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There are a lot of very smart people out there who know a lot about very important things. In some cases these smart people happen to be compelling speakers who are able to share their knowledge and experience in engaging and entertaining ways.
Enter the ibiblio Speaker Series. Over the last decade-and-a-half, ibiblio has compiled a collection of videos of talks given at UNC about topics ranging from copyright and open source, to the future of journalism and digital collaboration. This collection includes lectures from founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, and Author Cory Doctorow, among many, many other visionaries.
Video files of these talks are now available for BitTorrent download at terasaur.org. You can also browse the collection in our WordPress Speaker Series, wich includes descriptions of the talks and brief video samples hosted by ibiblio’s new youtube channel.
What an incredible resource and valuable piece of history! Many of the talks not only have important implications today, but also provide a picture of the issues that developed at a time when the information age was (and is) young, when content providers, users, governments, companies, entrepreneurs, hackers, and writers were (and are) figuring out what this whole Internet thing means.
Here’s Cory Doctorow talking about civil liberties and copyright in a sample of one of the many talks that are available.