To improve one must always be on the edge of ones own potential. Don’t look at what your friends are doing. Think about what you are able to accomplish today and aim higher, always challenge yourself instead of just aiming for a good mark or a ”job well done”.

Michael Jordan was once asked how much he bets on golf. To this he replied ”whatever makes me nervous”. This is a very important thing to always do. Do only things that matter to you and if they don’t you’re probably looking on them the wrong way.

When society changes it alters a lot of previously established conceptions. A common thing to say is that ”Content is king” but this is something that belongs to the past and not for our fast-paced world. Content is still very important but it is no longer sovereign. In our society today it is more important with Context.

The problem is that there are no exact answers, only approximations and guesses according to the ruling paradigm at a certain instance of time. Many people ”project the world as a deterministic black box — linking preordained input parameters to a predictable output”. Management in organizations ”try to ‘manage change’ or ‘engineer knowledge’ with tidy quantitative methods” without coping with subjective subtlety, ambiguity and complexity. People most of the time try to fit the world into black-and-white instead of the many grey-zones that exist. It’s natural to want to categorize into different parts but doing that one also strips away essential parts that might change the meaning of the object in a different context. ”All facts are context sensitive. Contexts are personal.”

We try to control society by imposing ‘proper control procedures’ but according to Goodhart’s Law: ”Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed on it for control purposes.” ”Models can only [...] be a pale shade of what actually happens.” ”Each of us experiences a different world, albeit with ’similarities’”. This gets further complicated when we believe we use the same schema as someone else but since everyone experiences things differentially there might be an essential anomaly in the two schemas. When we agree upon some parts of the world a fact is created. ”A fact is merely an approved communal judgement, positioned within a context.”

”Is being forever wrong a problem? No! For ‘[a]ll models are wrong, [but] some models are useful’”. We need to recognize that everything constantly changes and leads to new opportunities; ”you can never step into the same river twice.” One needs to adjust the thoughts to the current context and profit from that status quo instead of looking for an ultimate solution.

[source: Solution is the Problem: A Story of Transitions and Opportunities]
[pic:  CC-BY-NC-SA, donut2d]

In this post I will discuss three of the essential parts in the filesharing debate.
*Consumers show a need that is not satisfied by the market,
*The intellectual property law needs to change.
*The need for control to maintain power.
———–

A Need

The filesharing is a result of improvements in technology and a need to share and be social with each other. When new technology emerges and it is superior to existing technology the market needs to adapt to the new needs of citizens in our digital society. People don’t want to wait another few days (or weeks) for the end of the show they are watching. A lot of people would rather enjoy music digitally right away instead of buying a CD and converting it themselves. People have a need to be spontaneous at home and deciding what movie they would like to see now instead of planning it beforehand or having to walk off to rent a movie somewhere.

Intellectual Property Law

As I see it copyright is a ”monologue” where people are meant to consume instead of participating in the further shaping of the copyrighted piece. This limits the communication and creativity that would otherwise take place. Before our digital age copyright had a good place in our society preventing physical copies to be made elsewhere which was directly damaging to the sales. Today when a technological change has made copying of digital material almost costless the old copyright law no longer applies in the same way it used to. The intellectual property law needs to change to reflect this but the established companies are happy with the profits from their old business model and do what they can to maintain this model. For society to adapt copyright to our digital age we need to either change intellectual copyright law or we are forced to change other existing rights such as Secrecy of Letters (Brevhemligheten), Source Protection (källskydd) and Mere Conduit.

A Need For Control

The filesharing debate is essentially about the right to knowledge and the sharing of it. Today knowledge-hoarders have power since they are the ones sitting on more knowledge than others have. With a bigger access to knowledge the society gets more equal. Inside larger corporations they have the possibilities of remixing each others work with that corporation. Having an opportunity of remixing leads to an increased creativity. The creation of copyright was meant to allow creativity but today it acts more as a restrictor of creativity. ”To discuss the actual conditions of creation, one should also discuss how the act of creation is done”

[Pics: Movie watching, CC-BY-NC-SA, julianrod / Leaf, CC-BY-ND, jaypeq21 / control, CC-BY-NC-ND, alphadesigner ]

For a further discussion around the need to change copyright take a look at my blog-post ”Copyright Worked In The Past But Not Anymore”
For more around the concept of copyright as a monologue listen to ”Larry Lessig on laws that choke creativity”.]

When two broadcasters on Twitter or some other social media connect in the common area and create a discussion is when the magic happens. This is what social media is all about, connecting with each other and talking!