(Crossposted from www.c4chaos.com)
Last night me and my good friend
Dave attended a lecture by
Lawrence Lessig at the University of Washington. The title of the lecture:
Is Google (2008) Microsoft (1998)?As usual, Lawrence Lessig delivered another brilliant and insightful presentation. He deserved the standing ovation. He packed more information in one hour of lecture than I can digest. Good thing I took some notes. Here are some bumper sticker notes:
-- "the data is the platform"
-- "comedy of the commons"
-- "lawyers are not innovators"
-- "silly to moralize a corporation"
-- "Microsoft is not evil"
-- "support the competition"
-- "politics diverted"
I hope that Lessig posts a video of that presentation so I can share it with everyone. Really good stuff.
In the meantime, allow me to share some of the nuggets of wisdom I got out of that lecture.
First, the title of the lecture is a bit misleading. It's more like a hook to get people to pay attention. Mention Google and Microsoft and heads would turn immediately. But I'm not disappointed one bit. In fact, Lessig delivered more than what was promised by the title. Here's my attempt at summarizing the lecture.
Lessig started his trademark Powerpoint presentation with the story of how Microsoft lost its "coolness." And then he proceeded with the story of how Google now dominates the tech industry, while still maintaining its "coolness" factor -- the data is now the platform. In his storytelling he covered his usual topics such as copyright,
creative commons,
read-only/read-write culture,
economies of culture (e.g. hybrid companies), and
corruption. But those topics, as interesting and fascinating as they were, were only ingredients to the meat of the lecture.
The real meat of the lecture is: the eroding of
trust by the public on the government and the misplace of this trust on "good" corporations undermine our democracy.
Lessig concluded his lecture by pitching the book
Supercapitalism by
Robert Reich. The arguments in this book (which Lessig agrees with) go contrary to the popular idea of Corporate Social Responsibility. Here's an excerpt
on Lessig's blog:
"The problem, from Reich's (and my) perspective, is that the other half of us - the part that thinks not as an actor in a market, but as a citizen - has atrophied. That is, the half of us (again, of each of us - Reich's point is that each of us has these two parts) that demands that government set sensible and efficient limits on private action has atrophied. Deep skepticism about government has made most of us turn away from it as a tool of sensible policy making. We instead (and this is a truly brilliant part of the book) turn to corporations to make good policy in government's stead. We push for "corporate social responsibility" and praise corporations who agree to do the "good" thing, imagining that this means something other than the "money making" thing. This, Reich says, is "politics diverted" - trusting companies to do good policy rather than getting government to set good policy, imagining "corporate social responsibility" will produce something different from corporations maximizing profits." ....
"Corporations are not more efficient governments. They are instead increasingly efficient money making machines. And while there's nothing at all wrong with money making machines -- indeed, wealth and growth depends upon them -- there is something fundamentally wrong with trusting these machines to restrain the drive for profits in the name of doing the right thing." And this, for me, is the most important nugget of wisdom from that lecture. As much as I support and love the idea of
Corporate Social Responsibility and
Conscious Capitalism, I also admire Lawrence Lessig's brilliance so I pay attention to his arguments. So I'll be adding Supercapitalism to
my reading list. It would be interesting to see how I can hold these opposing views and still manage to do the right thing, at least in my own sphere of influence.
For more info on Supercapitalism, keep watching this bookmark tag:
http://coolmel.zaadz.com/bookmarks/tagged/supercapitalism I now leave you with this excerpt from a
Robert Reich interview on Forbes:
------------
Forbes.com: Doesn't the increase in consumer power allow the average American a greater opportunity to act as a citizen both of the U.S. and of the world?
Robert Reich: If consumers were willing to sacrifice good deals for the sake of some social goal they believed in--for example, paying more for a garment with a label guaranteeing it's not made by children in a poor country or for a book that's made with recycled paper--then you're right: Supercapitalism, as I've called it, would serve the interests of us both as consumers and as citizens. But the overwhelming evidence shows that consumers are not willing to make such sacrifices. If items are priced the same, consumers will choose the one that better matches their personal ethics, but they won't pay more for one that does.
Consumers are acting logically, because they have no guarantee that other consumers would make the same choice--meaning that their sacrifice would be pointless. The only way to make sure any such economic sacrifice is effective is to seek laws and rules that match one's ethical values.
That's where citizenship and democracy come in. It's through the democratic process that the economic "rules of the game" are determined--rules that all consumers and all private-sector competitors have to play by.
------------
kosmicaperture
December 2008 
~C4Chaos
Access: Public
