right?

As Lessig suggests, “Creators here and everywhere are always and at all times building upon the creativity that went before and that surrounds them now. That building is always… at least partially done without permission and without compensating the original creator” (2004).

So is the copyright law an ‘evil’ that is corrupting society and restricting human kind from an abundant development of pioneering technologies, art and culture? Or conversely, is it a necessary law, put in place to ensure the intellectuals and artistic genesis’s of the world are commended for there innovations?

Some say that copyright is a heavy-handed government intrusion into individual freedom to explore our cultural heritage, all in the name of protecting individual freedom to create. Although some degree of protection is good, but it carries heavy costs and collapses of its own weight pretty quickly.

Additionally, others feel that a lot of the anti-copyright enthusiasts are stuck in state of purely wanting to remake their favourites who don’t feel worthy of creating their own stuff. An interesting story by Steve Sailer tells of how the early Rolling Stones just wanted to perform cover versions of American songs, but manager Andrew Oldham kept telling them about how much money there was in writing original songs. So, he locked Mick and Keith in a kitchen until they'd written a song. After they'd eaten all the food in the kitchen, they decided they might as well try writing a song. So they came up with "As Tears Go By."

The debate over intellectual property law is a difficult, controversial topic. By protecting the original creators we are holding back progression into a world of fruitful modernism. But the creators need to be credited for there work. To strike a balance between the two, like so many other government enforcements, is difficult.

Lessig, L. (2004). Creators. In Free Culture: How Big Media uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Strangle Creativity (pp. 21-30). New York: Penguin [URL: http://www.authorama.com/free-culture-4.html]

A Novel Sphere of Industry

We have come a long way from Claude Chappe’s invention of the telegraph in 1974. Media has evolved and the Internet has revolutionized the once un-networked globe. This cyber-infected existence has saturated everyday life and impacted the working world in inconceivable ways. There are many additional demands, fresh production forms and altered labor requirements which have evolved in order to support the growth of the information economy. The shift from manufacturing to knowledge demands has had a dramatic implication on the sphere of industry, “these changes are part of a fiercely competitive international environment, marked by an internationalized division of labor” (Bradwell & Reeves 2008:26).

As Zygmunt Bauman attests, we are all living a “liquid life,” which is “a precarious life, lived under conditions of constant uncertainty” (2002). This uncertainty is created because of the consistent technological developments, bringing the need for continual re-schooling of skills, allowing one to navigate  through a series of temporary working arrangements. The idea of settling down into a comfortable role, with a mundane, repetitive task is not as common as it once was. The world is transforming and as an employee, one needs to transform with it, or risk redundancy.

“Our only shared condition increasingly seems to be the lived experience of being “permanently impermanent” in the context of consistent change”  (M. Deuze).

So I ask the question, should this be negatively looked upon as the end of comfort and stability? Or should this be perceived as an opportunity for individuals to extend knowledge, obtain new skills and transform with the course of their working lifetime. Gone are the days of tedious, repetitive labor, lets welcome this novel form of vocation and celebrate the opportunities that it brings.

Deuze describes “liquid life” as the convergence of the modern categories of production (work) and consumption (life) and the trends this has created which have been a result of the mass populations continuous and concomitant engagement with media. Also termed “presence bleed” by Gregg, “where the location and time of one’s labor becomes a secondary consideration to the task of managing the expectation and/or possibility that one is available and willing to work.” The development of equipment that permit citizens access to work outside the workplace produces an omnipresent possibility to carry out work based activities in unpaid locations. Does this arise from the desire to express a greater level of commitment to ones work because of the not long competitive workplace? Or have these actions and values been instilled within the technological savvy generation?

Younger people, like myself, have grown up with the idea of multi-tasking as a norm. People used to engage in a face-to-face conversation with complete attention being driven into that one singular experience. Today, one can engage in social-networking, watch TV, managing online bank accounts, complete uni work, send and reply e-mails and respond to questions from nearby friends and family– all simultaneously. These skills will undoubtedly be carried through to our working habits. That’s not to say that the increased workloads employees are now expected to undertake should go unrecognized.

