Information wants to be free, it wants to be traded and exchanged; stories want to be told. Human society’s based on it: we connect to one another by telling stories, trading information, and we resist any barriers to that trade (like download fees). Information that’s hoarded becomes less valuable because information’s value is in the sharing. It does a band no good to demand money for music no one has heard, nor for a T.V. show or author, etc.
The next step in sharing information is making it your own: there’s a theory that when ancient Greek storytellers recited the Iliad, half-lines were left incomplete so they could improvise. What we now know as “The Iliad” is what rose to the top as the best version–ancient crowd-sourcing. Opening up stories so that the audience can participate–by remixing, mashing, fan-fic’ing, inventing mythologies, maintaining histories, and forming sub-cultures–is what’s going to keep our stories fresh, flexible, and yes, free. The best will rise to the top.
This is from a great article about downloads from a blog called “Confused of Calcutta: A blog about information”:
The point is actually something else. It’s about culture. It’s about the way the millenials think and act. They have rediscovered something we’ve gone and forgotten, the sheer pleasure of getting under the hood of things. Making things. Making new things out of old things. Changing things.
This process of make, remake, change is part of the way they express themselves. Part of the way they think. Part of the way they create. Part of the way they protest.
Marcel Duchamp remixed the Mona Lisa. Ogden Nash remixed Joyce Kilmer’s Trees. Lampoon and Satire are culturally significant as well, no less creative than other forms of expression. If you haven’t done so already, go read Cory Doctorow’s Makers and Larry Lessig’s Remix. They will help you understand more of what is happening.
via Thinking about downloads – confused of calcutta.
