LIVE from NYPL: CHRIS ANDERSON in conversation with Lawrence Lessig

Event Details

The Rise and Fall of the Blockbuster

The twentieth century was the heyday of the hit, when the extraordinary power of broadcast technologies unified countries and even the globe. Mass markets ruled and bestsellers dominated the shelves, snapping societies into cultural lockstep. But then came the Web and the power of digital distribution, with infinite shelf space, near-zero costs and an appetite for a million niches. What will happen to our culture and economy as we shift from blockbusters to "nichebusters" and everything finds an audience, no matter how small?

Join Chris Anderson, author of the new book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, and Lawrence Lessig, Stanford law professor and author of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, as they debate the cultural consequences of our shift into the "Long Tail" of demand and what still stands in the way of truly unlimited choice.

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About Chris Anderson

Chris Anderson is editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine. Previously, he was at The Economist, where he served as U.S. Business Editor, Asia Business Editor; and Technology Editor. Anderson's media career began at two science journals, Nature and Science. Prior to that he worked as a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory's meson physics facility and served as research assistant to the Chief Scientist of the Department of Transportation. He is the author of book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, and runs a blog on the subject at www.thelongtail.com.

 

 

About Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, he was the Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and a Professor at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, The Future of Ideas and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. He is also a columnist for WIRED Magazine.