Lanham's "The Implications of Electronic Information for the Sociology of Knowledge"

Lanham poses some interesting concerns and questions regarding the effect of digital communication on humanistic knowledge. Today, we are already seeing many of the things he discussed in his 1994 article being implemented and actualized. Take the electronic classroom for example. Online education has erupted over the past decade. Discussion boards, e-books, and video conferencing have enabled almost all of the elements of the traditional classroom to be translated into an electronic classroom. Now, students from all over the world can take the same class and contribute their varying worldviews and perspectives to broaden the scope of class discussion. Another example would be libraries. I no longer have to physically drive to a library to ask if they have a certain book. I can check their online catalog and check out an e-book at 2:00 am from my couch. Research has become easier to manage and I can access more research to broaden my research scope.

While our culture and society have seemingly adapted quite well to the rapidly evolving digital age, some terms have rightfully come into question. Terms such as author and intellectual property must be redefined to fit within the context of our digital era. Lanham remarks that "After books have been printed and bound, they are unchangeable. Thus the idea of a single author can be protected. Because books can be physical property, they can be intellectual property, protected by some version of copyright law. Thus the career of authorship becomes possible" (455). I do think the career of authorship is still possible once we establish a newly adapted definition of the terms in question. Change is part of everything and usually brings with it better things for society. The highly debated SOPA and PIPA bills, in my opinion, at least recognized the need to look at the definitions of copyright and author and made an attempt to protect intellectual property. While these bills may have been prematurely brought up, it is clear that the need to address these things is evident.

Consider the following article in which a young author hit the best-seller's list with her first novel, later discovered to be largely plagiarized. She claims that it is not plagiarism but "mixing." Obviously, we need to redefine some terms to protect the works of our authors, but this does not necessarily mean that the overall digital communication change is not beneficial to our society. Like Lanham states, "as we have now discovered, the protective carapace of copyright law simply cannot apply": we need to redefine the law to adapt to our digital society (456).