Lessigs reading present four hypothetical’s which are based around his genuine concerns and trends in a world where offline rules, customs and laws are struggling g to keep up with the rapid changes of online life. He identifies the four trends as regulability, ability to encode regulability, latent ambiguity and competing Sovereigns.
Some of the key points I took in and reflected upon in this reading are as follows:
· There is a lack of offline consequences for anonymous online actions
· The web allows what would have been deemed as deviant offline and so isolated and regulated to easily form communities online for these deviances to gain validation
· Anonymous online personas allow for the post modern exploration of many different aspects of the self
· Remediation of offline reality into online play and interaction
· Online life is limited by how each environment is coded – which can result in both freedoms and restrictions
· These freedoms have been seen if the effects of P2P networks etc and sharing music, films etc
· The environments can be modified without participant knowledge – which normally would not happen in the offline world without some community discussion and analysis (i.e. facebook changes constantly on its users)
· Online worlds allow for a wide range of different communication and interaction methods that to the user mimic offline life but actually are missing some key parts of offline communication such as context. These changes may inadvertently spill over and change rules and customs in offline life. Thus a lack of online consequences can spill out and create a real world affect.
· Break down the restrictions of time and space placed by old media and communication forms.
· Decentralization of media distribution due to the low barriers to entry. These have distabalised business models of old media
· Deviant behavior such as piracy seems to be only an online issue which is separate from offline norms and rules of society. Probably related to the high level of anonymity online?
· Lack of content gatekeepers online, and the low barriers to entry meaning and one can publish, is a great change from old media where publishing houses controlled the content that would get to society.
· Does audience created content, free of gate keeping mechanisms, expose previously unrecognized realities in society that were previously controlled by publisher regulation?
· Who should these gatekeepers be in an online world? Government? Enterprise? Community? Whatever it is it needs to be transparent to ensure that valid community groups aren’t undeservedly discriminated against
· Old laws from the offline world are often inadequate for application in the online world to police online activities in cyberspace
· Concerns over big brother are here already I think as companies like Google and facebook build online user profiles. It is the price the user has paid for so much free content, free content distribution and creation tools. We have now become out IP address as the economies of information and attention build.
· Web filtering by the state or corporation is a concern as it can filter out information that challenges the dominant paradigm thus limiting cultural growth.
· Lessigs regulation online “regulation by code” is a very complex issue. It is a regulation that needs involvement from all parties government, corporations and audience in order to use Surowieki’s “wisdom of crowds” to build an effective gate keeping solution for online society. This process also would need to be under constant review as culture in cyberspace is subject to sudden change – just by changing some code.
· All of these concerns are no longer limited by sovereign borders. They are global concerns which need global solutions for future cultures and societies which is why finding a one size fits all solution is almost impossible but will become easier as culture is globalized over time. Is this is the period of transition into a global society.
Anonymity online is the largest issue in my assessment of Lessigs reading as online consequences are usually unseen and hidden in real life as with his example of Jake. If this anonymity was removed then the online experience would greatly change as a user would be responsible for a single identity linked both online and offline meaning the remediation off offline to online life would be far more accurate. They would still be able to investigate aspects of themselves with the wealth of online information but just not free of their identity making the regulation of cyberspace easier.
Some of the key points I took in and reflected upon in this reading are as follows:
· There is a lack of offline consequences for anonymous online actions
· The web allows what would have been deemed as deviant offline and so isolated and regulated to easily form communities online for these deviances to gain validation
· Anonymous online personas allow for the post modern exploration of many different aspects of the self
· Remediation of offline reality into online play and interaction
· Online life is limited by how each environment is coded – which can result in both freedoms and restrictions
· These freedoms have been seen if the effects of P2P networks etc and sharing music, films etc
· The environments can be modified without participant knowledge – which normally would not happen in the offline world without some community discussion and analysis (i.e. facebook changes constantly on its users)
· Online worlds allow for a wide range of different communication and interaction methods that to the user mimic offline life but actually are missing some key parts of offline communication such as context. These changes may inadvertently spill over and change rules and customs in offline life. Thus a lack of online consequences can spill out and create a real world affect.
· Break down the restrictions of time and space placed by old media and communication forms.
· Decentralization of media distribution due to the low barriers to entry. These have distabalised business models of old media
· Deviant behavior such as piracy seems to be only an online issue which is separate from offline norms and rules of society. Probably related to the high level of anonymity online?
· Lack of content gatekeepers online, and the low barriers to entry meaning and one can publish, is a great change from old media where publishing houses controlled the content that would get to society.
· Does audience created content, free of gate keeping mechanisms, expose previously unrecognized realities in society that were previously controlled by publisher regulation?
· Who should these gatekeepers be in an online world? Government? Enterprise? Community? Whatever it is it needs to be transparent to ensure that valid community groups aren’t undeservedly discriminated against
· Old laws from the offline world are often inadequate for application in the online world to police online activities in cyberspace
· Concerns over big brother are here already I think as companies like Google and facebook build online user profiles. It is the price the user has paid for so much free content, free content distribution and creation tools. We have now become out IP address as the economies of information and attention build.
· Web filtering by the state or corporation is a concern as it can filter out information that challenges the dominant paradigm thus limiting cultural growth.
· Lessigs regulation online “regulation by code” is a very complex issue. It is a regulation that needs involvement from all parties government, corporations and audience in order to use Surowieki’s “wisdom of crowds” to build an effective gate keeping solution for online society. This process also would need to be under constant review as culture in cyberspace is subject to sudden change – just by changing some code.
· All of these concerns are no longer limited by sovereign borders. They are global concerns which need global solutions for future cultures and societies which is why finding a one size fits all solution is almost impossible but will become easier as culture is globalized over time. Is this is the period of transition into a global society.
Anonymity online is the largest issue in my assessment of Lessigs reading as online consequences are usually unseen and hidden in real life as with his example of Jake. If this anonymity was removed then the online experience would greatly change as a user would be responsible for a single identity linked both online and offline meaning the remediation off offline to online life would be far more accurate. They would still be able to investigate aspects of themselves with the wealth of online information but just not free of their identity making the regulation of cyberspace easier.