The four articles presented all had certain ideas in common. The two common themes that I found in the readings were demystifying the net and commonly misunderstood (related) terms and of the Internets relation to utopian ideology.
The three short Internet articles related to each because they clear up any confusion of commonly used and misused terms. The terms of interest were free software, intellectual property and network neutrality.
The first two terms are misleading mainly because of their terminology. When one hears free software they may assume that it is simply free in terms of cost (that’s what I thought). This term is not that simple. Free software is a kind of software that follows a list of guild lines including: you can run the program for any purpose, you can study and adapt the software to your needs, you can redistribute the software to other people, and you can alter the program and release your version to the public. The software is free in terms of how you use it. As the article says “it is the user’s purpose that matters, not the developers purpose” (Free Software Definition).
One of the reasons that the term intellectual property is misleading is because of the word property. The word property is troublesome because it assumes that the copyright or patent has to do with a physical object but it is more abstract then than that because the “property” can be music and artwork. Another problem with this term is that it is a gross overgeneralization. It groups copyrights, patents and trademarks in the same category. This cannot be done because these three entities developed independently and are intended to fulfill entirely different purposes.
The last of the three articles dealt with net neutrality. Instead of commenting on the term itself the article was written so that readers can understand its importance and to no longer take it for granted. The purpose of net neutrality is to “preserve a free and open Internet” (Save the Internet FAQ). Without neutrality big corporations like AT&T and Comcast could essentially take control of the Internet by controlling access to web content with discrimination and favoritism. Without Net Neutrality, “the Internet will look more like cable TV” (FAQ). In cable TV you do not have access to every channel; the company is controlling what you see.
These three articles then relate to the excerpt from the text Critical Cyberculture Studies (but first I will examine the text itself). The excerpt traces the historical factors that led to the association of digital technology with utopian ideals. It pinpoints the 1984 Hackers Conference, which brought together three generations of hackers. The thing that brought these three generations together was there set of six value which relate to the utopian view of the Internet (pg 261). The forum style conference helped to bring ideas together. The article placed importance on the fact that the people at the conference sympathized with counterculture. (The three ring model of the forum mentioned on page 265 was also interesting.)
The intellectual property article and the FAQ article related to the aforementioned article in the sense that they can be considered a kind of “cultural rebels”. The articles do not accept widely accepted ideas and had the goal of educating the reader so they will better understand and even reject what they are told about the Internet.
The free software article relates to the part of the Turner article that talks about the cost of information. The Turner article says that all information should be free. The free software article explains what it takes for information to actually be free.
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