Who are we advocating for? Our patrons or corporate publishers?

#INM380 

Session 4

This week we focused on the ethics and moral considerations of copyright within publishing and how it relate to our understanding of 'the death of the @uthor' as librarians.

We were challenged to consider whether copyright is always applicable in all situations especially when the infringement is so slight and not at all disruptive to copyright holders' income. We were shown examples of when people - who did not set out to rip off anyone - faced fines / criminal investigation and removal of content after post material that included copyrighted material. These examples (the librarians and the mother, see links below) showed times when 'fair dealing' can be considered a needed concept as these individuals did little to no harm to the copyright holder's finances.

 As said at the beginning of 'Steal This Film II' (2007): "This is not a film about piracy... This is not a film about sharing files... It's a film that explores [massive] changes in the way we produce, distribute and consume media"

I was also very glad to hear about Larry Lessig who advocates for progressive copyright laws and has been a major participant in the creative commons movement.  As someone who strongly believes in the creative force of sharing and the history of replication / re appropriation / and adaptation in the evolution of art practices, our shared culture exists because we are able to take ideas (that haven't been claimed by intellectual property) and change them for our own end.

Take Sir Tim Berners-Lee's example. Instead of cashing in on the world wide web he gave it to the world for free. That isn't to say that I am against intellectual property full-stop. There are many musicians/composers who would have been left penniless if it wasn't for royalty cheques - I'm thinking more blues artists, less beatles....(more little guy, less rich establishment).

However, when large corporations with teams of lawyers can go after private individuals who have not profited from copyright infrighments, the scales of balance seem a bit off.

After reading the review of the book of piracy, I got it out from our university library and will read it when I next get a chance. In the mean time I'm making headway with Lessig youtube videos. He may just be my new personal hero...

The writer isn't dead, they just turned into multiple people...

#INM380

Session 3 

I have to admit that I was rather overwhelmed by the amount of reading to be done before this lesson. However, I am glad of the chance to study philosophers in more detail that are important in some way to library and information science. Unfortunately I only have enough time to skim the essays. I'm just glad that I have already read some Barthes and Derrida, so Foucault wasn't as daunting as he might have been otherwise!

Death of THE author (Foucault)
What I found to be central to this essay was the notion that the traditional structures of author and audience were over and that different relationships need to be built. Ernesto pointed out in the lesson that there is an inherit contradiction at work here. Foucault, arguably one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, is arguing that the tradition of the celebrated author is gone while himself enjoys stardom and acclaim primarily through his writings (authorship). The writer who is proclaiming the death of authorship does so through authorship.

Death of ONE SINGULAR author
So what if it's not simply death of an author, i.e. the time of authorship is death, but perhaps this is the death of a singular published voice. That collaborative authorship offers publishing a new dimension and also that authorship from a singular voice is more scattered across the informational landscape than ever before. As Matthew Kirschenbaum puts it in 'what is an @uthor?' "...Today you cannot write seriously about contemporary literature without taking into account myriad channels and venues for online exchange." but what is important to remember is that sifting through someone's output (whether a professional writer or not) becomes a choice of what to include and exclude, as there is too much ephemera to aggregate or even to remember. Documenting and archiving can be a creative process as you are establishing a perceptive of what is and isn't said and remembered about an author's output.

What also comes with the idea of the death of the singular narrator is the rise of the amateur and of the fan fiction writer/imitator/creator. There are numerous  example online, Ernesto showed up in class a particularly uplifting star wars tribute. I found a full length version of Star Wars Uncut online:

 I am interested in the idea of official and unofficial narratives and how these are dictated by power structures. Who gets to tell the official version of events and how is this documented? All of which is highly political.

Once back from a quick break, we were lucky enough to receive a presentation and led-discussion from Eliza Anyangwe who works for the Guardian's professional networks. She gave us a useful insight into the inter-workings of the guardian and addressed some difficult decisions that have been made and will be made with modern news/media publishing.

As we are moving beyond a system of per print customer purchase - i.e. one person buys one newspaper, once a day... toward online free content, we must consider how to fund journalism within this new climate. Do we include more advertising or ask readers for donations? do we pay just 'official' journalists or amateur writers who create valuable content? and how is this done in a news organisation that has a particular editorial style and quality? A lot of interesting and relevant thoughts were shared.

To help with studying...

As I am time poor, and the ever librarian, I have come across some helpful resources for unpacking some of the key notions of the philosophers which we are grappling with.

Summary of The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

"Critical theory for library and information science: exploring the social from across the discipline" (2010) which has chapters devoted to different philosophical ideas and philosophers who are relevant to library and information science. There is a very good chapter devoted to Foucault which I would recommend.

 I'm off to Spain for 5 days, see you all next Friday!

I was there in spirit....

Session Two #INM380

Despite the fact that I was ill for this week session, I have looked at the slides provided on moodle, read the suggested reading and conducted my own reading to support my learning concerning this week's lecture.

