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Nathan Eagle on Big Data, Global Development, and Complex Social Systems

Nathan Eagle, Omidyar Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, infers behavioral dynamics on a broad spectrum of scales using technology; from risky behavior in a group of MIT freshman, to cholera outbreaks in Rwanda and wealth in the UK, to disease transmission and slum formations in East Africa. Though the analytical techniques are sophisticated, the tools used are as simple as a mobile phone. Ultimately these insights can be used to actively improve the lives of the billions of people who generate this data and the societies in which they live.

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David Weinberger on What Information Was

Berkman Fellow David Weinberger investigates the origin of modern "information", trying to understand what about it led us to embrace it as the dominant--paradigmatic--way of understanding ourselves and our world. David Weinberger will present an informal sketch of a direction, suggesting that we leaped into information because it reflected a long-held but squirrely metaphysics.

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Radio Berkman 136: The Garden and the Net

The "Walled Garden" is an oft-used metaphor to describe an area of the web that is somehow closed off - think AOL in the 90s, or any site that lives behind a paywall. To some, these areas of the net are exclusive avenues to brilliantly curated content. To others "Walled Gardens" are threats to the open nature of the net. Elizabeth Goodman, a PhD student at the UC Berkeley School of Information and a design researcher with Intel, has taken the metaphor of the Garden back to its roots (so-to-speak), to see if we can't reimagine web communities through the lens of these physical spaces.

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Ellen Goodman and Jake Shapiro on Redesigning public media for the 21st Century

Ellen Goodman of Rutgers University School of Law and Jake Shapiro, Executive Director of the Public Radio Exchange (PRX), discuss public media's role in providing public discourses, advancing democratic capabilities, and empowering publics to communicate and organize. The two investigate whether the United States has a system of public media that is able to support the kinds of widespread, high value, noncommercial, and productive communications essential for democratic functions. See the full set of slides from this talk here: http://www.slideshare.net/jakeshapiro/public-media-from-broadcast-to-broadband

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Radio Berkman 135: The Quest for a Free Culture

There’s something a bit stale about the way creativity works in the old world of pre-web, copyright-happy big media. But wait, what's this? The Free Culture Movement wants to tear down some of the walls that are hindering creativity, preventing people from remixing and repurposing the culture around them to fit their needs, visions, and desires! A world where anyone can feel free to edit a photo, remix a song or video, or modify a piece of software without the constraint of excessive laws or artificial limits – sounds great, right? But it raises more questions than you might think. Gabriella Coleman is an Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University who has given a lot of thought to the role of genre and piracy in how we might build a Free Culture that works. She sat down with our guest host Elizabeth Stark for a word or two on some of the toughest questions facing Free Culture.

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Elizabeth Goodman on Walled Gardens: Opening the Discussion

"Walled gardens" is a common term for systems that limit the entrance and exit of certain kinds of data. It is a deceptively simple metaphor that relies on the existence of a shared set of assumptions about what gardens are, what walls are, and what it means to build and maintain them. In this talk, Goodman extends the walled garden metaphor for digital spaces by comparing it to everyday experiences of more literal ones: urban community gardens.

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Viktor Mayer-Schönberger presents "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age"

A book talk with professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger who examines the technology that’s facilitating the end of forgetting in his book, "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age". Mayer-Schönberger argues that in our quest for perfect digital memories where we can store everything from recipes and family photographs to work emails and personal information, we’ve put ourselves in danger of losing a very human quality—the ability and privilege of forgetting.

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Jesse Shapins, James Burns, and Kara Oehler on Mapping Main Street

Mapping Main Street is a collaborative documentary media project that creates a new map of the country through a dynamic visualization of stories, data, photos and videos recorded on actual Main Streets. The goal is to document all of the more than 10,000 streets named Main in the United States. Three of the project's founders, Jesse Shapins, James Burns, and Kara Oehler explain the origins of the project and invite feedback.

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Ruby on Rails Workshop for Women

In this series of 5 videos - one introduction and four workshops - trainers teach the basics of Ruby on Rails. This event was coordinated by the Gender & Technology Group of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society

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Radio Berkman 134: Small Medium at Large

Few dispute that the web will be the dominant medium of the 21st Century - swallowing whole newspapers, books, radio, television, and the cinema. And even as the web grows virtually - over a trillion unique urls and growing - it shrinks physically - from laptop, to netbook, from cell phone, to even tinier and ubiquitous communication devices. The growth of the web seems radically different from that of television, radio, and newspapers. It seems like it was so grassroots, so rapid. But Professor W. Russell Neuman of the University of Michigan argues that to predict the growth of the web in the future we need to take a good hard look at just how those 20th Century technologies and infrastructures came to be so dominant. So, what does history have to say about how this tiny little medium will grow?

