Lessig Drops the Bomb, Talks of i-9/11

The blogs are all about Lawrence Lessig's comment about a i-9/11 made during the 2018: Life on the Net panel discussion at this year's Fortune Brainstorm. Lawrence Lessig, founder of the Creative Commons, who has a knack for often making bold yet entirely rational statements, asserted that an online security threat, similar in magnitude to the devestation of the World Trade Center, will happen sometime in the future. If such an event occurs, a new crackdown legal-framework, similar to the Patriot Act, will be put into place. Talking to a governmental official, Lessig says that such an emergency policy has already been drawn up.

Now I can think of a number of virtual security threats that might equate with 9/11, or something even more collosal, but this sort of statement resonates with me sort of like one of Marshall McLuhan's probes. I'm not sure where he's going with this, but Lessig might simply be trying to alarm the progressive movement of such a possible "catalyst" for a whole new explosion of security culture. Maybe we ought to be more concerned with lobbying government to adopt more policies that aim to protect the freedoms of the Internet and the World Wide Web.

The rest of the panel discussion is also intriguing for those interested in this medium.