Youth, Creativity, and Copyright in the Digital Age
John Palfrey, Urs Gasser, Miriam Simun, Rosalie Fay Barnes
International Journal of Learning and Media, Spring 2009, Vol. 1, No. 2, Pages 79-97
(doi: 10.1162/ijlm.2009.0022)
ABSTRACT
New digital networked technologies enable users to participate in the consumption, distribution, and creation of content in ways that are revolutionary for both culture and industry. As a result, “Digital Natives”—young people growing up in the digital world with access to the technologies and the skills to use them in sophisticated ways—are now confronting copyright law on a regular basis. This article presents qualitative research conducted with students age 12-22 that explores youth understanding, attitudes, and discourse on the topic of digital creativity and copyright law. Our findings suggest that young people operate in the digital realm overwhelmingly ignorant of the rights, and to a lesser degree the restrictions, established in copyright law. They often engage in unlawful behavior, such as illegal peer-to-peer music downloading, yet they nevertheless demonstrate an interest in the rights and livelihoods of creators. Building upon our findings of the disconnect between technical, legal, and social norms as pertaining to copyright law, we present the initial stages of the development of an educational intervention that posits students as creators: the Creative Rights copyright curriculum. Educating youth about copyright law is important for empowering young people as actors in society, both in terms of their ability to contribute to cultural knowledge with creative practices and to engage with the laws that govern society.
Full paper available here
(published as How to Design for Sustainability in ITPBook2.0 – 2010)
April 01, 002010
“Automatism amounts to a closing-off, to a sort of functional self-sufficiency which exiles man to the irresponsibility of a mere spectator” – Jean Baudriallrd, System of Objects
Our technologies are growing increasingly complex, sophisticated, “smart.” Ever more automatized, the technologies we interact with every day are being designed to sense, analyze, and act independent of human input. The phone is smart. The city is smart. Even the kitchen is growing smarter. Where does that leave the human?
Are we becoming stupid? Lazy? Lacking in agency? Our interactions with technology are ever more dependent upon abstract, intellectual metaphor. One might argue that our brains may becoming smarter, or at least more interoperable with the technological systems we live with. But what about they body? Our physical bodies have evolved over thousands of years to serve as excellent sensors, reactors, activators. Beginning with the Cartesian divide (“I think, therefore I am”) and continuing through to our current transitioning to a knowledge economy, we are coming to exist in a world that places little value on our bodies beyond the brain, the eyes, and the typing fingers. We arrive to a contemporary in which the body, visceral senses, and embodied knowledge are being left behind.
How do we design not only for the brain, but for the human system?
1. I AM NOT (ONLY) MY BRAIN
“Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert.”
- Donna Haraway, Cyborg Manifesto
We come to know the world through interacting with it. As infants, we explore the world by putting everything and anything in our mouths, coming to know the world first through the inside of the mouth. As we grow, we see and hear, but also touch, smell, feel. Our physical senses play a crucial part in our formation of knowledge. Sometimes our bodies know things that our minds do not.
A sense of touch is a particularly diffuse and varied source of information. Unlike the eyes, our tactile sensations have the ability to focus on multiple stimuli at one time. And yet, our interactions with ever more complex technologies that we use everyday depend largely on the eyes, and on rudimentary physical actions that negate the full range of knowledge our bodies have accumulated over the course of human evolution.
How might we make use of embodied knowledge to better understand the ways in which we use technology in our everyday lives?
2. TOWARDS A BETTER METAPHOR
Designing interactions with technology relies heavily on metaphor. When you swing a hammer, you can see, hear, feel the nail go into the wall. Growing levels of mediation between our inputs and the result (in the form of mechanics; code; electronic signals) require the design of an experience that communicates to us what we are actually doing. And so we interact with a collection of metaphors; the mouse cursor as metaphor for the finger; the knob on the stove as metaphor for increase/decrease of fire; the click on the “open new document” button as the turning to a fresh (electronic) page. As physical and virtual worlds merge, the metaphors communicating our interactions are ever more abstracted from the actions we are taking, and their impact upon ourselves, others, and the world. Can we imagine a world where our interactions with technology are grounded in embodied knowledge rather than abstract metaphor?
The Visceral Light Switch is an exploration of visceral interaction with technology. To define visceral: deep; instinctive; unreasoning; dealing with crude or elemental emotions; earthy. What does it take to turn on a light? With the Visceral Light Switch, the proportions are redesigned. The light bulb is relatively small; the rope to control it hangs large and heavy. To turn on the light the you must engage your whole hand, grasping the thick rope and pulling with the bicep. A light pull will provide a dim light. The harder you pull, the brighter the light becomes. In order to get the full brightness of the light, you must make use of your whole body – often this will require you to use both hands and throw your body into it, pulling, even hanging from the rope to ‘pull’ out the brightest light from the light bulb. Your fingers grasped tightly around the rope, your bicep straining as you pull, your feet coming slightly off the ground as you use your weight to pull down on the rope – all of these sensations become a part of understanding what it takes turn the bulb bright. Energy does not come from nowhere – its provision is not as easy as a simple flip of a normal light switch may suggest. With the Visceral Light Switch, the more energy you put into your action, the more energy the light bulb will give you in return. Through this whole body interaction, you are led to engage with the greater system you act within.
