Showing posts with label power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label power. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Continuing Questions on Ownership

Here's a great CBC radio 3 podcast on the topic of "Who Owns Music?"



In it, there are three suggested 'owners'; the labels, the artists, and the listeners. There is also a question of whether or not ownership is transferred from producer to consumer at the time of purchase.

The final comment that ownership is a legal matter while sharing is for everyone is interesting. There's no doubt that piracy in no way benefits the producer, but 'sharing' is still more inclusive than 'ownership'. I'm not defending piracy, but the notion of owning something that we cannot actually hold is kind of strange, despite the fact that we can still interact with it and engage with it.

My questions are then, who do you think owns music? Do you agree that ownership is a legal matter while everyone should be able to share? How do you feel about the ownership of physically intangible digital media?

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Digital Dummies?

Tonight, I was talking to my roommate who is in Business at Laurier and she told me about this new documentary she watched in class today.

It's called Digital Dummies and is a documentary put together by the CBC. You can read about the documentary HERE and watch the full-length video (for free!!) HERE! It runs about 45 minutes long and is very informative!

It pretty much asks whether the new technology that has evolved is a good or bad thing. Although this technology, like cell phones and laptops, helps us to become more productive, this documentary argues that this technology is proving to be more of a distraction that encourages multi-tasking.

Relating to remix culture, this documentary immediately reminded me of discussions about convergence culture. Is what Henry Jenkins talks about actually a good thing that helps consumers, by giving them more ways to express themselves? Or, is convergence culture actually proving to mute our expressions by preventing deep thinking and instead promoting fast, superficial ways of finding information?

This documentary also asks questions on how all of this new emerging technology is affecting personal relationships. The main question that Digital Dummies asks is, are actually able to manage the technology around us or is the technology overpowering us? This question is definitely something that applies to remix culture as well and needs to be considered in order to figure out whether the technology that remix culture requires is actually helping or hurting us.