Sep 20 2010
Framing week 4
1 ) Benkler asks a really great question in Chapter 1 when he asks how fifty thousand volunteers can successfully coauthor Wikipedia and then give it away for free? Does this generation (Gen Y) still view information as a commodity as operators of more traditional media have always seen it?
2 ) Benkler offers a view that seems almost utopian, where people from all walks of life commune through technology to achieve something larger than one person alone could create, and all with a cooperative attitude. Is this the real digital landscape or merely one aspect to the way that we interact online?
3 ) Are the notions of copy right and patent obsolete in online communities where it is perfectly acceptable to plagiarize computer coding?
5 ) Are Peer Produced sites like Wikipedia changing the way that we judge online content as being valid and credible?
September 22nd, 2010 at 2:11 pm
My first question was a query into the way that my generation (“Gen Y”) views information. I do not think that we value information as a commodity or good. We have grown up with the knowledge of how to manipulate search engines to find what we need for free. It has even been said in other classes that if people are barred access from a page due to a service charge or fee, that the user will simply leave the site to find a free one. We also came of age during the Napster era, growing up knowing that there are free sources of information and goods that exist on the web – if only for a short time before they are threatened with legal action. It is an interesting question to consider now that we are planning to be our own developers and designers of web content. I certainly don’t like the idea of people using the things that I have created – although I do think it is acceptable for others to copy any coding that I may use. I myself plan on using pre-existing codes to achieve certain looks and features of web pages that I design. This touches on my third question of whether copyright and patent are obsolete in the new Internet environment. I think that physical pieces of media like photos will remain copyright protected but the plagiarism of computer coding has been acceptable since the birth of the Internet. Benkler touches on this when he discusses GPL (General Public Licenses). Information is free as long as everyone is using it at the same functional level and no one persona can claim it as exclusively theirs. This is a really interesting concept and a model of online communities/relationships that deserves more attention. It is especially interesting because of how often this system of sharing works without any self-regulators. That point leads me to my second question concerning the Utopian like networked society that Benkler himself romanticizes in a way. Although the idea of people working together to compile free information, regulate and correct that information does occur, there are also instances where the people working together are corresponding to perform illegal acts. It is interesting that people collaborate by sharing files and information, but often times that information is not theirs to share. So while the idea of cooperation in virtually connected networks is a lovely thought, it is all taking place in a political and economical environment in which issues of ownership are still being worked out. My last question was whether peer produced sites like Wikipedia are changing the way that we judge online content as valid and credible. My answer to this is a definite yes. The video about Wikipedia and the heavy metal umlaut shows clearly how accurately online users can collaborate to edit and regulate highly detailed information. Some blogs can also be considered credible sources of information, especially those published by professionals and business people. So although we still consider these sources to be an unconventional and casual type of media, the social notions of credibility are slowly being changed as unique forms of internet publishing become widely accepted.