How Big Is Your Gap?

In class on Thursday we looked as social media and some individual and groups' social media presences.  What stood out was the correlation between the irl income gap and the gap of fame and income from online channels or users.  Which just seems to tie back to the fact that nothing in life is new anymore and everything is just regurgitated and forced back into consumers in hope of profits, awareness, or fame.

It is very interesting to look at, somewhat depressing but very interesting.  The idea of copywriting and claiming ownership and naming make it even more interesting because it ties in with the idea of ownership.  As an individual I do not believe I could even claim ownership of my own ideas, they are not deeply rooting in my own existence but are from the things i observe and are altered by my shared experiences and the ideas of those around me.  Ownership has its importance but the way that it works does not seem to do what it should.  People should not be able to simply decide that they want to own something then have the legal rights of ownership over it.  In class we talked about "let's play" and other similar devices or web technologies and the idea that companies can try to go to court to obtain ownership of things like that for the purpose of having a monopoly and bleeding profits from it is absurd.  One of the strongest cases for ownership would be if the opposite of that were the case and a business wished to obtain rights to something to ensure that it would be free to all but capitalism makes that slightly ...yeah only slightly... difficult.  

The whole issue with ownership and profits is what is turing the online web entity into a reproduction of society.  Yes profits can be seen from many amenities and benefits from online experiences but when profits are the driving force in things they corrupt the beauty and freedom of it.  The communicator in me sees how communication is change both in ease and in purpose.  The anthropologist in me sees how the online community has become its own society and has adapted the goals and pursuits of society from real life.  The philosopher in me is so curious and so depressed as to why people would want to take the freedoms that seemed to be offered by imagination and ability that the internet made available and contain them for whatever profits that can be bled from them.

It is like the gap is this ominous shadow that follows society.  As people embarked on adventure in pursuit of freedom the gap saw the profits always available and pirated them.  Now it is doing the same thing, the internet exposed freedom and the gap sniffed the profits and began to impose business practices and brought out peoples desire to conquer the gap but the desire to get from one side of the gap to the other only makes the gap stronger.  So I finish by asking how can we be done with the gap?  How can society exist and have the freedom without separation?  (This makes me excited for when the class begins to talk about utopian society).