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Just when it seemed the corrosive influence of big money on American politics could not be greater, the Supreme Court gave corporations full license to exercise ‘free speech’ during campaign season. Renowned legal scholar Lawrence Lessig and his respondents debate the most effective response to the 2010 Citizens United ruling, which, Lessig claims, poses an imminent danger to our democracy. Consider how corporate political clout has shaped critical areas of public policy, Lessig begins. For instance, subsidies to influential corn producers in the past three decades have led to shifts in food production, such as feeding cattle antibiotics to help them digest corn fodder, and high fructose corn syrup pervasive in food and soda. The result: an epidemic of obesity and antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria — both antithetical to public health. Industries engage in “rent seeking,” contributing to politicians in exchange for some kind of economic advantage, and blocking action in the public interest in the process: fossil fuel industries defeat climate change legislation; financial services defeat tough banking regulation; the health insurance sector defeats truly comprehensive health care law. Now, says Lessig, the Supreme Court has “taken a bad situation and made it much worse,” by lifting restrictions on corporations at election time. Lessig does not disagree with the essence of the decision -- that the First Amendment permits corporations to engage in political speech. But he takes issue with the Court’s reasoning, which ignores what he describes as “dependency corruption.” The framers of the Constitution intended that Congress depend exclusively on its citizens. This is no longer the case, says Lessig: “People have increasingly been replaced by the funders.” (Political scientist Gabriel Lenz confirms this perception, citing studies showing that when it comes to enacting policy changes, “Congress is mostly responsive to the 99th percentile in terms of inco...
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Video Length: 0
Date Found: October 23, 2010
Date Produced: October 20, 2010
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MIT World |
July 07, 2011
In three presentations that look back to digital-age milestones, and glimpse ahead to what may come next, speakers share some previously undisclosed stories, great enthusiasms, and a few concerns. Nicholas Negroponte tells a few “dirty secrets” about the start of the MIT Media Lab, including ...
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MIT World |
June 29, 2011
Winners of the A.M.Turing Award, the Nobel Prize of computing, describe their singular contributions to the field, and their works’ impact. They also find time to discuss the current and future state of computer science. Moderator Stephen Ward starts with 1990 prize winner Fernando Corbato, who ...
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MIT World |
June 13, 2011
Drew Davidson likes to play with blocks in his sandbox, as he demonstrates in a show-and-tell to interactive media colleagues. In this case, the playground is an online game called Minecraft, a two-year-young internet sensation with millions of followers, developed single-handedly by a ...
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MIT World |
June 06, 2011
Amy Bruckman finds the accomplishments of such online collaborations as Wikipedia, Apache and Firefox “nothing less than astounding,” and is both eagerly seeking and hoping to foster the next creative group Internet sensation. In her lab’s empirical studies, Bruckman has dissected different ...
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MIT World |
June 06, 2011
The ultimate questions for this Sandbox 2011 panel, posed by moderator Alan Gershenfeld, are “Where is technology not working? When is technology not the answer?” That’s a bold agenda for a panel of children’s media creators and a roomful of other producers in the industry, from Sesame ...
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