Joyce Valenza’s Neverending Search

Something is happening in the vernacular of presentations.  I remember the great vowel shift from my long-ago study of linguistics and I wonder if this shift is akin to that one.  Or, it could be merely a matter of style. And those of you who know me well, know that I am a slave to that stuff. Right now I am sure of something. My PowerPoints are growing stale. 

So, yesterday I took a break from my big paper to try to relearn presenting for the 21st century and to examine what folks are calling “presentation zen.”  My understanding of this is that I need to work toward a more feng shui approach. Critical words and phrases and powerful images should stand alone and make their impact on stark backgrounds.  Garr Reynolds’ blog has lots of examples.

Anyway, my exploration led me back to Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture presentation.  Folks tend to point to this white-typewriter-text-on-black-background approach as early presentation zen.

I don’t think I can adopt this approach entirely.  I like pretty too much and those words come flying awful fast. 

But now a thought shift:

My visit back to Lessig’s presentation resonated.  It resonated especially in light of my recent post and current feelings of confusion and abiguity surrounding information ethics, the regulation of creativity, technology, the expansion of copyright, intellectual freedom, the owning of culture, and intellectual property.  If you haven’t already viewed this presentation, go back, take a look, and think.  Lessig’s story about the Disney’s approach to intellectual property, as well as his timeline relating to culture and copyright, may give you fresh context and cause you think twice about where all this is going.