Macroassignment 1. Perspectives
[I apologize in advance for the massive amount of text here. I can only hope it will end up formatting properly and be readable.]
Since the earliest dawn of Homo sapiens, humans have been creatures of innovation and adaptation. Over the millennia, we have been confronted by a plethora of challenges, and an unforgiving ultimatum: adapt or fail. Those who successfully navigated the rising tide of change prospered tremendously, whereas those who could not suffered the consequences. In centuries past, when these challenges related directly to survival, the penalty for this failure was often death.
These days, the consequences of failing to adapt are less dramatic, but equally worthy of our concern. We face not mortal peril, but a cultural peril of our own making. We are generating new technological advancements faster than the global society can adapt to them. In effect, humanity is lagging behind its own inventions. Business models, educational systems, and cultural behaviors are becoming increasingly outdated and ineffective in the rapidly changing world we have created. There’s no doubt that a revolutionary paradigm shift will need to occur, and soon. The only questions that remain are what, and how. Three modern authors (Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams, and Lawrence Lessig) think they know the answers.
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, a book co-authored by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, discusses how our technologically advancing world is forcing the realm of business to adapt in unexpected ways. One of these adaptations is specifically referred to in the title itself; forward-thinking companies are beginning to realize the immense value of mass collaboration via the Internet.
Nowadays, every person and their grandmother can use a computer and the Internet. Just twenty short years ago, this wasn’t true at all. Back then, the Internet was a dull, stuffy, read-only network utilized by a relatively small portion of the population. Nothing exciting or innovative happened on the ‘Net. Now, a vast living, breathing, interconnected community exists on the web, filled with billions of people and all the collective knowledge they possess. It is interactive, it is creative, it is collaborative. And, best of all, it is free and fully accessible to anyone who wants to use it. For a tech-savvy business, tapping into that network is like hitting the jackpot. This is partially because Internet collaboration nearly eliminates an age-old business problem: size constraints.
Businesses have always been limited by size; regardless of wealth, a company can only expand so far, manage so many processes, and employ so many people. The enormous majority of the human population (and its talent) will always remain outside the company. Logically, this also means that a majority of highly qualified individuals will always remain out there, undiscovered by the companies that could use them. Before the age of the Internet, these individuals might never be found. The cost associated with seeking them out would be tremendous, and no company in their right mind would bother scouring the globe for a few diamonds in the rough. Now, however, the Internet has changed the rules. Even if an individual is physically located halfway around the world, they’re barely a few clicks away on a computer. It’s possible (and supremely advantageous) to collaborate on a massive scale, with anyone and everyone. Companies can crowd-source for creative ideas or solutions to complex problems on a global scale. They can finally tap into the talent of the billions that remain outside their employment, for little to no cost at all.
One might think that every company worth their salt would be busily establishing strong collaboration networks via the Internet. After all, when presented with the opportunity to easily and cheaply harness the full potential of the human race, why would you even hesitate? Many companies, however, are reluctant to abandon the old ways. They’re sticking with the traditional closed-off, hierarchical “walled garden” business model, and they are suffering because of it.
As far as Tapscott and Williams are concerned, this strategy of mass collaboration is absolutely necessary for survival in the new, technologically advanced world of business. If a company isn’t using the Internet for collaborative purposes, their competitors certainly will be, and they will be left woefully behind. It’s do or die; either embrace the newest technologies or sink into obscurity. Adapt or fail.
Lawrence Lessig, author of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology [to] Control Creativity, has a similar stance. He preaches that understanding the newest technology is vital to success, and not just in a business environment. It’s key to artistic and cultural survival as well.
As previously discussed, the Internet allows for an incredible degree of global interaction. People can (and do) share anything and everything through the web: ideas, stories, photos, songs, videos, and more. These materials are then enjoyed (and sometimes improved upon) by others. Unfortunately, more often than not, the material isn’t legally theirs to share. “Piracy” is used to describe the common, albeit illegal, practice of openly sharing copyrighted material through the Internet. Most common is the sharing and downloading of copyrighted songs and music files. Innumerable websites and software products (Napster, Limewire, Kazaa, to name a famous few) have cropped up over the years to serve this very purpose.
The music industry has raged against this “new” piracy crisis, filing lawsuits left and right, and claiming that their profits have suffered considerably as a result of all this free sharing and downloading. They seem to believe that music piracy is one of the worst things that could happen to our society. Lessig has a different opinion on the matter.
Lessig begins by pointing out that, contrary to the claims of “Big Media”, piracy is nothing new. In fact, piracy has been instrumental to the development and vitality of all major entertainment industries from the start. The film industry moved to California and founded Hollywood specifically to escape persecution for copyright and royalty infringement! Even Walt Disney, beloved storyteller and movie animator, blatantly stole his material from other artists without crediting or rewarding them in any way. The characters and stories that made him so famous were never his to produce, but I think we would all agree the world is better off for Disney having made them. The “piracy” big production companies so detest is really just a form of widespread sharing and collaboration. And, strangely enough, this sharing rarely (if ever) detracts from mainstream sales. In fact, it tends to bolster them. Freely sharing information through the Internet allows it to reach infinitely more people, and many of those people will financially support the industry itself. Some entertainment industries, realizing this, are actually supportive of so-called piracy. Japan’s manga industry is one of them.
In Japan, “manga” (the Japanese word for “comic”) is an incredibly popular form of entertainment. Hundreds of mainstream manga series exist, each with a devoted following of paying fans. Each year, the manga market brings in over 406 billion yen (or the equivalent of 3.6 billion US dollars). This massive industry is also extensively and blatantly pirated on an enormous scale. Dōjinshi, a non-mainstream branch of manga, is based entirely on parodies or alternate storylines of popular mainstream series. They use the exact same characters and plots as all the big brands, just with the individual artist’s own unique twists or ideas added in. Essentially, they are manga fan-fiction. These dōjinshi books are produced and sold en masse (in 2007, the dōjinshi industry made 28 billion yen, or 245 million US dollars).
You’d think that mainstream manga producers would stop at nothing to squash this “competing” market, to crush these “pirates” that rip off their characters and stories for profit. In actuality, neither private companies nor the Japanese government itself makes any move against the dōjinshi artists. They don’t care, because they know that manga sales are not diminished by dōjinshi, and these alternate versions only increase interest (and purchase) of the genuine article.
Both the example of Japan’s dōjinshi empire and our own American “pirate” Walt Disney show that piracy is not nearly as bad as big producers like to think. Most of the time, it’s a neutral (if not beneficial) force. Lessig knows this, and encourages modern copyright lawyers to realize the same. If we try to shut down all “piratical” artistic and cultural sharing to protect against a nonexistent danger, we risk shutting down art and culture itself. Advancing technology is not a tool of destruction that needs to be stopped, but a tool for creation that should be encouraged and supported.
Ultimately, that is how I feel about technology and the Internet in general. Whether from a business perspective, or from an artistic & cultural perspective, technology is not something to fear and avoid, but something to embrace and understand. Human nature, the way we interact with one another, and the problems we face have not changed. Only the mechanisms through which these constants are expressed have changed. Piracy is not new; collaboration is not new. The Internet and other modern inventions simply allow for these familiar behaviors to occur on a much larger scale, and more quickly than ever before. The “problem” we face today is learning how to operate in a virtual global society that is always moving, always changing, and always growing. The solution is learning how to collaborate with a global network of peers, share information and ideas openly with all, and readily adapt to what will (inevitably) continue to be a rapidly advancing technological landscape.
