Lessig on McCain on Technology

This one is absolutely on-topic. From Lawrence Lessig's blog, it's "Me on McCain on Technology".

More quality from Lawrence Lessig. You keep shootin' 'em Larry, and I'll keep showin' 'em.

Parrots the Universe and Everything (Douglas Adams)

Look, I'm wandering further off topic. This is indeed a talk (about an hour and a half long), but it's not really about freedom or free culture. It's partly about endangered species and mostly about being damned funny.

My excuse is that it's Douglas Adams, of Hitchhikers Guide fame, and a very tenuous thread is that he was apparently good friends with Richard Dawkins. The world became a measurable poorer place on the day he died.

I'll be posting more by Adams in the near future (on topic this time), although I can't find a video, so I might have to read it myself, which should be jarring, I mean excellent.

The God Delusion #2 (Richard Dawkins)

Part 2 of Richard Dawkins talking about his book The God Delusion in Lynchburg, Virginia (in the U.S.A.).

70 minutes, so grab a coffee and kick back for this one.

Hang in there for the creationist pwnage as students from Liberty University try to catch Professor Dawkins out. Some nice discussion of that is here.

The God Delusion #1 (Richard Dawkins)

Slightly deviating from topic, here's Richard Dawkins talking about his book The God Delusion in Lynchburg, Virginia (in the U.S.A.).

Professor Dawkins isn't talking about freedom / free culture, but he is talking about truth and evidence based rational enquiry, the impulse to which stems from the same root as the free culture movement; that it is right to know all we can about the universe we live in, and it is not right to fence that knowledge away, be it through the use of goons (legal measures) or memes (religion).

Also, it's just a great talk. Worth your time to watch. Which is 37 minutes for this first part, and 70 minutes for the second part.

Lawrence Lessig at iCommons Summit 2007

Lawrence Lessig speaks at iCommons 2007 about CC (CreativeCommons.org).

Gin, Television and Cognitive Surplus - Clay Shirky

"I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin.

The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing—there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.

And it wasn't until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today. Things like public libraries and museums, increasingly broad education for children, elected leaders—a lot of things we like—didn't happen until having all of those people together stopped seeming like a crisis and started seeming like an asset."

Life in the Information Economy - Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow writes on BoingBoing:
I gave a talk a couple weeks ago in Cambridge, UK, as part of the Cambridge Business Lectures, entitled, "Life in the Information Economy." Lots of folks asked about video for the talk -- and here it is! The (free) lecture series goes on -- the next speaker is John Bird, the founder of the Big Issue, on Sept 12. Life in the Information Economy"

Transcript here.

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

"presented at the Library of Congress, June 23rd 2008. This was tons of fun to present. I decided to forgo the PowerPoint and instead worked with students to prepare over 40 minutes of video for the 55 minute presentation. This is the result."

by Professor Michael Wesch