After the first lecture of the course and my first attempt at deciphering the course outline I was feeling a little lost about this blog.
Although initially lost, as I progressed through the readings I felt as though I was slowly finding some direction.
I felt resonance with the concept of ‘commons’ when I first saw it in Wikipedia and I thought the idea of something universally owned and distributed had a sort of pleasantry about it. Published material is material that has gone through the process of being made available to others via some platform. As Wikipedia describes it, “the activity of making information available to the general public.” Once something is published it is made available to those who wish to access and has effectively been entered into the ‘cultural sphere.’
I do think there is inconsistencies between these two ideas though as people’s access to published items can be affected by things like money or education. Like the commons article on Wikipedia suggests, published information may be readily available on the internet but people must first pay a provider for access to the internet in order to gain part ownership of that information.
From the first lecture and readings i am also intrigued by the significance of the E-Reader and its potential effects on publishing.
The obvious effects of the E-reader on publishing that i can identify are things like the ubiquity of published material and the potential losses and gains in profitability for publishers.
I thought the article on idealog about E-Readers and the profitability of publishing had some poignant points.
The ease with which material may be published via E-Readers obviously reduces costs for publishers, but also has a huge potential to reduce profits for them as their publications are exposed to huge amounts of competition.
How ubiquitous published material may be come with the Internet and E-Readers as platforms made me think about the effect this could have on the relationship between the concepts of publishing and the ‘commons.’
If published material can be spread online over the internet, transferred onto E-Readers and easily make the transition across these platforms, then it may help in making published material more closely mirror the commons.
Although this does come with detrimental impacts for publishers and the sellers of information.
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