From the slides which were uploaded there were a few concepts that particularly caught my attention: the effect of media subjectivity on a reader's perspective and the knowledge economy which I had already come across in Lyn and David's chapter "Information Society" in which it is used as one definition of what the information society might be.

What is clear straight away is that this was an extremely packed session; spanning the invention of paper, introduction to McLuhan, further thoughts on the theories of Walter Benjamin and disruptive technologies.

I must confess that I have prior interest in all of these, however in writing this blog it is extremely difficult to knit them all together - as I'm sure Ernesto did seamlessly during the lecture.  Obviously, publishing in every sense runs through all of them. I'm sure if I was there I would have got it.

It seems that we are stepping away from our basis as 'LIS professionals' into uncharted territory as readers, writers, social commentators, philosophers and producers.

The essay on the history of paper in china was interesting to me as it reminded me that a) as writers and as readers we have a cultural bias which informs our understanding of history and b) technology has a disruptive affect on society (in this case paper) even when it is not acknowledged as a disruptive technology.

The information concerning Marshall McLuhan was also welcome. I wonder if a discussion was had about the later 1960's reprinting of his chapter 'medium is the message' as 'medium is the massage' in which graphics and text are explored to express the reprint-authors' interpretation of McLuhan's ideas.

I wonder whether Ernesto (or anyone else in the class) has read 'The Alphabet versus the Goddess' in which McLuhan's notion that the way by which information is carried can have a bigger affect on society than the contents, is expanded and fused with neurosurgery to create the thought-provoking hypnosis that - due to our brain's separate and specialised hemispheres the technology of the alphabet has had a damaging and lasting influence on the development of our brains. Shlain suggests that the world's shift from goddess and image worship to male gods and patriarchy have come about because of an emphasis on right-brain specialised skills such as writing which causes linear thinking, conceptualisation and violent pursuits to become rife within a society. Whether or not you believe or argee with Shlain, this notion is appealing - that disruptive technology have a significant affect on a collection of people as it inform how they live their lives. In 'The Alphabet versus the Godess' Shlain devotes a chapter to china and its technology, as such I would very much endorse you read it.

 The Knowledge Economy

 I have to admit that every time I have read about the 'information society' every definition I have ever come across has left me uncomfortable. 'Knowledge Economy' is no different. In the writing taken from Credo, the authors describe an information economy in which western countries control their population through information technologies which dictate industry as well as workers' skills (as information workers, wooly definition...). I find the 'triple helix' (Leydesdorf, 2010) notion particularly frustrating. Also the idea that the information society is 'soft capitalism' is really scary.

Personally I think that all societies are dependent on the transmission of information. Any society with a language of any sort is an information society. As Ernesto put it last lesson society is "a series of relationships" which depend on knowledge and the sharing of information. The idea that the control of resources or (I hate myself for saying it) 'intangible good' elevates a (usually western) society to that of an information society is just stupid.
 

 #INM380

Lesson One 30/01/2015

In class on Friday, Ernesto raised many question around libraries, publishing, media consumption and the future of library and information science. He emphasised the importance of connecting with audiences (through reading and purchasing media yourself). I was interested by how there was a focus on fusing together libraries and publishing, rather than seeing them as disparate entities with their own interests, e.g. publishing industry vs. library sector...

Questions were raised around: what is publishing? Is there a definite definition? The answer seemed to be no. Some people defined publishing as simply the dissemination of content, whereas some people argued that publishing actually created and shaped what was made and how it was made. Examples were stated of times when publishing companies have controlled what get made and consumed by the public.

During the lesson I made notes (excuse poor hand-writing and bad, rushed spelling). These are shown below.

I picked out certain things that Ernesto said, as well as trying to record my own thoughts. We were also encouraged to live tweet using the #INM380 hash-tag. I have included a screen shot of live tweets that I tweet below. Unfortunately, I incorrectly put #INM830 rather than #INM380 for a few of them which has shown me the importance of re-reading before publishing ANYTHING.

We were also asked to draw a Venn diagram (in our own time) to include 'libraries' and 'publishing' and the hinterland between them. I found this task extremely difficult. To define either of these terms is hard enough. In trying to separate them, I found that I was connecting words like 'business' and 'profit' to publishing and words like 'access to information' to libraries. Although commercial and for-profit libraries exist (such as the London Library) most libraries are not created to make money and have different functions. The same cannot be said for the publishing industry. It is clear that Ernesto wants us to expand on our idea of what publishing is and to re-claim vehicles for self-publishing, such as twitter.

We were also introduced to our coursework and what would be expected of us to pass this module. I haven't yet finished reading the Walter Benjamin essay and will likely post more content about it here when I next get a chance. From the discussion in class I was reminded of Marshall McLuhan and his book The Global Village. What is clear is that the ideas of the past are generally manifested in the technology of the future. I have come across this idea before through Ken Holling's radio essay The Victorian Search Engine in which he talks about how the technologies of the 20th century were dreamed up in steam and cog-work in the 19th century. He uses Babbage and Ada Lovelace as strong examples. I will explore Benjamin's dialectics in more detail....