Generally boring weekend. Did however finish Lawrence Lessig's The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. Lot of hoopla over Lessig and his ideas, as he's one of the primary lawyer-academic types thinking about intellectual property and its changing role in todays networked world, I first got exposed to his ideas in an Internet Law and Society class at UCI (PolySci/ICS 179?). Found the book interesting, particularly the WiFi stuff, though it wasn't as fleshed out as his other ideas, seeing it was published way back in 2001, ha ha. Lessigs basic premise boiled down to a short-attention span size is that the Internet's mantra of openess fosters innovation, and we are beginning to see a corporate/governmental backlash(or more positively stated misunderstanding) in the form of controls and restrictions towards this culture because of copyright/patent issues, thus less innovation. Yeah yeah I know its nothing new to us here in the trenches, but it makes a good introduction to the cogent issues for the Muggles. Your unfettered network can be controlled. United States copyright law is seriously flawed. So though the author leaves us with a bit of doom and gloom towards whats happening in this arena I didn't close the book and rush out to mail my legislator. The decentralizing effects of the net are just beginning to rev up, most of big media/politics dont have a clue, and they won't ever. One link closes up, you route around it.
posted by Brent at 12/16/2002 05:43:00 PM | permalink |
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