Might visceral, physical interactions better communicate the systemic impact of our actions?
3. SYSTEMS: RIPPLES OF ACTION
When you go to the toilet, shit disappears. You flush it, it disappears. Of course, rationally you know, it’s there, in the canalization, and so on, but at a certain level of most elementary experience it disappears from your world.”
- Slavoj Zizek, The Examined Life
As we moved from agriculture, to industrial, and now to service- and knowledge-based economies, so to did human work move from an engagement with the land and the body; then with mechanical production; and now with information, often virtual. Our social systems are ever increasingly instantaneously mediated across vast expanses of physical time and space; our most important markets are now financial – information based rather than physical; even the food we put into our bodies are now of a mediated nature – artificially colored, scented, flavored, packaged in a form that negates the crucial role the physical for nourishment that we have relied on for centuries. The further we move from direct engagement with our natural environmental and our very own bodies, the more complex and distant these connections grow, the harder it becomes for us to understand the impact our actions have upon natural systems.
As Zizek claims, rationally and cognitively, we may understand the theoretical impact of our actions. The emergence of ecological crisis in global social consciousness beseeches us to continuously be aware of our actions and their systemic environmental impact. And yet, our technologies are built for speed and ease, using highly abstracted metaphors that make it difficult to truly understand the impact of our actions. As technological complexity grows, even a cognitive understanding becomes harder to grasp. But at this ‘elementary’ level of experience, the flipping of a light switch hardly communicates the chain of actions and systemic impacts our simple actions trigger. Natural resources have been harvested, converted to energy, transported to a home, channeled through a transformer, to finally turn on a light bulb. And all that was required was a flip of the switch. As our brains grow increasingly complex and familiar with disembodied informational and virtual dealings, our bodies remain a crucial connection to our natural environment.
Can embodied interactions encourage more environmentally sustainable minded actions?
4. EQUATING EFFORT WITH PLEASURE
“Let everyday life be a work of art” – Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space
The dominant discourse of sustainability is rife with a demand for sacrifice. Use less electricity, use less water, use less paper, don’t drive, don’t fly, don’t eat (largely the only available) unsustainable food. To live a truly sustainable life is to not live at all; at least not within the available system. Successful encouragement of sustainability is part raising awareness; but also, to encourage sustainable action, rather than sacrifice.
During the design process for the Visceral Light Switch, I presented the concept to a class of 3rd graders. I showed them a prototype of a light bulb and string: to make the light bright, they had to pull really hard. The class was then asked to design their own light switch: they could envision any interaction they wanted that would result in the turning on of a light. Two themes emerged from their designs: fun, and a bit of sadism. One girl’s design required a funny sound to turn on the light: “Blup! Twa-twa!” Another boy’s design was a form of automated sadism: you sit in a chair and the light automatically turns on, but the chair has a big spike in the seat to discourage long sitting periods (and encourage less use of light).
The 3rd grade reactions were vital in highlighting the need for a revision of sustainable discourse, as well as a revision of the pleasure factor in interacting with the Visceral Light Switch. Certainly, ecological realities require that our use of natural resources can not remain as easy, abundant and thoughtless as they have been until now. Effort is required. But effort must not be equated to sacrifice. The move to make life easy, efficient, effortless has not succeeded in making us happier. Humans are creators, and creation requires effort. Effort is often pleasurable. Physical exertion may be difficult, but often brings us peace of mind.
The Visceral Light Switch was designed to require significant effort from the user to turn on a simple light bulb. The rope was designed to be large, heavy, strong, bouncy, intricate in its tactility, a pleasure to touch, fun to pull. It entices passers-by to manipulate its tactile handle, to give it a pull, to see how hard they can throw their body into it. And users come away gratified in having turned the light bulb turn on – an action that usually passes by unnoticed in everyday life.
How can embodied interactions with technology be designed to bring pleasure into everyday life?
September 2009. ‘My Music, My World: Using the Mp3 Player to shape experience in London,’ New Media and Society. 11(7).
This article examines the ways in which individuals use MP3 players to shape their experiences of the London commute. To investigate MP3 listening practices, I conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with eight DJs and ‘listeners’ living in London. I argue that MP3 players enable individuals to use music to precisely shape their experiences of space, place, others and themselves while moving through the city. In doing so, individuals experience great control as they transform urban journeys into private and pleasurable spaces. While experienced effects of MP3 player listening were similar among respondents, pre-existing relationships to music appear to relate to motivations for use. This article draws on a variety of social theorists ranging from Simmel and Adorno to Lefebvre to interrogate the experience of control MP3 users describe, and to understand the implications for the autonomy of urban inhabitants.
Key Words: city • commute • control • music • MP3 player • privatization • public space
New Media & Society, Vol. 11, No. 6, 921-941 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1461444809336512