Lawrence Lessig's New Book: One Way Forward | Hacker News Reader

Lawrence Lessig's New Book: One Way Forward

oneway.lessig.org

70 pointsakg14 comments

Here's a brief excerpt from the book:

http://byliner.com/lawrence-lessig/stories/one-way-forward-e...

If you're looking for a DRM-free version, we made that available via Apple's iBookstore and Google's eBookstore (now known as Google Play). A print-on-demand version is available via Blurb.com. All of these buying options are reachable from the book's page on Byliner:

http://byliner.com/originals/one-way-forward

One aspect of Byliner that's interesting (we hope) is the ability for authors to either update their stories, or provide detail behind their stories. A good example is Jon Krakauer's Three Cups of Deceit. In the months since its publication Jon has added 20,000 words of updates to his story:

http://byliner.com/jon-krakauer/stories/excerpt-three-cups-o...

Most of our authors continue to evolve their stories after publication, to the benefit of readers. We hope that Professor Lessig does the same with One Way Forward, which we were very proud to publish.

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood right now, but for whatever reason I find this excerpt really uninspiring. There's no doubt that amateurization of culture and politics is part of the solution, but at the same time it's pretty much a non-answer. He's basically just saying we need to wait 50 or 100 years for the world to change, and even then it's a pretty big leap of faith.

I don't think you'll feel that way about the full book. Send me an email (info in my profile) and I'll send you a complimentary copy. If you enjoy it, you can amend your comment; if not, no foul.

But people can start disintermediating their lives right now, without having to wait for 'the world' to change. We're seeing more and more of this - it's once again becoming prevalent for individuals families to grow their own food, educate their own children, generate their own energy, etc., and there are a growing body of open, substantive 'amateur' resources for them to turn to for external guidance.

It might take 50 or 100 years for these movements to become dominant, and for the modern institutional centralization of culture and politics to fully recede, but it seems that the way it's most likely to happen is for the 'issues' we now fight over to fade into irrelevance as people gradually cease being dependent on the context of those 'issues', not by one faction or another winning some sort of pitched conflict and imposing reform from the top, downward. I'd think that the success of a top-down reform program would actually demonstrate the failure of its motivating intention.

Perhaps it's just me, but I am unable to purchase it on Google Play. There is simply no "Purchase" button. I'd like to purchase a DRM-free version, but I don't own any Apple products. Is this a problem on your end, or is it just me?

See http://imgur.com/N9gYW for a screenshot.

Yep, there's a glitch. We'll look into it. In the meantime, feel free to email me and I'll hook you up with a copy.

I didn't read his book Republic Lost because it wasn't available for the Kindle. Strange to see this book available.

Anyone know why Republic Lost wasn't available?

The story link is to a blog for discussing revisions the book. The revised book comes out in the fall and will be available at the story link. Until then you need to actually buy the book. Here is the link to buy the actual book:

http://byliner.com/originals/one-way-forward

I haven't read his previous book, "Republic, Lost", but I saw the 1 hour speech at Google from last year, that was based on it, and it was great. He explains how the Government ended up having a relationship with corporations instead of "the people", and what is needed to solve this (almost unsolvable) problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc

Also relevant: http://theanticorruptionpledge.org/

No offense to Prof. Lessig - but he's sort of like someone trying to restore the Roman Republic in the age of Nero.

The reality of Washington is that politics (ie, democracy) matters a little, but not very much:

http://foseti.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/on-government-employm...

If politics has negligible power over government, electorates have negligible power over government. So why do we need to "get money out of politics?" The reality of Washington is (IMHO) that voters could elect a President and Congress as pure and holy as the Dalai Lama, and it wouldn't matter at all - because they'd have about the same real power (over the permanent government) as the Dalai Lama.

Lessig is yanking with all his weight on a wheel that isn't connected to the rudder. If there's any rudder at all...

Interesting. So what do you see as solutions?

Fire everyone in DC and move the capital to Palo Alto.

Is it that we don't need to do this, or that we can't? If we can't, the hypothesis is confirmed and we really need to. If we don't need to... come on, man.

I've never worked in DC as an adult. But I grew up there as a bureaucrat's brat. And all I can say is... neighbor, you have no idea.

(Professor Lessig certainly has an idea. But he won't share it with you - because the source of his power is the dark crystal under the Capitol. Ie, he's important because of his connections, direct or indirect, personal or institutional, to the permanent government. He matters because he teaches at Harvard, an institution unconditionally trusted by... you get it. Certainly if he was just some random neighbor on the Internets, like me, he'd have a much tougher time being taken seriously.)

And if the de jure political process no longer has enough de facto power to assert control over the bureaucratic institutions, isn't external money a very useful source of de facto power to challenge the bureaucracy?

It seems like getting money out of politics would be surrendering one of the only viable tools for re-asserting public control of the apparatus of government.

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