Lessig

There is little doubt that we are currently living in a time where technology reigns supreme.  As technologies progress and change, we progress and change with them; it is a necessary response.  Technology will continue to advance, and if we do not stay up to date then we will left behind.  Technology is discussed in length throughout Lessig's chapter two: "Mere Copyists."  Specifically, he addresses the demand for new technology as well as technological skills, the free expression changing technology allows us, and even democracy and the legal restrictions surrounding this digital age we live in.


The chapter starts with a simple story: the progression of photography.  The demand for photographs, or "daguerreotypes (par. 2)" as they were originally called, was huge.  This is not surprising, for, as Lessig explains, it allowed the public to document their lives, their families, their passions, it allowed for keeping a visual and semi-permanent record (par. 7).  When George Eastman invented the Kodak camera and its rolls of film, the demand and interest in photography expanded to an even greater level.  It allowed the individual man or women, despite their social standing and/or class, the freedom of creative expression (par. 8).  


This idea of creative expression via technology is seen in the various stories Lessig tells in this chapter.  The "Just Think!" buses are a perfect example of both this creativity and the demand presented with advancing technology.  The "Just Think!" buses presents a different sort of demand than that of photography, instead of a consumer demand we have an educational demand for "media literacy (par. 16)."  Lessig explains how the term literacy has changed throughout the years; it has changed in order to accommodate for the changes in technology.  No longer is it simply reading and writing, but it is understanding the sequence of digital stories, understanding and analyzing digital images, and the ability to create images and other works using various technology (par. 17-19).  While kids have a need to know how to work with and run this technology (video, music, ect.), it is more than just a practical tool.  As with the invention of the Kodak camera, the digital tools used on the "Just Think!" bus also are a great aid to creative expression.  Lessig gives a fantastic example of this with the class put on by Daley and Stephanie Barish.  The class allowed poor inner-city kids a chance to express themselves through digital media.  Not only did it allow for this, it did so with a topic which hit so very close to home for many of these kids: gun violence (par. 27).  Just as the Kodak camera "empowered" the general population to document their lives and the lives of their families, this class "empowered" students to understand themselves and the issues that surrounded them (par. 29).  This transfers into non-digital writing, it reveals the practice as more than a chore: 


"[They write] Because they needed to.  There was a reason for doing it.  They needed to say something... (33)"


As for expressing oneself, the events of 9/11 exploded this need on a national level. Thus, the blog became an extremely popular and important form of communication (par. 39).  These electronic logs of feelings, facts, opinions and more rose to new heights to meet the demand of a nation troubled by recent events.  As with the kids in the inner-city school, the general population of America needed to speak and discuss what had just happened and what it meant to them personally.  Both demand and creative expression meet and merge within this digital platform.  Along with these two, also comes advances or at least changes in democracy.  


Democracy originated in ancient Greece, and it began basically as a public forum.  Blogs allow us to return to that primal form of democracy;  they act essentially as a public forum where the population can participate in "democratic deliberation (par. 43)."  It gives the general public a chance to participate in debates and express their own feelings without fear of great retaliation/consequence.  "Blogs allow for public discourse without the public ever needing to gather in a single public place (par. 44)."


All of what Lessig discusses has some connection to democracy/government.  The next portion of the chapter discusses one of the most debated digital platforms in regards to legal rights: open-source/free software.  These programs/software stretch along the range of all possible softwares available, from a email systems (eg. Mozilla Thunderbird and Neomail) to an impressive amount of games, to calendars, photo editing platforms and more.  This technology allows for even greater expression and even greater learning.  People can add, change, share, tweak, delete nearly everything and anything with this type of technology.  This learning has become hindered, however, by the extreme restrictions placed upon the many different softwares available (par. 63).  This is not  the only instance that Lessig refers to legal restrictions or democratic issues.  Along with the democracy presented in the network of blogs, he makes note of the legal issues surrounding photography when it first emerged (par. 9).  Similar to the issues brought up with open-source software, photography was seen as something that "took" from another person or subject matter (par. 10).  It seems that as quickly as new technologies arise, laws arise to hinder it  (par. 67).


Regardless of laws and debates and possible changes, technology is fully integrated in our day-to-day lives now, and I can only see it becoming even more essential as time goes on.  It currently allows the greatest freedom of expression, something invaluable in our present society, and something we cannot afford to lose.