“…exploitation becomes less material and more psychological” (Mills, 1973:110)

Bradwell, P., and Reeves, R. (2008) Economies. In Networked Citizens (pp. 25-31). London: Demos.

 [URL: http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Network%20citizens%20-%20web.pdf]

Gregg, M. 'Function Creep: Communication technologies and anticipatory labour in the information workplace'.

[URL: http://homecookedtheory.com/wp-content/uploads/functioncreepnms.doc]

Deuze, M. 'Liquid Life, Convergence Culture, and Media Work'. [URL: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/3343/Liquid%20Life%20Deuze%202006.

Mills, C.W. (1973 [1951]) White Collar: The American Middle Classes, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zygmunt Bauman (2002), The 20th century: the end or a new beginning? Thesis Eleven 70, pp.15-25.

Adjusting To The New Economy

As “our world shifts to a new highly technical planetary economy” (Kelly, 1999), it is observed that every facet of ones existence is revolutionised to accommodate this new way of life.

In my personal experience, I have known no different, thus the shift from traditional to contemporary methods of communication has not been so noticeable for myself… and for many others among my generation. However, As this weeks reading by Kevin Kelly suggests, the hi-tech developments have restructured human existence and “the geography of wealth is being reshaped by our tools” (Kelly, 1999). So as a consequence, those who take this in their stride and cooperate with the way that the world is maturing will succeed, and those that fail to do so will descend into the distance, be left behind and essentially become forgotten.

Kelly feels that, “the new economy has three distinguishing characteristics: It is global. It favors intangible things – ideas, information, and relationships. And it is intensily linked” (1999). This is particularly true for business for obvious reasons, but also plays a great role in other areas of human existence. For instance, our social world has been entirely remoulded. Gone are the days where a hand written letter was the only way to inform your grandmother of your achievements. “The world of communication now includes all kinds of media—audio, video, rich media presentations, interactive websites, DVD, simulations, and virtual meeting environments.” (Aho, 2005)

Since relocating two years ago, I have developed a large social network with friends and family scattered all over the world. Thus, I rely on skype, e-mail, facebook and sms text messaging – the main forms of digital communication – in order to preserve relations with friends and family.

After gathering quantitative data to record the connections of my personal relationships across social networks, it is evident that I utilize the digital developments immensely, particularly use of my mobile phone. It is clear from the graph below text messaging is the predominant means of communication, which I choose to engage in. There are many factors that explain why I rely on text messaging:

-                Convenience

-                Speed

-                Time to think about response

-                Saving of information and conversation

-                Entertainment

-                Distraction

When comparing the amount of digital communication to face-to-face communication, it is clear that digital interaction prevails. The main reason for the lack of face-to-face communication is due to location. Most of the friends I examined do not live within a reasonable radius to undertake face-to-face interaction on a regular basis. However, I did note that I have a very large amount of text messages sent to my roommate who lives merely meters away from me. I put this down to laziness. Why get out of bed to walk a few meters, knock on a door and wait for a response when I can simply send an sms whilst in the comfort of my bed and achieve the same result?

Digital communication devices are a blessing to the lazy beings of generation Y!  Kelly’s assertion that “Human expression, thought, communication, and even life have been infiltrated by high technology” could not be more correst. I believe many of the repercussions of the invasion of digital networking go unnoticed to the masses as they seamlessly glide into ones life, creating less labor to the modern man.

Reference List:

Aho, K 2005 “Digital Communication for All Students,” THE Journal, 24 May accessed 10.4.2011, http://www.adobe.com/education/solutions/pdfs/dc_for_all_students.pdf

Kelly, K 1999, “This new economy,”New Rules for the new Economy, URL: http://www.kk.org/newrules/newrules-intro.html, accessed 10.8.2011

Phenomenon of the WWW

Post nuclear America - and no doubt the rest of the world -was unaware of the brilliance of what was about to proceed when the idea of a decentralized network consisting of flows and nodes rapidly developed and engaged the masses across the globe. What was originally coined “an intriguing concept of a decentralized, blastproof, pocketswitching network” (Sterling, 1993, p 1), was invented with the intentions of stabilizing the American communication systems after the event of a nuclear attack. Interestingly enough, the users of this network began to use the communication system as a means of personal and social contact – “to gossip and  schmooze” (Sterling, 1993 p 2).  This fact I found quite interesting as it is still true today.

