Is our so-called “remix culture” really a new Renaissance of learning and cultural progress? Certain thinkers such as Lawrence Lessig and Yochai Benkler knock vigorously on that door but are wise enough not to walk through. Plenty of bloggers and blog commenters, however, show no fear in ecstatically breaking through that thought barrier. In this post I will argue that in fact there are many parallels between the origins and rise of the European renaissance and our modern embrace of unauthorized distribution and use of creative works, but that while the Renaissance empowered creative output, the “remix culture” has the potential to contract cultural output.

Points of similarity:

Both movements revived former strains of philosophy that had largely been abandoned.

The Renaissance thinkers sought to shake off the Judeo-Christian model operating in Europe for fifteen centuries, and instead revived the classical minds of Plato and Aristotle.

Remix advocates rebel against the domination of capitalist thought in the 20th Century and, as Wired’s Kevin Kelly articulately states, evoke and revive the philosophical strain of socialism, applying its disdain for property rights to the digital medium.

Both movements celebrated the empowerment of the individual.

A humanist perspective arose in the Renaissance in the shift to classical thinking, with a twist reflecting their societies that had Renaissance thinkers celebrating the autonomy of man in his universe. Echoing modern times, this allowed for rationalizations of behavior not advancing all of society, such as the teachings of Machiavelli. But the broader humanist movement is embodied in Shakespeare’s Hamlet — “What a piece of worke is a man! how Noble in Reason? how infinite in faculty? in forme and mouing how expresse and admirable? in Action, how like an Angel? in apprehension, how like a God?” — but is perhaps clearest in Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.”

In a bit of an ironic counterpoint to the socialist strains of the “remix culture,” there is also a sense of individual entitlement in this new “philosophy.” The Internet and digital technologies are seen as the ultimate drivers of a society of egalitarianism, thus the socialist thread, but one resulting from individual empowerment, in the form of use and distribution of others’ works. Call it “I can, therefore I will.”

Both movements react to perceived positions of absolute power.

During the Renaissance, France’s Sun King and England’s James I and Charles I took advantage of technologies and knowledge transfers of the time to claim sweeping powers over not only the state but individual autonomy. History has shown, in significant part due to Renaissance thinkers, that absolute power is a chimera, an illusion only maintained if not challenged.

The advocates of unauthorized file distribution posit that they are similar heroes challenging the existing order, thus the frequent comparison of media industries to cartels. However, the tsunami of new businesses and business models speaks to the fact that consumers are in fact in the driver’s seat, but that perspective is lost on someone who wishes to make a copy of a DVD or post a sound recording on YouTube. Then it is far easier to feel suppressed by The Man.

So what can we learn from this? The paragraph above suggests that I view the perspective of “remix culture” thinkers as, perhaps, lacking in a broader perspective, but their perspective fits with their own advocacy of self-interest combined with a disrespect for property rights, found in the first two sections above.

For reasons far more lengthy than can be addressed in a blog post, the intellectual rebirth in Europe during the Renaissance opened the door to the Age of Reason and subsequently the founding principles of our country, to the birth of modern science, and to many other areas of thought and discourse critical to modern society. In fact, it is those very advances that have led to our current explosion of creativity in numerous forms; yes, I acknowledge the birth of our richness in culture does in fact precede copyright law and the assignment of ownership rights to creators.

But those ownership rights have in fact been empowering, allowing creators to not have to rely on patronage by the state to further their creativity. In fact, artists’ rights successfully undermine the absolutism of the state, even when assigned by the state. This was true in the freedom of speech resulting from England’s Statute of Anne.

By definition, a dilution of those rights assigned to creators will eliminate those works by whom those rights enable their continued creativity. We will continue to see works by those unencumbered financially. We will continue to see works by those seeking only to create for the sake of creation. But we will also see a reduction in the creation of works in which a free market matters, and a cursory review of a physical or online bookstore or media outlet will show that much of what we read and watch and play every day is produced in that market.

One truism of philosophy is that no one can truly have perspective on one’s own time. I may be proven wrong as the decades progress. But advocates of the “remix culture” as a new Renaissance must await the verdict of history as well.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 8:39 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under blogging, copyright opponents, creators, culture, founding fathers, market forces, p2p, piracy, property rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.