Larry Lessig and the Revival of Read Write Culture

I was simply astonished watching this Larry Lessig TED Talk. Not only do Lessig's ideas coincide with my own, but the issues he raises are almost exactly the same as I have raised in several essays on this blog.

Lessig:

"In my view, the most significant thing to recognize about what the Internet is doing is the opportunity to revive the Read Write culture . . ."

From my essay, "Is Social Technology making us Smarter?":

"The shift from a readerly culture which privileges paid, professional journalists to a writerly culture in which anyone can post their opinion and discuss a topic has been underway for some time now."

Lessig:

"Digital technology is the opportunity for the revival [of Read Write culture] . . ."

From my essay, "Is the Internet Killing Culture?":

"To me, the proliferation of artistic expression, the videos on YouTube, the online novels, the loads of bad poetry, cannot be equated with a loss or diminishment of culture but instead a replenishment of it."

Lessig:

"User-generated content, spreading in business in extraordinary ways like these, celebrates amateur culture--by which I don't mean amateurish culture--I mean culture where people produce for the love of what they're doing and not for the money. I mean the culture that your kids are producing all the time."

From my essay, "Is the Internet Killing Culture?":

"'More artists, more culture,' I say--even if the great majority of those artists are naive and unskilled. The individual acts of creativity, that's what's important, and with more people creating, I see the phenomenon of mass amateurism as a boon."

Lessig:

"Remix is not piracy . . . I'm talking about people taking and recreating, using other people's content, using digital technology, to say things differently."

From my essay, "What is Contemporary Art?":

"We are living in the age of the re-mix; where the creative act of re-mixing and combining styles and vignettes claims an originality of its own. This may be scary to some, but to others it means unfettered creative freedom."

We need, according to Lessig, two types of changes:

"First, artists and creators choose that their work be made available more freely; for example, for non-commercial, amateur use but not for commercial use."

"And second, we need the businesses that are building out this Read Write culture to embrace this opportunity expressly--to enable it--so that this ecology of free content or freer content can grow on a neutral platform . . . so that more free can compete with less free . . ."