Copyright laws

Do we as a global society need to rethink copyright laws?

As teachers, when we observe the tech habits of our students we often find exactly the behavior that Kevin Kelly so aptly describes in his blog post, “Technology Wants to be Free.” www.kk.org/thetechnium/

 “The “free” in digital music meant the audience could unbundle it from albums, sample it, create their own playlists, embed it, share it with love, bend it, graph it in colors, twist it, mash it, carry it, squeeze it, and enliven it with new ideas. The free-ization made it liquid and ‘free” to interact with other media. In the context of this freedom, the questionable legality of its free-ness was secondary. It didn’t really matter because music had been liberated by the free, almost made into a new media.”

 The apparent joy and ease with which young people transform music and other digital content is a hallmark of their generation. This generation will never be content to simply listen to and view digital content without the urge to transform it into something even more unique and personal. However, the real transformation is not of the digital content itself, but rather of this young generation who have become intrepid creators of new ideas and new media.

 Kelly writes that freedom is the key element in unleashing human creativity: “Technology wants to be free, as in free beer, because as it becomes free it also increases freedom. The inherent talents, capabilities and benefits of a technology cannot be released until it is almost free. The drive toward the free unleashes the constraints on each species in the technium, allowing it to interact with as many other species of technology as is possible, engendering new hybrids and deeper ecologies of tools, and permitting human users more choices and freedoms of use. As a technology grows in abundance and cheapness, it is more likely to find its appropriate niche in which it can sustain itself and support other technologies in commodity mode. As technology heads toward the free it unleashes the only lasting thing it can: options and possibilities.”

 As I read this paragraph on free technology I was reminded of Ray Kurzweil’s book, the Singularity is Near. One of the headlines that I took from this startling book is Kurzweil’s belief about the “options and possibilities” of humans. Namely, that the purpose of humans is to infuse the universe with intelligence and order. I like to think of this purpose as the evolutionary imperative of Homo sapiens.

 So, what does Kurzweil mean by “infusing the universe with intelligence and order?” He means that if we look at the exponential growth curve of computational power (artificial intelligence) we understand that very soon most of the matter and energy on our planet will be devoted to computers (artificial intelligence) and eventually this process will expand to include most of the matter in our solar system and then most of the matter in the universe. As the technology of artificial intelligence “grows in abundance and cheapness it allows its human users even more choices and freedoms of use,” as Kelly reminds us.

 When we think of technology within this exponentially expansive Kurzweilian cosmological framework, doesn’t it seem absolutely reptilian to believe that we can confine content, media and technology into little boxes labeled with the name of the original creator along with a caveat telling users not to think of other choices and freedoms of use? As for our students -- let’s make them aware of our evolutionary imperative and its cosmological implications. We must encourage our students to hitch a ride on Halley’s Comet and in Stanley Kunitz’ words, “go roaring down the storm tracks of the Milky Way.”