Image 1
 So here we are, roughly four decades later, faced with a phenomenon that plays a great role in shaping our society and dictating our daily existence. For myself personally, I have Internet access at my fingertips 24 hours a day 7 days a week, it heavily dictates my level of knowledge, information access, socializing opportunities and university study . This networked sphere I have unconsciously immersed myself in, somehow shapes every facet of my life, in one way or another. This notion is promoted by Stadler, “All human actions rely, in varying degrees, on digital information networks” (2005, p 62). 

 

 

Image 2

Stadler goes on to describe how the Internet is constructed through a network consisting of flows and nodes – an interdependent, dynamic relationship, subject to change, with high velocity whose existence is determined by differentiation (2005). This concept was initially difficult for me to grasp as the visual diagrams did not translate into an explanation of how the Internet phenomenon mechanically produces structured networks which spit out the right information on the right platforms at the right time! Yet upon reflection the idea of the Internet in general is a complex enough marvel to wrap ones head around. So the idea of flows and nodes, and there tendency to carry information across the globe will have to suffice at this time. 

 

Sterling, B. (1993) 'A Short History of the Internet', The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction [URL: http://sodacity.net/system/files/Bruce_Sterling_A_Short_History_of_the_Internet.pdf]

Stalder, F. (2005) 'Information Ecology'. In Open Cultures and the Nature of Networks pp. 62-66 [URL: http://felix.openflows.com/pdf/Notebook_eng.pdf]

Networks Are A Modern Currency

Because of the development in micro-technologies and software-based communication, networks have grown to underpin and structure society as we know it (Castles, 2001, p 221). Technological development has undoubtedly been the most significant factor in characterising our generation, we have grown up with digital expertise embedded in our fibers. It is inevitable that the broader consequence of our technologically saturated existence would one day be investigated, scrutinised and published. Castles is one of the many scholars who have attempted to deconstruct the numerous consequences of this evolution. Prior to the MacBook, smart phone and I-Pad, traditional forms of networks were unaware of their limitations - old forms of social structure and organisations simply do not compare with the contemporary, fresh opportunities presented by modern platforms…

"Only under the electronic based

technological paradigm can networks reconfigure themselves in

real time, on a global–local scale, and permeate all domains of social life. This is why we live in a network society, not in an information society or a knowledge society"

(Castles, 2004, p 221)

Castles goes on to suggest that our society - in terms of social structure - can only be defined as - "networks powered by micro-electronics and software-based information and communication technologies" (2004, p 222). This title is rather complex, incorporating the idea of an information, knowledge and technological based society all in one. Which I believe is indisputably correct. If one is to succeed, they must engage and succeed in multiple areas. All three factors are co-dependant in todays' corporate and social world.  The consequence of this ideology include a focus on globalisation, and how each nation and culture becomes framed and shaped by the international social networks that underpin it, thus meshing and breaking through one unbreakable borders. Also the advantages that networks create for the corporate sphere - "Companies that do not or cannot follow this logic are outperformed and ultimately phased out by leaner, more flexible competitors" (Castles, 2004, p 222). The next point Castles illustrates is that the global networked sphere can act as a method to unite governing abilities, as each node plays a part in shaping decision-making, an area which I feel will expand and evolve dramatically within the next fre years. Activists utilize the networked outlets to achieve discussion and debate and further their reach, which touches on the idea of citizen journalism and how this platform is democraticising the globe. All of these along with virtual communities and online media are redefining time and space, and encouraging the need to co-experience life, which is all facilitated through societies adoption of and contribution to the networks.

Castles, M 2004, "Aftword: why networks matter," Nework Logic: Who governs in an interconnected world?, pp219-224
 [URL: http://www.kirkarts.com/wiki/images/5/51/Castells_Why_Networks_Matter.pdf]