The Free Culture

On April 1st, Google posted a feature that would allow you to go back and timestamp your posts, emails, etc, to the date you wished. Well, I wish that day was Friday, but it is not. It's Monday, but I'll still roll the rock up the hill with the ole' Blog Post.

I found the project to create something without permission to be pretty easy. I think it left open a lot of opportunity, however, to digress, and it was harder to focus your statement because you had access to everything you wanted. I felt myself asking, "Do I want to do say this, or take a shot at this?" With the permission culture piece, I found one theme and decided to stick with it, as it was hard enough to go and find the images for ONE theme, let alone multiple statements.

And perhaps that is reflective of the whole free vs. permission culture as a whole. I felt a lot more restricted with the permission culture, but I still produced something that was satisfactory to me. I just felt that I was almost led down a specific path of what to edit, crop, use, etc.

Then, when remixing a classmate's project, I found it even harder. I was lazy and used powerpoint and created a collage but to take something melded together in Photoshop and remix what has been mixed was difficult. I felt the most restricted here, and even wished I could add somethings to it to enhance my perspective, building on the original work.

This project tied in very nicely with the Free Culture/Permission Culture debate. I think it is possible to function within a Permission Culture and I don't find it as smothering as I originally thought. However, it is more difficult, and I think more people need to learn the rules as it can be quite shady.

See you all in class. :D