Get Your Geek On

Lawrence Lessig swung by our office on Friday to give a lecture on “How D.C. pathologies are undermining the growth and wealth of the Net.” Lessig is a very dynamic speaker and was highly entertaining to see in person. I’ll update this post with links to a video of his talk for anybody who wants to get their geek on.

It was great to get the chance to meet him in person, and I’m even going to have the opportunity to send him some questions for a featured interview on Campus Progress. If you have any burning questions to ask Lessig, send them my way ASAP.

Pasted below is the first paragraph of my essay I sent out for Law Skool applications:

“On the eve of the 2004 presidential election, I remixed a C-SPAN speech given by a Congressional representative from Ohio. I spliced a hip-hop beat behind his words and then I posted it on my blog. Soon thereafter, Lawrence Lessig, “the Elvis of Cyber Law” and one of my heroes, somehow found it online and wrote me to say that he thought the video was great. He encouraged me to put it up on a new website he had created that enabled people to disseminate political videos. I posted it and the movie clip spread across the Internet; I began receiving correspondence from folks all over the globe. The experience heightened my awareness of how technology will reshape the face of democracy.”

Originally uploaded by themarkpike.

Here’s a pic of me and Lessig. I sarcastically told him I’d send him doubles, and by that I clearly meant check out my Flickr feed. I also got a book signed to put on the shelf next to the Yochai Benkler autographed book. Sheesh, I’m a dork.