Lawrence Lessig visits Google's New York office to discuss his book “Free Culture.”

Lawrence Lessig could be called a cultural environmentalist. One of America’s most original and influential public intellectuals, his focus is the social dimension of creativity, or how creative work builds on the past and how society encourages or inhibits that building with laws and technologies. In his two previous books, CODE and THE FUTURE OF IDEAS, Lessig concentrated on the destruction of much of the original promise of the Internet. In FREE CULTURE, he widens his focus to consider the diminishment of the larger public domain of ideas. In this powerful wake-up call he shows how short-sighted interests blind to the long-term damage they’re inflicting are poisoning the ecosystem that fosters innovation.

All creative works—books, movies, records, software, and so on—are a compromise between what can be imagined and what is possible. For more than two hundred years, laws in America have sought a balance between rewarding creativity and allowing the borrowing from which new creativity springs. The original term of copyright set by the First Congress in 1790 was 14 years, renewable once. Now it is closer to two hundred.

Lessig shows us that while new technologies always lead to new laws, never before have the big cultural monopolists used the fear created by new technologies, specifically the Internet, to shrink the public domain of ideas, even as the same corporations use the same technologies to control more and more what we can and can’t do with culture. As more and more culture becomes digitized, more and more becomes controllable, even as laws are being toughened at the behest of the big media groups. What’s at stake is our freedom—freedom to create, freedom to build, and ultimately, freedom to imagine.

Originally published in March of 2007.

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Everybody look around, there’s reason to rejoice! "The Wiz," the Tony Award®-winning Best Musical that took the world by storm in 1975 is back. Based on L. Frank Baum’s children’s book, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," "The Wiz" returns home to the stage with an all-new adaptation.

This beloved Broadway musical sets Dorothy’s adventures in the Land of Oz to a dazzling, lively mixture of rock, gospel and soul music. Dorothy, a restless Kansas farm girl eager to see the world, is transported by a tornado to a magical world of Munchkins, witches and a yellow brick road. On her way to the Emerald City to meet the Wizard of Oz, who she believes can help her get back home to Kansas, she encounters the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion — friends who help her battle the Wicked Witch of the West and eventually learn that there is “no place like home.”

Director Schele Williams and cast members Nichelle Lewis, Avery Wilson, Phillip Johnson Richardson & Kyle Ramar Freeman make up the panel.

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Fred Kofman visits Google to discuss his book “Conscious Business”.

Consciousness is the main source of organizational greatness. Conscious business means finding your passion and expressing your essential values through your work. A conscious business seeks to promote the intelligent pursuit of happiness in all its stakeholders. It produces sustainable, exceptional performance through the solidarity of its community and the dignity of each member.

It also fosters personal fulfillment in the individuals, mutual respect in the community, and success in the organization. This book is the definitive resource for achieving what really matters in the workplace and beyond.

Fred Kofman is an executive coach and advisor on leadership and culture. He is founder and president of the Conscious Business Center. In 2018, Fred accepted a position as Vice President at Google in charge of advising the CEO's office on leadership and culture. Previously, he was Vice President of executive development at LinkedIn.

Originally published in March of 2007.

Visit http://youtube.com/TalksAtGoogle/ to watch the video.