Lawrence Lessig of Creative Commons fame gave the UW's Danz lecture this evening; we also attended a reception with him beforehand. On our way there we were impressed to see a queue of hundreds of students lined up at Kane Hall, an hour in advance of the talk; turns out they were there for Rainn Wilson.
The talk ('Is Google (2008) Microsoft (1998)?') was excellent. The Microsoft/Google hinge was a framework for a broad ranging discussion of society's attitude to corporations and of the different options corporations (such as MSFT, Facebook, Flickr) have in interacting with society as content creators -- he ended in pointing out how mistrust in government has led the US population to expect "benign" corporations and individuals to solve social issues.. thus eroding democracy. Good questions from the audience, and long, thoughtful answers. He also has the best Powerpoint style I've ever seen, especially for a nonscience talk. Check out his TED talk for a sampler. It also contains two brilliant mashup clips that he showed again tonight.
Lessig joins my Gore/Krugman Axis of Good.
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