Ethan Zuckerman: the history of digital community, in less than 7 minutes

April 25, 2008

Photo: RubyJi, CC by-nc-sa

Fasten your time machine seatbelt. As part of the Berkman Center’s ongoing tenth anniversary celebration, Berkman@10, we’re retrieving some classics from our multimedia archive and adding them to our new YouTube channel.

To date, we’ve: re-presented Lawrence Lessig’s fall 2000 debate with Jack Valenti; brought back Charles Nesson’s framing of IS2K7, University: Knowledge Beyond Authority; re-produced John Perry Barlow's reassesment of his 1994 essay on the economy of ideas; and re-posed the question: Will the Internet draft the next president?

This week, a double hat tip -- to ROFLCon's group dissection of Internet culture and to Digital Natives' roundup of Internet video, which reminded us of this classic from the watershed first Beyond Broadcast conference...

Cambridge, MA, May 12, 2006 - Global Voices co-founder and Berkman Fellow Ethan Zuckerman delivers a magnificent, breathless history of digital community, by way of prefacing a Beyond Broadcast panel on the community dimension of media. Reaching back to the mid-60s and ARPANET, Ethan makes a propulsive case for the foundational role of communications between people -- email, chat, MUDs, MySpace, more -- in the development of the Net. More than a quarter century after ARPANET, why do we care? Take a few minutes to find out how Ethan answers.

Without further ado...

More: Audio, Video, and Summaries from Beyond Broadcast 2006, including the full-length video of the "What is the community dimension of media?" panel

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The Berkman@10 conference and gala are only three weeks away!

• Registration is open, space is limited, reserve your seat now!
• Agenda: updated, ready to go.
• Wiki: If you've registered for the conference, then add your name and affiliation to the wiki, pose questions, propose your ideas for breakout sessions.
• Gala: Join us for the finale, a gala dinner where we will present the first-ever Berkman Awards. The Gala will be held on the evening of May 16 at the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square. Tables and individual seats are still available. Register to reserve your place. (Please note that registration for the gala dinner and awards ceremony is separate from conference registration.)
• Keep up to date with lead up events, conversations, and more: http://www.berkmanat10.org.