"All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations"
About this Quote
His key move is the hinge word "hence". He collapses the false separation between technology as tools and culture as values, insisting they’re the same ecosystem. New architectures of communication don’t merely speed up old habits; they reorganize power: who gets to speak, who gets heard, what gets copied, what gets owned, what becomes legible to institutions. Lessig’s career-long obsession with code as a kind of law hums beneath the sentence: design choices in platforms, networks, and IP regimes quietly govern behavior more effectively than many statutes.
The claim also smuggles in a generational scale argument. By calling it the most significant revolution "in generations", Lessig is positioning the internet era alongside the printing press and broadcast media, but with a sharper edge: this one is participatory, frictionless, and endlessly reproducible. That creates cultural abundance and cultural enclosure at the same time. The context is Lessig’s larger project - warning that copyright expansion, platform gatekeeping, and surveillance can convert a liberating medium into a permission culture. The sentence is less marveling at change than demanding that we notice who is writing the rules while we’re busy enjoying the apps.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Lessig, Lawrence. (2026, January 16). All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/all-around-us-are-the-consequences-of-the-most-113977/
Chicago Style
Lessig, Lawrence. "All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/all-around-us-are-the-consequences-of-the-most-113977/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/all-around-us-are-the-consequences-of-the-most-113977/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.







