Today was full of lectures at RIT. Lawrence Lessig rocked my friggin’ world. — he???s a brilliant man and a phenomenal speaker. I have a lot of thoughts on the lecture, but I???m reserving them for the moment as they need more time to peculate. Ralph Nader was on campus too. I poked my head in for a moment, but opted not to stay. So all I can say about Nader is that he is a very tall individual (and it looked like he had slept in his suit).
In addition to all of that, I also sat in on a large group discussion on new forms of writing and how various new media affect the pedagogical process and two panel discussions. The latter one, on Intellectual Property and Authorship, was quite interesting. Especially since it brought up questions about who owns characters created in online games (a question I find quite interesting). The prior one, on Pornography, sucked (that really wasn???t intended as a pun). The positions taken were pretty simplistic and just not satisfying (again, no pun). I had hoped the speakers would problematize the relationship between pornography and the development of various communications mediums (from the Printing Press to the Internet). Instead they retread the simplistic ???objectification argument??? without dealing with the more complex problems inherent in that argument (in particular, if you are saying that pornography is bad because it reduces participants to performance objects ??? which are commoditized based on their physical features ??? then you need to acknowledge all of the other aspects of the culture/entertainment industry ??? professional sports being the best example ??? that engage in exactly the same behavior). Don???t get me wrong, I???m not all ???rah-rah, go porn!??? I???m simply saying that I think that is a much more complex situation, especially on the college campuses of today.
