Monday, November 13, 2006

The Modern Communicational Environment

Hey just thought I'd link to this talk at MIT. It is a discussion with Yochai Benkler and Henry Jenkins about the networked society. I just wanted something to watch over dinner but I ended up watching the whole thing. I had heard of both of them before so I figure they must be pretty big. Whenever I watch this sort of thing I think I ought to be an expert on the future of communication. I don't know whether its my ideas regarding culture, or perhaps my generational perspective, but I never feel people fully grasp the potential of change in the informational structure of society. I always wish I was there to answer the questions. In any case these guys are interesting.

Oh yeah. Check this quote out. It rocks.

"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."

- Thomas Jefferson, from a Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813

1 comment:

Joe said...

Yeah, that's a great TJ quote. Larry Lessig used it in a speech he gave at UVA a few years back, and I've occasionally seen it elsewhere in copyright discussions. I'll give the video a run sometime this week..