Much of the Internet runs on Apache server software. Apache is created and maintained by an open source community who share the code and the work, and the software is distributed for free. The Creative Commons, an initiative started by Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig in 2001, extends the open source concept to the sharing of ideas and collaborative activity of all sorts. Lessig argues that copyright law often thwarts innovation by preventing the connection between ideas and technologies. Check the embedded "Free Culture" video, below, which tells a particular story by means of a stark and bleak refrain.
How would you interact with this narrative? Press pause and tell us how and why. The history of science and technology suggests that innovation emerges out of freely shared, peer reviewed information, where scholars exchange knowledge and engage in collaborative, if competitive, inquiry. Different commons spaces produce different rhythms. Numerous (and potentially exponential) ephemeral communities, such as Slashdot, patterned by a revolving door of participants (contingent cooperators), propogate ideas and produce projects, information, and value in short-order. Likewise, initiatives such as The Public Library of Science and the Internet Archive work from open principles to make scientific, medical, and cultural knowledge freely available. By means of this "commons logic," communities form, and in doing so, these communities liberate ideas and facilitate innovation and novelty through interconnection. In short, by sharing our work, we enable many unexpected connections and form communities of collaboration.
Write
1. Commons how-to
Go to the Creative Commons site and decide how to license your work by choosing an Intellectual Property license, and pasting it onto your blog. Write your blog providing a rationale: explain why you selected the deed arrived upon. As you write, reflect on the arguments supporting your argument, i.e. your assumptions, and then display your major premises - basically, supply reasoning to support your decision. Don't worry: as we select into the groups, and begin writing our major assignments, you will of course be able to revise your decision and rationale, if necessary. Minimum 250 words.
2. Combined keyword search: go to slashdot, youtube, PLOS, the Internet Archive, or any open-ended web presence that encourages user participation. Search "sustainability" plus a keyword of your choosing. What do you find? Choose a discussion thread that seems most interesting to you. Now, slow down and carefully read the discussion and the texts they cite. How would you respond to this discussion thread? Begin rehearsing your response on our wiki, and link the page where you are working to your wiki hub/homepage. Minimum 250 words.
3. Lessig uses the example of "Steamboat Mickey" to illustrate the way Disney's artists repurposed archetypes and narratives already circulating freely in culture. Find another example, in any genre (fiction, film, music), of a work that selects and creatively mixes a work or works that came before. Describe the differences between the two similar texts, and consider the techniques the artist(s) used to derive novelty from already available ideas.
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