kowski's diary

At times we come across an idea we really wanted to share despite all the mundane distractions. Here is a 2003 paper by James Boyle titled the "The Second Enclosure Movement." He discusses issues we are facing in balancing the older Intellectual Property regimes against the rising user creativity. I especially like Boyle discussing I.P. as a regime to protect the "noblest of human productions" which should be "free as air." But there is little clarity to how we can balance the playing field due to the lack of understand the myriad of "public domains" we are trying to protect.

Social studies of the New Media often focus on the user side of the equation, while overlooking product developers and designers as key actors. This special issue, that I edited with Bonnie Nardi, put together papers from a multi-disciplinary team of prominent researchers including Dan Burk, Jordi Comas, Mimi Ito, Hector Postigo, Walt Scacchi, and Ted Tschang. I hope that the papers would provide alternative lens for examining New Media development.

See full issue.

Abstract of the special issue:

Our book chapter, Culture and Creativity: World of Warcraft Modding in China and the U.S., has been published in the edited volume Online Worlds: Convergence of the Real and the Virtual by William Bainbridge.

The book is available both online as well as at Amazon.com.

The problem of ethics is difficult. Imagine one customer trying to return a product he had bought the previous day; it was broken. The store assistant politely declines, saying that it is the company's policy of no return. The customer insists, saying that it is only ethical. The store assistant says that she is only doing her job. Who is right, and who is wrong?

Something which I implied, quite frequently in my research, was that culture affects creativity. Then one may ask: "what is culture?"