After reading Professor Burton's blog post on the differences between classic capitalism and the new digital capitalism one phrase remained with me: "information wants to be free" so i followed the link to learn more. I thought at first of the philosophical implications of such a statement. of how century after century the human mind has been yearning for greater and greater knowledge and how it is our destiny to continue to build on the foundation of knowledge that was painstakingly laid by those who went before us. but the article gave me a different perspective than i was expecting.
Steven Brand Said of informations: "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other." and so now i have this image in my mind of a little idea or piece of information taunting me the learner saying "here i am, so accessible, and yet if you can find a way to make me inaccessible you will be able to greatly benefit economically". but i think the amazing thing is there have been those people that have capitalized on such a proposition. google and facebook are excellent examples. i love exploring the econimicmodels of these companies.
The article also mentioned that there also exists a movement whose members border on anarchists. Under this line of thinking, "hackers, crackers, and phreakers are liberators of information which is being held hostage by agents demanding money for its release". i love this line. i wonder if i myself am holding information hostage. in any case i would love to get a strong hold on some of that 'expensive' information...
What an interesting perspective on hackers as the rescue mission, saving kidnapped information. Do we have a right to the collective knowledge of the human race? What would happen if anyone could read the latest articles of the greatest minds for free?
ReplyDeleteI had a friend that enjoyed trying to hack into different websites. He was even able to alert the school district on a critical problem in their system that might have allowed students to gain access to change their grades. Although there are some people that don't "hack" for the good of the world, it's interesting that some people actually break into different websites to actually help.
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