Stuart Noble

Creative Commons Founder to Congress?

April 8, there will be a special primary election for California’s 12th Congressional District, which has become vacant after Tom Lantos passed away last week.

Within days, a draft Lawrence Lessig campaign was set up by Harvard professor John Palfrey.

Ars Technica reported;

Legal theorist Lawrence Lessig, who has become an academic celebrity for his innovative work on cyberlaw and intellectual property in the digital age, made headlines late last year when he announced that he would be shifting his scholarly focus to the study of political corruption. But now a burgeoning online movement is urging the Stanford professor to tackle the problem head-on: they are seeking to draft Lessig to run for Congress, in a special election, scheduled for April 8, to replace the late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), who succumbed to cancer last week.

Now Lessig has launched his exploratory committee and two web sites, Lessig08.org, and Change-Congress.

Here’s his announcement video. Anyone familiar with Lessig is familiar with his “powerpoint” and speaking style. This is definitely not the typical political campaign message, but it will no doubt appeal to a sizable portion of Democratic primary voters in his district.

At this point it’s not certaint that he will enter the race. Furthermore, his chances against a popular and well-known politician like Jackie Speier would seem fairly insurmountable.

But this district, spanning parts of San Francisco and San Mateo counties represents one of the most IT tech savvy districts in the nation. Lessig is also a staunch supporter of Barack Obama’s campaign and there has been much speculation that Lessig would play a role in an Obama administration. It will be interesting to see if and how these two races intersect. IT and communications policy, while mundane to the average voter, will be a major issue in the years to come. Obama, for example, has placed IT policy as a top priority for his administration. He’s outlined a very progressive policy (progressive being quite subjective) which can be read here.

Whether or not Lessig enters the race or wins the seat, this demonstrates the increasingly dominant role of not only internet technologies in US politics but of the very active online culture behind those technologies. Lessig, with his dedicated support of open copyright and “free culture” represents the technocratic neo-progressivism which has become a powerful constituency within the emerging new Democratic coalition. Like Carl Pedersen suggests, 2008 may ultimately turn out to be a total referendum on the last 30 years of Conservative free market ideology. Communications and copyright are just a few of the many fronts in what could turn out to become a generational political realignment.
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SIVACRACY.NET

Siva Vaidhyanathan is a cultural historian and media scholar. He’s an associate professor in the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University. He earned his Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas.

His most recent book is the edited (with Carolyn de la Pena) collection, Rewiring the Nation: The Place of Technology in American Studies (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). Our own David Nye is featured in this collection with his article, “Technology and the Production of Difference.”

I started reading his blog when I found it through the Institute for the Future of the Book while researching for my current project on the American virtual public sphere. I look at Vaidhyanathan’s career both academically and professionally as a model for where and how I may proceed beyond my Masters in American Studies. When I consider future research, I’m often thinking about the cultural histories and intellectual traditions that inform contemporary postmodern political movements. My Masters thesis, an intellectual history of Al Gore, relates to half of this equation.

I also wanted to share his blog with you in hopes of encouraging you to think about joining our group blog project at the Atlantic Community. This is the, “if Siva Vaidhyanathan is doing it so should you” argument. It’s also just a great blog, and appears here in our blog role.

Finally, this was the original reason for writing this post; an article posted in his blog about professors on Facebook. Not to worry, I don’t have any virtual expectations.

Richard Rorty, Philosopher, Dies at 75

“Richard Rorty, whose inventive work on philosophy, politics, literary theory and more made him one of the world’s most influential contemporary thinkers, died Friday in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 75.”

Rorty’s writings have been very influential on my own “philosophy” about academia, democracy, and ultimately how I view America and my place in the world. He was unique for several reasons. Undoubtedly one the most influential American thinkers, he blurred the lines between philosophy, politics, and literary theory. In particular, Rorty has brought the differences between literature (as the nearest textual practice to philosophy) and philosophy into a common discussion. He emphasized that the kind of arguments that literature makes are in fact more open and dynamic (and thus more suited to a liberal/pragmatic world-view) than the kind of arguments that philosophy makes.

I recommend this article, “The Decline of Redemptive Truth and the Rise of a Literary Culture,” for a fairly recent summary of Rortian philosophy.

From within a literary culture, religion and philosophy appear as literary genres. As such, they are optional. Just as an intellectual may opt to read many poems but few novels, or many novels but few poems, so he or she may read much philosophy, or much religious writing, but relatively few poems or novels. The difference between the literary intellectuals’ readings of all these books and other readings of them is that the inhabitant of a literary culture treats books as human attempts to meet human needs, rather than as acknowledgements of the power of a being that is what it is apart from any such needs. God and Truth, are, respectively the religious and the philosophical names for that sort of being.

He is most misunderstood and attacked from critics on the “right” and “left” for his assertion that there is no truth out there and that we (philosphers in particular) should simply stop searching for truth and get about the practical business of creating a better society. Better, of course, being defined not by epistemology but by social consensus. When I’ve argued that Wikipedia represents “the truth,” its largely based on Rorty’s concept of “unforced agreements.”

Stanford University, were Rorty taught comparative literature has an obiturary here. Jürgen Habermas writes a eulogy which you can read here. Todd Gitlin has also written something here.

Arthur Schlesinger, historian, dies at 89

One of America’s cannonical historians and among the most famous of his time, died last night of a heart attack. The New York Times has a very nice front page story here. The piece in the LA Times is also very good.

“Problems will always torment us,” he wrote, “because all important problems are insoluble: that is why they are important. The good comes from the continuing struggle to try and solve them, not from the vain hope of their solution.”

Seymour Martin Lipset, Sociologist, Dies at 84

Seymour Martin Lipset was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Hazel Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University until 2006. He passed away on Dec. 31, 2006. Previously he was the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford University (1975–90) and the George D. Markham Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University.

His major work was in the fields of political sociology, trade union organization, social stratification, public opinion, and the sociology of intellectual life. He wrote extensively about the conditions for democracy in comparative perspective.

Here’s a great piece about his background and career here at the NY Times, and here at the Economist, “Seymour Martin Lipset devoted his life to explaining why America is different”.Also, check out the Guardian , its definately worth the read. If you haven’t read any Lipset yet, you certainly will.

THE QUASI-PRIESTLY ORDER