In the first week we discussed the ideas of language and property through the readings of Gleick and Lessig, respectfully. Gleick's reading required us to think about the difference between ways that information can be passed with his example of the African drumming and Morse code. While Lessig describes the difference between property with examples of the boundaries in which ones property can be limited to, in this case it was air property versus land property (which later brought up as intellectual property and the internet).
In both readings the authors describe our ability to either create codes and language, or manipulate property as a person's "right to tinker". To tinker as defined by dictionary.com suggests that it can be "a person skilled in various kinds of mechanical work" (noun) or "to work unskillfully or clumsily at anything" (verb). Which means that being able to work with what is already given to you as either a language or piece of property doesn't necessarily mean that something new will occur from what you tinkered with but a change may take place.
For language and codes, tinkering is done within smaller groups of people which then spreads out to the population all at once. One example is 1337 $P34K which started off with people interested in numbers and symbols on a keyboard. Usually the speech is associated with "nerds" because of the fascination with computers. This idea then expanded and transformed with the rise of the cell phone since cell phone companies charged about 10 cents per character in a text message. The challenge became to find a way to communicate quicker than a phone call in as few characters as possible where words like LOL (laughing out loud), and BRB (be right back) manifested.
Where as with Lessig the idea of tinkering comes more from how we create new images or ideas with the inspiration, help, or base of what is already created. This boils down to tinkering with the idea of property since there are so many ideas being produced in the world that it becomes harder to create something new and not step on a person's toes.
Within the DTC department I've noticed that the right to tinker varies greatly from teacher to teacher depending on their own backgrounds as well as school policy. Each professor I've had really digs into the idea of creating imaginative and new works without the help of outside sources. This then gets rid of the fear of being sue'd for copyright infringement on projects that we work on in their classes. It becomes especially significant in project base classes where the professor would rather not step on any toes if the student decides to use the project within their portfolio.
Roger Whitson is one teacher who didn't focus too hard on those laws however and actually discussed Lessig's ideas with us further and had us create a paper using only other people's words from some articles he dug up for us. It became hard to create something using people's words and trying to make it our own and proved to most people that being able to tinker with someone's intellectual property wasn't as easy as perceived.
I've been apart of the art community for a very long time and I've noticed that these same issues tend to pop-up throughout the website. Many artists discuss the idea between copyright and creative commons and the number one thing that both parties agree upon is that they want to be respected. This means that if an artist openly says "feel free to use my art" then, although technically copyrighted through the site, the material can be used without permission. Or if an artist says "ask permission first" even though they are also open to people using their art, it is better to ask them and to give them credit if they demand it. The artists also developed their own set of languages to express their emotions through the tinkering of how the symbols look when formed together. OTL and orz are both used in the same way where it shows a person on her or his knees.
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