I feel like this quote states how free technology can become. At one point it is protected by the creator or inventor, but as more people use the technology they find ways to elaborate it. An example was how AT&T tried to control the phone systems, but in the present day AT&T has many competitors.

I’m not sure what he means to tell you the truth. My sense is that with the internet, we need to have a set of rules and controls. within those rules, we have ultimate freedom. Sort of like the alphabet. If we know the rules of letter, sounds, language, we can write epics. With a few notes, great symphonies can be created. We are in the process of creating the structure of the language of the internet.

The author explains previously the physical layer of telecommunications is controlled but the content, or rather e2e, that is what is free. He believes that that principle is what has created innovation commons. Ability to create freely with only laws to govern internet protocol has created the desire to try something new, go beyond what was previously possible. It is that freedom that shows us real estate on the internet is not just disposable. It’s valuable because it’s physical is controlled. But the question exists, if freedom for the user to create e2e is taken away, could that diminish the controlled value of the internet?

Throughout the chapter, Lessig seemed to be saying that there are positives and negatives associated with both freedom and control. A positive of control is the huge incentives and monetary resources available to implement ideas and infrastructure. A negative of control is that it often stifles innovation, since those with control always try to prevent competition. Lessig uses the example of AT&T, who was responsible for many useful innovations, but also prevented beneficial projects because they would have cost the company money. Freedom also has upsides and downsides. Ultimately, freedom creates a more useful product for the consumer, since no innovations are barred from creation. However, the problem is the lack of incentive to take on costly projects–like installing fiber-optic cables. I think the quote is saying that some level of control is necessary (or inevitable), and the importance of freedom is that it increases a product’s usefulness, or “social value”, with unrestricted innovative opportunity.

The physical codes that make up the WWW is the controlled, through this opened up a social change in freedom to connect/share with one another, through how one creates and builds upon these codes. The freedom is set through the vast amounts of ways you can create a site like Pandora for music, Facebook for social connections, Ebay for product sales etc. thus this freedom through creativity and change increases the value of the control.

I believe that this last sentence reflects on what Lessigs feels about the Internet and how it is a place of great freedom. We are able to use it as we like as long as we follow certain rules. This freedom allows the birth of innovation and, as time goes on, technology and the Internet itself will change. These changes may be for the better or for the worse… only time will tell. As Lessigs explains about “Quality of Service” solutions, there may be a time when the network is modified to treat different types of data differently. This would make the Internet more controlled because it would discriminate between different types of data and give priority to one over the other. To me, this statement reflects on how the Internet allows so much freedom that eventually there must be some control instituted. It can’t remain completely free forever. We overload the network with packet requests and transfers, and the network becomes bogged down. Thus, there is the need for Quality of Service solutions and greater control in the future.

I believe this means that we have freedom to do what we want with the internet, as long as we follow the laws/rules. We have the freedom to create and access different pages on the internet. This is a lesson that will recur because of the magnitude and response the internet has created. It gets bigger every day and billions of people access it. The creators had no idea that the internet would become this giant. They did not know what to expect from it, which is why they created it the way they did; so it can be changed and altered as needed. It was a brilliant idea that more people and business should follow.

Lessig points out that the power of the Internet was not in the system itself, but in its users. The system of the Internet is, as he points out, very simple, which is what made it popular, and its breadth of usage therefore made it powerful. “Social value”, in this case, refers to improvements that the Internet made in society. But again, unlike the telephone system, the Internet is largely regulated by its users – entirely moreso than its servers. By being as all-inclusive as possible, those few who controlled the hardware of the system reaped and will reap the most benefits. By allowing, rather than restricting public input, the entire system as a whole is able to amass a greater and more valuable load of content.

The latter half of this quote is only foreshadowing of sorts. But it points out that even a free system has some basic controls or constraints in place, being of course the code on which the Internet transfers. As the social value of the Internet grows, then, it is possible that in controlling or manipulating such code, those who run the basic mechanism of the Internet may one day be able to regulate what we get out of the Internet and what we don’t.

I must admit that this is an intriguing subject, and almost hard to grasp in a definite and concrete fashion. Of course, it’s also 3 in the morning.

The article was very interesting. The most interesting part for me was that AT&T tried to control the telephone community. Even something as small as the “Hush-a-Phone” was taken away because it wasn’t approved by AT&T. The ending sentence that Lessig writes implies that by having the internet allowed us to have freedom to information around the world without any restrictions. The controlled space is the use of fiber optics and servers in order for us to use the internet. As technology grows, more inventions like the internet will appear.

This finishing sentence illustrates Lessigs attitude towards the freedom that the internet enables us to have. The controlled space is comprised of the physical code layer, yet the connection to the net which allows access and freedom for change and innovation is the freedom aspect of the idea. This means that as time continues, this freedom will recur and more innovations and changes on technology, connection, the web and how one can reach the internet will expand and grow, yet there will be a reoccurring reverence and value held to the main elements that comprise such a phenomenon.

This two part sentence is both a statement of what transpired with the development of the e2e principle and TCP/IP protocol and a prediction that this type of democratization of a “controlled system” will happen again as the push for paid services grows through the introduction of QoS technologies.

The author believes that the “freedom” created by e2e is equivalent to added “value” to the once limited function of the “controlled” telephone network that is now shared by the “innovation commons” which is the joined community of users free to access the internet through the wired network than was originally intended just for voice communication.

http://jcripe2.xtreemhost.com/groupproject1/

and if you wanted the tutorial I used for the galleries, here it is:

http://blogs.msdn.com/xwebsupport/archive/2009/02/24/a-css-photo-gallery.aspx

Please do note, however, that the guy who did this tutorial left out one essential step: div.container needs to have the position set to relative!