information=power

Information is power. So I think it's interesting that as the internet continues to develop more and more people are eager to share information they have about anything. What's more - as time goes on it's obvious that people are eager to share without asking for compensation.

I mean, when you need access to information and you go to a website that specializes in something (i.e. legal stuff at Lexis Nexis) you're required to pay a fee in order to gain access to information. But over the last few years with the idea of the social web really catching on, people have become eager to share information they have for free. So more and more people make blogs, create websites that specialize in obscure stuff, and add entries to Wikipedia.

Lately, the thing that's really intrigued me about this freedom to information is the access that major institutions are granting to the public. NPR started posting all their shows as podcasts, available for free download - but I guess that's not a huge deal because NPR was free in the first place; you just had to turn on the radio. However, now there are major universities like UC Berkeley posting many of their class lectures (via podcast) directly to their websites.

So I can't take classes at Berkeley right now - ok, well I can listen to a good recording of every single lecture for Legal Studies 103 (Theories of Law and Society) that was given last semester. I may not be getting a diploma or class credit, but I love the idea that I can download all of these to my iPod and continually learn about this sort of stuff while I'm just walking or sitting around my apt.