English 411

Week 13: Mixing it up with Lawrence Lessig

I thoroughly enjoyed our second Best of Delicious session yesterday, and I wish I had scheduled more of those days on the syllabus. It seems like our conversations are always more lively when we’re talking about what we’ve read in the news lately. Perhaps we should take a few minutes at the end of each class to talk about what we’ve been posting to Delicious lately. (If you’d like to do this, let me know and I’ll try to make time for it.)

Next week, we will dive into our sixth book of the semester: Remix, by Lawrence Lessig. On Tuesday, Kyle will lead us in a discussion of pages xiii–83; on Thursday, Kendra will lead us in a discussion of pages 84–176. Given the topic of the book, I think we’ll need to be in the lab for both class sessions.

If you don’t know much about Lessig, try to find some time before class on Tuesday to read/watch/explore a few of these links:

• Lessig’s Blog
• A video of Lessig’s presentation at the TED Conference
• Creative Commons (founded by Lessig)
• Change Congress (Lessig’s current project)

Last but not least, a reminder about making progress on your final paper: on Thursday, please bring an annotated bibliography (a list of sources with notes about and/or quotes from each source) containing at least ten sources. I will review your bibliography and give you some feedback and/or suggest additional sources you may want to consider.