Chapter 7

Creativity in Real Space

There was a time before the Internet. Innovation and creativity were dif-
ferent then. I don't mean that creators were different then or that the
process of creativity has changed. But the constraints on creativity and in-
novation were different. This difference can be expressed at each layer of
Yochai Benkler's system. Because the physical, and code, and content layers
were controlled differently, the opportunities for innovation were different.

We all know about these differences in the constraints among these lay-
ers. They are all obvious, if a bit in the background. They flow directly from
the nature of real constraints within a scarcity-based economy. They are not
the product of conspiracy or the will of evil minds. They are importantly un-
avoidable, at least in real space.

My aim in this chapter is to remind you of these things that we all know.
I will rehearse the constraints on innovation that flow from the character of
these different layers of communication in real space, so that we can better
see how they have changed.

_In_real_space._ It is this qualification about which we must become self-
conscious. Our intuitions about property, and about how best to order soci-
ety, are intuitions built in a particular physical world. We have learned a
great deal about how best to order that world, given the physics, as it were,
of that particular world.

But the physics of cyberspace is different. The character of the constraints
is different. So while there may be good reason to carry structures that de-
fine real space into cyberspace, we should not assume that those structures

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