shouting loudly

Just a quick, 24-hours-overdue thanks to the folks at the Newsweek Dev Team for hosting me last night at their third News/Geek event.
I had a rollicking good time, the questions were awesome, and the post-talk celebration was even better. If you want the Powerpoint, it’s here in all its 12.2 MB glory.
Further discussion welcome.

Professor Lessig is presenting on Institutional Corruption today at the Kennedy School as his first public appearance at Harvard since his return a few months ago.
Professor Lessig likes to introduce three ideas to frame his talk today: 1) influence, 2) independence and 3) responsibility.
Relying on his framework of the four modalities of control [...]

Lawrence Lessig, who is quite nearly my idol, is trying to enlist would-be campaign donors in a strike for change. The idea is that campaign donors will go on strike; we’re not to give money to candidates for federal office until and unless those politicians commit to publicly funded campaigns.
I’ve been thinking about this for [...]

Robert Reich’s latest book, Supercapitalism, is a fantastic analysis of the current relationship between corporations, citizens, and politics.
I put Supercapitalism on my wish list after Prof. Lawrence Lessig’s glowing recommendation. While I make no pretense of being such a gifted writer as either of these scholars, here I attempt to summarize the book and follow [...]

Two Democratic chairs of key House committees introduced a bill yesterday that would require colleges to police copyright and pay off the entertainment industry.
Buried on pages 411 and 412 of the 747-page bill, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 (pdf), is the following:
Each eligible institution participating in any program under this title shall [...]

elucidating, and brilliant as always, Lessig is giving us a preview of his work on corruption. Some of his arguments relate strongly to those made by Etzioni earlier, who helped us understand that oftentimes it is dollar for dollar more efficient or profitable to invest money in lobbying than actual innovation.