Week 4:

The first reading, "Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project" contained a lot of seemingly obvious things, like explaining how teens communicate, to surprising insight.  The insights I found interesting centered on how teens have such ever-present communication with each other.  The article talked about the many ways teens achieve these multiple presences, both online and off.  It talked about the work-arounds teens employ to maintain these networks.  This got me thinking about the potential of these latent networks, of how much that could be achieved if just some of this potential was harnessed.
  The interview with Lawrence Lessig was also interesting.  I have to admit I'm still confused about fair use and copyright law.  This confusion is something that troubles me.  I know that as an aspiring information professional, I need to address this deficiency.  It concerns me that Lessig was talking about how fair use in theory is more supported than it is in practice.  That makes me think even our courts are confused on this matter.
  The comic about fair use both frightened and enlightened me to just how complex this matter is.  The example of documentary use of music is crazy.  I never thought about how copyrighted our culture is.  Then I checked out the fair use evaluator tool, and I think that might help my confusion, however, it seemed Lessig was saying that fair use is not always applicable in the court of law.


I have far more work ahead of me...


P.S.  I really like the split up discussion threads.  I'm not gonna lie, I didn't listen to last weeks' podcast.  I thought I could do the readings and posts and that the podcast would just further explain stuff for people that need explaining.  I now see the error of my ways.  I will be listening now.