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Radio Berkman 133: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Inbox

Author and Professor of Public Policy Viktor Mayer-Schönberger believes that digital memory is a little too perfect. Every word you post on the web, every picture, every video, tweet, and email is set in stone, archived, permanently findable. Like the proverbial elephant, the digital world doesn't forget. There are incredible benefits to this. And there might be consequences as well, ranging from invasion of privacy, to the impairment of human memory. David Weinberger spoke with Viktor about some of these consequences, and how we might help our machines learn to forget.

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John Clippinger and Oliver Goodenough on Cloud Law, Finance 3.0, and Digital Institutions

John Clippinger and Oliver Goodenough of the Berkman Center's Law Lab discuss the progress made this year by the Law Lab - especially three specific projects that develop new digital institutions and research tools to foster innovation and deepen our understanding of trust, transparency and human cooperation.

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Radio Berkman 132: Learning to Share

Ownership structures for creative works – such as Copyright, Creative Commons, Fair Use, Public Domain – abound. This week, Kenneth Crews, the director of the Copyright Office at Columbia University, speaks with us about some of the distinctions, and the ways to make sure your work is protected as much or as little as possible.

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Herkko Hietanen on Network Recorders and Social Enrichment of Television

Television recorders are going online. Device manufacturers are starting to produce consumer devices and software that can be connected to Internet at consumers' homes. New models of innovation are starting to emerge. This talk proposes the social enrichment of TV offerings may prove to create disruptive innovation to an industry accustomed to control the consumption of content.

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Communication and Human Development: The Freedom Connection?

Professors Michael Spence and Amartya Sen join leading ICT (Information-Communication Technology) experts Yochai Benkler and Clotilde Fonseca in a public discussion of the role of communication and ICTs in human development, growth and poverty reduction. Michael Best will moderate the discussion. What has changed, been learned, not been learned, needs to be learned, needs to be done most urgently?

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Radio Berkman 131: Clay Shirky asks “How’s Your Web?"

Internet access. Anymore, it’s something many of us take for granted. Like water from the tap, power from the plug, outrageous outbursts from Kanye West. It’s there, it happens – why question it? Sure, there’s a lot of buzz about broadband and net neutrality going on in Washington, and in Geek Caves around the country. But the Net users on Main Street haven’t yet hit a tipping point. The fact is, your average consumer’s web connection isn’t very fast or cheap. But it is just fast and cheap enough that they won’t question, complain, or demand better. What is the ideal web? And how do we get past the consumer complacency to build it? Well, Clay Shirky has some ideas. And we were lucky enough to get an exclusive with him on One Web Day earlier this week. Listen in as he lays out a few visions for the potential of the web.

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IDRC Audio Notes

Uncut audio from the two-day ICTs for Human Development Conference, held at Harvard University, September 23-24, 2009. (See http://www.archive.org/details/HarvardForum2AudioCast for more details on the conference audio) ****NO VIDEO****

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Clay Shirky on Internet Issues Facing Newspapers

Clay Shirky describes the changing news landscape that has put accountability journalism at risk, and outlines a "journalistic ecosystem" that is needed to preserve essential watchdog role of the press. This talk was sponsored by the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School. Find links to the summary and transcript of this talk at: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/news_events/archive/2009/shirky_09-22-09.html

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Lee Dirks on Transforming Scholarly Communication

Lee Dirks, Director of Education & Scholarly Communications in Microsoft’s External Research division proposes a vision for the future of research and the need for semantic-oriented computing by exploring eResearch projects that have successfully applied relevant technologies. He suggests that a software + service model with scientific services delivered from the cloud will become an increasingly accepted model for research. This event was co-sponsored by the Harvard Business School Knowledge and Library Services, Harvard Law School Library, and the Office for Scholarly Communication.

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Radio Berkman 130: Adventures in Anonymity, Part One

Have you ever said something you wish you didn’t? Put your foot in your mouth? Insulted someone, cursed, or threatened somebody? In the real world, you can whisper your most seditious thoughts, and hope they don’t come back to bite you. Well, online, your comments are archived indefinitely. And if you don’t want those comments traced to you, you can just choose a funny forum name, or remain anonymous. But you are NOT anonymous. Believe it or not most of your anonymous blogs, comments, forum posts, and even emails have tiny digital fingerprints that can lead right back to you. Not a big deal if you’re commenting about how awesome “Blame it on the Rain” was on a Milli Vanilli fan board. But a growing number of online anonymous wordsmiths are being unmasked as they become the subject of civil suits. Sam Bayard, a Berkman Fellow and Assistant Director of the Citizen Media Law Project has his eye on such cases. And today, we’ll try to figure out whether legal action could put online anonymity out of commission forever.

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Calestous Juma on Legal Issues in Broadband Internet for Eastern Africa

Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development and Director of the Science, Technology, and Globalization Project at Harvard's Kennedy School, explores the implications of high speed internet for Africa’s capacity to expand the global market for access devices, creation of content, and development of markets.

