From Denmark, no less. (I love the Internet.) It’s the first time I’ve seen Lessig speak. Noted with interest:

1. He’s a very effective public speaker–almost a preacher, really.

2. He’s carefully choreographed a series of mini-pull-quotes–think words?–for his PowerPoint (or whatever) accompaniment. The effect is theatrical as well as rhetorical. Sometimes it’s a little distracting. It’s never boring.

3. Think of the strange, counterintuitive thing this webcast represents: a freely disseminated videorecording that resides on a computer at the University of Southern Denmark, on the other side of the world from me, a video that I can summon and see on my desktop when I like. After all these years, it still seems a marvel.

4. And what is this thing that I see? Why, a sage on the stage! a lecturer! that thing that was supposed to be either a) dead or b) on death row! Yet such is the skill of the speaker, such is the interest of the content, such is the dramatic presence of the event, that it’s plain that the lecture per se need not engender passivity or promulgate repressive pedagogy. It may even foment critical consciousness. Paolo Friere has nothing to fear, here.

Viva voce!