Commons- Sydney

1. These days, when everything seems to be just a click away (on Google, go figure!) people are starting to question the relevance of libraries, as Bollier talks about in his writing. I agree with him immensely, that libraries should not only be seen as “where all those people who can’t afford to buy computers or their own books go.” I love libraries, and I love the freedom I have to go and peruse them and find whatever jumps out at me, books I would never think to look for to buy online, so it broadens my horizons. If this freedom is taken away from us, or if it start to cost money, the few people that still go to libraries will go down considerably, if not to near zero. It’s hard to convince kids that libraries are awesome now a days, and if they have to pay for it, there’s no way they’ll go. This is just going to make educating children harder, and it will make them turn into adults that are not well read and cannot make educated decisions when doing things like voting, which is very important for the future of democracy.

2. The quote from Vaidhyanathan that stood out to me was “Inconvenience was comforting. Potentially dangerous information and alarming expressions only circulated in obscure pockets of subculture or lay undisturbed in inaccessible repositories. The bad stuff was always around. It was just inconvenient to find, distribute, or deploy.” This really is saying a lot. Not only do people have all this extra information at their fingertips, they are using it for more bad than good (according to authorities). The government is taking advantage of this, even arresting and prosecuting people outside our country for hacking into and figuring out an American company, like Adobe. The government is taking away the citizens’ freedom of creativity that was always available to us in libraries, and now are throwing it back in our face by prosecuting those who use it for themselves. It’s like all the good things the internet gives us and allows us to be a part of, the country is trying to do damage control to keep it from being free and public, so someone can be making a buck on it.