Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

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I Can Tell By Your T-Shirt You're a Commoner Too! Lessig on Bzz

With a hat-tip to Laurie Anderson.  I guess language really is a virus, huh?

 Lawrence Lessig: Advice Taken.  Larry Lessig and the Creative Commons folk, along with Dave  and BzzAgent, have had an interesting week.  The outburst over CC accepting pro bono support from BzzAgent stirred up a hornet’s nest of a different bzz.  I want to say something about that, because it ties so much into other things that are happening.  But first, …

No, No, Put it on a T-Shirt!  In choosing to decline the offer from BzzAgent, Larry posts a lengthy analysis and appeal in which every paragraph is to be savored.  But I want to start with the opportunity for valuable swag.  Larry says,

If there is power in this movement, it comes from this volunteer economy. That doesn't mean we won't pay people to work for us; it doesn't mean we don't think people should be paid for their work. What it means is that we can't dilute the meaning of what it says when someone says, “I'm a commoner.” (I'm sure no one ever says that, but you know what I mean.) Authenticity is essential. The power of the authentic act — an artist giving up remix rights; an author allowing her book to be shared freely — is the power that makes this movement grow. [my emphasis – dh]

 I want that T-shirt.  I’m a Commoner.  I say it.  I do.  Some restrictions apply: You must publish an accessible work under a Creative Commons license.  Then you be a Commoner too.  I’m paying my dues right now.  There’ll be plenty more where that came from.  Mostly, the idea is to encourage people to try it and see what really happens rather than whatever fears and disbelief (and weird political and ideological interpretations) are evoked by the notion of making public works in the creative commons.  I think of it as a toe in the waters of a rich and diverse trust economy. 

Notice how much the there’s harmony with the conversation of authenticity, authority, and passion also championed by Shel Israel and Robert Scoble in their invitation to business blogging. 

There’s also a connection with Scoble’s triggering a major dialog on corporations as good citizens in civil life, a conversation that shifted from outrage to an under-the-barrage serious and public inquiry over the tension around relationships of employees, managers, corporations, governments, communities, society, civil affairs, and the social contract.  This has impacted the public conversation of Microsoft executives and it has led to interesting expansions of the topic in the media.

I finally think I get what Tim Bray was pointing at when he says anger has a place in blogs.  It doesn’t mean people have stopped listening, at least not the people whose blogs I admire.  Lessig points out that being interesting doesn’t come from a disinterested point of view.

Coming back to Larry’s essay, I want to focus on a critical aspect of living in the commons.  Larry recognizes that Commoners inhabit a conversational and creative space that lies between unrestrained license and the closed, controlled, locked-down notion of possession (like art collectors who jealously keep their treasures only for their own eyes).  It is more than that: a commons doesn’t work without civility.

Larry says, “ … I am sorry for the bile that has been spilled across the wires about this. I wish we could learn to do this less.”  He especially thinks it is important to recognize that “words like ‘creepy’ are unfair weapons in any fair rhetorical fight”  and is unwilling to see evil in those who are looking at things differently.

My friend and associate, Bill Anderson, give copies of P. M. Forni’s Choosing Civility: The Twenty-Five Rules of Considerate Conduct to friends and colleagues.  I think we should do more about creating civility in our participation in social life.  Now that washing mouths out with soap has ceased to be acceptable parenting, we need to practice on ourselves as adults.  We only have our example for the young, now, and that matters more than we can ever know.

There’s probably another T-shirt message in here.  But if we choose a bird as a theme, let’s not have it be flightless, ok?  (Well, I’d make an exception for the platypus.)  I’d prefer Immaneul Kant.  “Citizen of the Commons: Where Human Beings Are Ends, Not Means.”

Thanks Larry.  You do us proud.

posted by orcmid at 5/5/2005 10:33:39 AM