1. The best way to sum up why public libraries are important for democracy is to look at Bollier's statement, "Once you put a pay-per-use meter on the act of reading and research, you turn a culture into a marketplace, which is something very different indeed. A marketplace serves an audience of consumers. But a library serves a nation of citizens." Libraries provide free information to open and strengthen the minds of the public. Democracies thrive on the freedom from censorship, and libraries are excellent resources upon which democratic societies can depend to supply knowledge. The way this discussion of public libraries relates to the internet is that the internet, as we have discussed in class, is a public domain containing an enormous volume of free information. We are at risk of the internet becoming over-regulated by corporate interests who desire to turn the internet into even more of a marketplace, and are not concerned with information pertaining to public interests.
2. Vaidhyanthan's anarchy in the library refers to rejection of censorship. His reading directly relates to Bollier's, as both discuss information flow. Multiple people have commented in their blogs about Vaidhyanthan's toothpaste analogy; Caitlin, Lauren, and Erin all made note of this in their posts. I can see why this caught their attention as I've found myself giving this example some thought. One of Vaidhyanthan's hopes is that we can control information to a certain extent, and somehow place some of it back in the toothpaste tube. Personally, I would agree with Caitlin on this topic. I love Americans' first amendment right, and I would be opposed to anyone trying to suppress information flow.
-Ryan Stefani
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