will automatically map. The different physics of cyberspace means that the
rules that govern that space may be different as well.[7-1]

_A_different_physics._ I'm not talking about science fiction or about ideas
that you've never considered before. Indeed, we've already seen a careful
translation of real-space constraints into the physics of a very different
world -- the world of ideas. Jefferson made that translation in his writing
about the nature of patent. My argument is nothing more (and certainly
much less) than Jefferson's. The world we must consider is partway between
the world of ideas that he describes and the world of things that colors our
intuitions. Cyberspace is between these two worlds. It offers not quite the
freedom of the world of ideas, though it offers much more of that freedom
than the world of things.

In the balance of this chapter, I want to make explicit constraints in the
world of things, so that we can better see how these constraints have affected
our thought about the world of ideas, and hence also about cyberspace.

One final note. My argument is not that all constraints are corrupting of
something called "creativity." Certain constraints obviously enable cre-
ativity. The constraints of the classical form gave us Mozart and Beethoven.
The aim is therefore not to find a world without constraint; it is to remove
the constraints that might otherwise inhibit innovation. Just because it is
good that sonnets forbid rambling paragraphs, it doesn't follow that a tax on
books would inspire better writing.

/tab\/tab\CREATIVITY IN THE DARK AGES/tab\/tab\

Put yourself back in the dark ages, the time before the Internet took
off -- say, the 1970s -- and ask: What was the environment for creativity
then? What was required of a creator or innovator to bring his or her cre-
ativity to market? What limits were imposed? I want to consider this ques-
tion in two contexts -- first the arts and then commerce.

/tab\/tab\_The_Arts_/tab\/tab\

We can understand the environment for creativity in the arts with the
same three layers that Benkler describes when talking of a communications
system. Like a communications system, creativity in the arts is affected by
constraints at the physical, code, and content layers. To author, or to create,

[[104]]

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