Lessig

I think with each new innovation, Lessig is illustrating the history of mediums through which people have been given the opportunity to express themselves. With each innovation comes a new and improved element. First, with photography, people could document their lives and then share it with others. Second, with Just Think!, people were given the opportunity to make sense out of real life issues by expressing themselves in video format, and then share those videos with others. Third, blogs allowed people to express themselves on virtually any topic they wanted, and then (immediately!) broadcast those views across the globe. If that wasn't good enough, they also received responses and feedback from all over the globe. Lastly, open source software allows people to express themselves, but also to have a say in how that expression occurs. Then, others give "feedback" and give their say in how that expression should occur. They essentially have more of a hand than ever before in creating that virtual software world that they choose to express themselves in.

I really like what Lessig says as he is quoting Daley on pgs. 6 and 7, "What you want is to give these students ways of constructing meaning...because they needed to...they needed to say something as opposed to just jumping through your hoops..."

I think this can be generalized to the whole human population and the progression of mediums of expression Lessig talks about in this chapter. People need ways of constructing meaning; we need ways to express ourselves and understand the world around us. Each of these mediums is a way to make that happen. We yearn for the freedom of saying what we need to say without "jumping through" the hoops of popular media etc... We want a say in that media, we want a say in how the meaning of the world is constructed. Like Lessig says on pg. 5, we don't want to be a "read-only" population when it comes to the media. Through our own expression, we refuse to be "passive recipients of culture produced elsewhere." We want to help produce and create that culture, after all, each and every one of us is a part of it. Why should we be passive in this matter? Lessig shows that, throughout history, we haven't been passive. We have consistently created ways (however small) that have allowed us to take an active part in that expression of culture. From the camera to the blogosphere, each advancement has let us play an increasingly active role. It will be interesting to see how copyright laws affect that role. However, I am confident that we will always find some little tiny way around those laws, staying just a few steps ahead, to ensure that we have some way to actively express what we need to say.