After watching the TEDtalk “Laws That Choke Creativity” by Larry Lessig he introduced a new way to think about the creativity of individuals. He discusses the theory of a read write culture and read only culture. This read only culture is one that is owned, vocal cords have been lost, and the creativity is being consumed but the consumers are not the creators. This idea of cultures within creativity was such an interesting one to me. I have never thought about this read write and read only culture before. I have just always assumed that there have always been those individuals who manage to have their creativity seen by others in some form. Larry discusses the way to revive the read write culture is to allow user generated content, allow for the celebrating of amateur culture, individuals expressing themselves for the love out of it and not for the money. The way in which Larry finished his talk hit me the most. He expresses that the children of the audience are different from how they were when they were children. The reasoning for this difference is because of technology. “Technology has made us different.” (Larry) After he said that it made me think and he is right. If you look at different generations and how technology has helped in them evolving the difference can probably be seen. It just makes me wonder, what if the individuals who created the many forms of technology were not allowed to do so because of Larry’s whole theory of the laws that choke creativity, how would different generations look like.
I, too, liked Larry’s comment about the differences between cultures that allow people to read something and recreate it as part of something new and those that are “read only” cultures. The differences between generations was particularly interesting to me because he discussed a fundamental difference in the way the younger generation interacts with information. This became increasingly clear to me in my personal life as I encountered the University of Oregon’s plagiarism codes as part of the University Hearings Board. On this body I served to adjudicate students for various student conduct code violations, the most common of them being cheating or plagiarism. One professor spoke at a training and had very strict guidelines about what intellectual property was and who it belonged to. She stated that even the information she states in her lectures (not citing research or other authors) she expects students to cite in their papers. This concept was astounding to me as well as the other students of a younger generation. To us, the idea of shared knowledge is more broad and encompassing in general. I think this is a factor of the technical generation that wouldn’t have changed had we not been exposed to things like the internet.
You article is very interesting. First, you talk about the read write culture and read only culture. I never consider it before as well. But I was absolutely a read only person, I never think to write something and I also do not good at writing. It is the point between two culture. In read write culture, people enjoy read other people’s work and like to write their own work and share with each other and their writing skill will be better and better. However, in read only culture, people only read other people’s work but never write, so their writing skill will be loss and then, they will hate writing. After that, you talk about the generation, people live in different age consider different things, so they will create different culture. Sometimes we think old culture is very closed and they do not allow some new things. However, the new culture is very opened and it also makes a lot of vulgar things, and when people read it, they will get almost nothing. I think the generation is not just because of technology, but the age culture. So I have a question, the technology is developing every year, but does our culture also develop or do we loss more?
As technology develops more and more over the years it is hard to say where culture will stand. I do believe that culture will change as technology develops because if you look at history it has already been changing. Our culture is so consumed with technology already. I remember being a little kid when cell phones were becoming so popular, I didn’t get one until I was in middle school due to playing sports. Now you see children in so young with cell phones and it is not unusual. I don’t feel like the younger generation has an appreciation of the world around them because they are constantly on their phones, tablets, or video games. Even though technology has provided some positives, such as expressing oneself and allowing people from all over the world to see what you created, or giving us the ability to learn about new cultures and world news, but there is also negatives.