I recently came across a book I am interested in picking up, entitled, “The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System“. It’s by Siva Vaidhyanathan who is an assistant professor at NYU in their Culture & Communication department. It seems to be in the same vein as Lawrence Lessig’s book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity.

I found an FAQ on Siva’s site about the Anarchist in the Library. I also found an excerpt from it online at Salon. While Lessig offers a free copy available online of Free Culture, Siva does not seem to. Or at least I have not found it yet. I hope he has a free version though, since that is essentially what his book seems to be about: empowering people with tools for “cultural democracy”.

In any event, reading the book FAQ above has given me a good sense of the sort of language and metaphorical models he is using to talk about the culture wars currently raging over who is in control of creative works, and how should they exercise control over them. The whole thing very much seems to be about power relationships in the media - between cultural producers and consumers, and how they are being modified with new computer technologies and distribution systems.

He spends a lot of time framing the debate in terms of political power, using words like “oligarchy,” and “anarchy” and “democracy.” And this is actually where he starts to lose my interest. I’ve been writing a lot about how stories are used by people in their lives. But to me, power relationships is only one of many facets of how media & stories are used by people. I don’t really like it as the central or guiding metaphor either, because it allows you to get drawn into existing political debates, rather than trailblazing in areas of thought which are yet to be explored.

In other words, while I find the debate between oligarchic and anarchic use of media to be intellectually interesting, I also find it to be needlessly restrictive. People are much more than just political animals and stories (ie, media) are much bigger and more important than all that.

Of course, that said, I haven’t actually read Siva’s book, and maybe it falls along different lines than what I have perceived from reading about it online. Only one way to find out though, I suppose.

UPDATE!

The author of Anarchist in the Library, Siva Vaidhyanathan, left some worthwhile comments in response to this post. I have posted them here.