Free Culture
bq. Lawrence Lessig, "the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era" (The New Yorker), masterfully argues that never before in human history has the power to control creative progress been so concentrated in the hands of the powerful few, the so-called Big Media. Never before have the cultural powers- that-be been able to exert such control over what we can and can’t do with the culture around us. Our society defends free markets and free speech; why then does it permit such top-down control? To lose our long tradition of free culture, Lawrence Lessig shows us, is to lose our freedom to create, our freedom to build, and, ultimately, our freedom to imagine.
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While it’s all great, Lessig et al need to “free history” a bit and get their story straight…
“argues that never before in human history has the power to control creative progress been so concentrated in the hands of the powerful few, the so-called Big Media. Never before have the cultural powers- that-be been able to exert such control over what we can and can’t do with the culture around us.”
Hello Catholic Church who controlled all western information and media and thus directly controlling the lives of millions of lives over a hundred generations.
Hello Islam. Ditto.
“Our society defends free markets and free speech; why then does it permit such top-down control?”
Why? Because it is a fallacy. Our society does not defend free-markets, it supports monopoly. Our culture likes to believe in free-markets and freedom of speech, but our economic system promotes and rewards monopolistic tendencies, our political system is closely coupled with our economy, and so our society is so much the poorer it can’t stand on it’s own two feet.
Our culture is already so drained and so poor. And the people defending it, bless them regardless, are themselves not as up to speed as they should be. :