You know the future? The one where anyone with an idea would be able to publish it online without any intermediaries — no publishers, no editors, no bookstores?

Apparently we’re here. Please disembark in an orderly manner. (And feel free to tip your guide. Ahem.)

From Lawrence Lessig, quoting a friend on Harvard’s faculty:

i take a car service to the airport this morning. driver is an older irish boston type, very talkative; do i know the history of cambridge, the reason behind the establishment clause (“[another Harvard professor] didn’t…”), etc. as we’re hitting the airport, he hands me his self-published tract on the crisis in public education and how to solve it by canceling the Simpsons.

“you should put it on the web,” i say, which is what i usually say when handed a self-published tract by a cab driver. “i did,” he said, “and it’s under a creative commons license.” (and, he adds disapprovingly, [the other prominent Harvard professor] hadn’t even heard of creative commons.”)

i had to tell him to put it in a wiki just to retain my sense of being anywhere near the cutting edge.