Friday, February 25, 2005
Inspiring Lessig/Barlow blogs from Porto Alegre
And John Perry Barlow was there too:Lessig blogged this last month on the way back from the World Social Forum.
returning home
...This morning's panel was packed in what seemed to be an old factory. The room was overflowing with at least 1,500 people, and a panel of 5. Manuel Castells began, with a careful and extremely interesting diagnosis of the net's development. I then described the remix culture culture has been (legal and free) and the remix culture culture could be (amazing and diverse) and the blocks to that new culture coming about (law). Christian Alhert told the story of the BBC's Creative Archive. And JP Barlow gave one of the most intense and powerful speeches I've ever seen him deliver. This place is personal to him.
Then Gil [Gilberto Gil, musician and Minister of Culture] spoke. .... He electrified the audience, delivering a written speech as poetry slam. He promised more support for free software, and free culture. And he again embraced the Creative Commons movement in Brazil, which is exploding everywhere here. ..... I was reminded of his comment to me in the car the other night: we're just citizens here.
After lunch, I visited the Youth Camp at the WSF, where 50,000 tents, and 80,000 kids are participating in WSF events. At the core was a Free Software lab, with about 50 machines, all running GNU/Linux, and constant lessons about how to set the systems up, how do to audio, and video editing, how to participate in free software communities. This was organized totally by the kids who ran it. Machines in shacks, hay on the ground, wires and boxes everywhere..... Again, there were geeks, but not only. There were men, but plenty of women (and lots of kids). They were instructing each other -- some about code, some about culture, some about organizing, some about dealing with the government -- as they built this infrastructure out. Think Woodstock, without the mud, and where the audience makes the music.... I've not admired more in as long as I can remember.
 | John Barlow Pushes Open Source in Brazil |
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from the stuff-to-read dept.
greysky writes "This story on Foxnews.com reports that as part of the larger World Social Forum, Barlow spoke on how open source software can help alleviate financial problems of developing countries: "Already, Brazil spends more in licensing fees on proprietary software than it spends on hunger"." NPR talks about how Brazil plans to switch 300,000 machines over.