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Radio Berkman 129: I Bought the Law

Steve Schultze is a busy fellow. He is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He recently joined the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy as Associate Director. He also is one of the developers behind RECAP - an ambitious and provocative project that seeks to bring publicly available digital court records out from behind a costly paywall. What is RECAP? Find out on this week’s episode! And why are there fees for court records? Steve also just dropped a great working paper that goes into more detail on the topic. If you’re in Washington, DC next week catch Steve’s talk on RECAP at the O’Reilly Gov 2.0 conference on Tuesday, September 8. Naturally we think Steve will make a terrific addition to the Princeton team — congrats, Steve! — and, while we’re sad to lose him, we’re looking forward to stronger ties to CITP and opportunities to collaborate and partner in the future.

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Radio Berkman 128: Tweeting a Dead Horse

The hype shows no signs of abating. Now that people have moved from just talking-about-Twitter, to the more meta talking-about-talking-about-Twitter, we here at Radio Berkman decided to take on the topic from our own perspective and see if there is possibly anything new left to be said about the popular microblogging service. Turns out there is.

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Life in the shadow of the Google Books Settlement

The opening panel from the Berkman Center's workshop on the Google Books Settlement, held on July 31st, 2009, features insights from: Maura Marx, Open Knowledge Commons; John Palfrey, Harvard Law School Library & Berkman Center; and Siva Vaidhyanathan, University of Virginia.

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Orphan Works: What does open access mean?

The second panel from the Berkman Center's workshop on the Google Books Settlement, held on July 31st, 2009, features insights on orphan works and open access from: James Grimmelmann, New York Law School; Lewis Hyde, Berkman Center; Phil Malone, Berkman Center; Eric Saltzman, Creative Commons; and Jule Sigall, Microsoft (formerly U.S. Copyright Office, principal drafter "Report on Orphan Works").

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Lawrence Lessig on the Google Book Search Settlement - "Settlements: Static goods, dynamic bads"

Larry Lessig, Professor of Law and founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society speaks at the Berkman Center workshop "Alternative Approaches to Open Digital Libraries in the Shadow of the Google Book Search Settlement". Photo from flickr user gchicco.

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GoogleBooks Workshop Breakout Sessions and Wrapup

Breakout sessions and the final wrapup from the Google Books Settlement Workshop. Click .MP3 links for audio from three of the breakout sessions: Breakout 1 with Marc Rotenberg of EPIC; Breakout 2 with Ethan Zuckerman and Peter Suber of the Berkman Center; and Breakout 3 with John Palfrey of the Harvard Law School Library & Berkman Center and Robert Darnton of the Harvard University Library. ****N.B.: Content is raw and unedited.

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Radio Berkman 127: Video Killed the Video Star

Is the idea of a mainstream video culture dead? TV news anchors, sitcom stars, and A-list actors are losing ground to the groundswell of citizen journalists, independent web series creators, and the occasional cats falling off of pianos on YouTube. If everyone is a producer, what role will video play in our lives in the future? This was one line of questioning taking place at the first ever Open Video Conference in New York City this past June. In addition to the producer question were questions about the sharing of creative works, and questions about how we can make it technologically cheaper and easier to share, collaborate on, and deliver video in the future. Today's Radio Berkman is a report back from OVC, with Amar Ashar, Chris Peterson, and Catherine White of the Berkman Center. Special thanks today to Catherine White who gathered audio from the OVC!

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Alexander Macgillivray of Google on the Google Book Search Settlement

The proposed Google Book Search settlement creates the opportunity for unprecedented access by the public, scholars, libraries and others to a digital library containing millions of books assembled by major research libraries. But the settlement is controversial, in large part because this access is limited in major ways: instead of being truly open, this new digital library will be controlled by a single company, Google, and a newly created Book Rights Registry consisting of representatives of authors and publishers; it will include millions of so-called “orphan works” that cannot legally be included in any competing digitization and access effort, and it will be available to readers only in the United States. Alexander Macgillivray, Deputy General Counsel for Products and Intellectual Property at Google (and soon to be General Counsel of Twitter) chats about the Google Book Search Settlement, its intricacies, pros, and cons, and responds to provocative questions and comments.

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Radio Berkman 126: The G-fail

You don’t need to be a crowned Ranger class master hacker to sneak into someone’s email or facebook account these days. Which means that you’re not simply being a nervous nellie if you’re worried about security. In fact, users of public WiFi should be worried. If you use WiFi to access some of the most popular email and social networking services, like, gmail, yahoo mail, hotmail, and facebook, your account information floats around in the air, often completely unsecured. You want some more fear with your coffee? Chris Soghoian, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, took a look into WiFi and account security to find out just how scary the situation is.