BERKMAN CENTER FOR INTERNET & SOCIETY AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Upcoming events and digital media // February 2, 2011


[TUESDAY 2/8] Berkman Luncheon Series: "Millions, Billions, Zillions: Why (In)numeracy Matters" with Brian Kernighan, Berkman Fellow & Department of Computer Science, Princeton University (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2011/02/kernighan)

[2/19-20] Students for Free Culture Conference 2011 (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2011/02/freeculture)

[SAVE THE DATE 2/25] "The Googlization of Everything" with Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of The Googlization of Everything & Professor at the University of Virginia (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2011/02/vaidhyanathan)

CRCS Seminar

[2/7] "CRCS Seminar: Cybersecurity Challenge" with Steven Bellovin, Columbia University (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2011/02/Bellovin)


[TUESDAY 2/8] BERKMAN LUNCHEON SERIES on WHY (IN)NUMERACY MATTERS
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2/8/11, 12:30 pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St., Cambridge, MA
RSVP is required to ashar@cyber.law.harvard.edu

Topic: Millions, Billions, Zillions: Why (In)numeracy Matters
Guests: Brian Kernighan, Berkman Fellow & Department of Computer Science, Princeton University

Technology has buried us in an avalanche of numbers and graphs and charts, many of which claim to present the truth about important issues. At the same time, our personal facility with numbers has diminished, leaving us at the mercy of quantitative reasoning and presentation that is often wrong and sometimes not disinterested. Numeracy is basic numeric self-defense: how to assess the numbers presented by other people, and how to produce sensible numbers of one's own. In this talk, I'll explore some of the central ideas, with plenty of examples.

About Brian

Brian Kernighan received his PhD from Princeton in 1969, and was in the Computing Science Research center at Bell Labs until 2000. He is now in the Computer Science Department at Princeton. His research areas include programming languages, tools and interfaces that make computers easier to use, often for non-specialist users. He is also interested in technology education for non-technical audiences.

This event will be webcast live; for more information and a complete description, see the event web page: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2011/02/kernighan


[2/19-20] STUDENTS FOR FREE CULTURE CONFERENCE 2011
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2/19-20/11, New York City
Organized by Students for Free Culture, Co-Sponsored by Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Register @ http://conf11.freeculture.org/about/

The Students for Free Culture Conference is a gathering of student activists, intellectuals, artists, hackers, and generally interested people to discuss the latest issues in the free cultural world, especially with a focus on student involvement and participation. The conference will feature keynotes from the creators of Diaspora, Pablo Ortellado, and Susan Crawford, as well as panels on remix culture, open education, and fashion and copyright. The second day is an unconference where anyone is invited to pose a panel, discussion, gathering, or hack session. Registration is pay-what-you-want, and travel funding is available by request.

For more information and a complete description, see the event web page: http://conf11.freeculture.org


[SAVE THE DATE 2/25] THE GOOGLIZATION OF EVERYTHING
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2/25/11, 12:00pm, Harvard Law School
Free and open to the public; RSVP is required to ashar@cyber.law.harvard.edu

Topic: The Googlization of Everything
Guests: Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of The Googlization of Everything & Professor at the University of Virginia

Siva Vaidhyanathan will discuss his new book, "The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry)."  From Siva: "Google dominates the World Wide Web. There was never an election to determine the Web's rulers. No state appointed Google its proxy, its proconsul, or viceroy. Google just stepped into the void when no other authority was willing or able to make the Web stable, usable, and trustworthy. This was a quite necessary step at the time. The question is whether Google's dominance is the best situation for the future of our information ecosystem."

For more information and a complete description, see the event web page: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2011/02/vaidhyanathan


CRCS Seminar: CYBERSECURITY CHALLENGE
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CRCS Lunch Seminar
Date: Monday, February 7, 2011
Time: 11:30am - 1:-00pm
Place: Maxwell Dworkin 119

Speaker:  Steven Bellovin, Columbia University
Title:  Cybersecurity Challenge

Abstract:   From more or less any perspective, we have failed in our attempts to build secure systems.  We argue that given one uncontroversial assumption -- that bug-free code is impossible, if only because we cannot construct bug-free specifications -- this is unlikely to change.  Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is one class definition of insanity, but that's what security people have been doing.  Instead, we outline a fundamentally different approach to security, called resilient system design.

For more information and a complete description, see the event web page: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2011/02/Bellovin


OTHER EVENTS OF NOTE
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2/5: The Virtual and Actual Reality of Online Gaming, featuring Berkman Center faculty co-director Jonathan Zittrain // A.R.T, Cambridge, MA (http://www.americanrepertorytheater.org/node/5614)

2/7: Lawrence Lessig on Institutional Corruption // IBM Center for Social Software (http://ctr4sslessig.eventbrite.com/)

2/10: Digital Humanities 2.0: Emerging Paradigms in the Arts and Humanities in the Information Age, featuring Berkman Fellow Jeffrey Schnapp and Berkman Faculty co-director John Palfrey // Harvard Humanities Center (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~humcentr/conferences/index.shtml)

2/14: Robin Chase on Excess Capacity: The Source for the Next Wave of Innovation // IBM Research (http://ctr4ss-robinchase.eventbrite.com/)

3/25: Fifth Annual Law & Information Society Symposium: Mobile Devices, Location Technologies & Shifting Values // Fordham University (http://law2.fordham.edu/ihtml/cal-2uwcp-calendar_viewitem.ihtml?idc=1110...)

4/6-7: Beyond Books: News, Literacy, Democracy and America's Libraries // MIT Center for Future Civic Media (http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Biblionews)


DIGITAL MEDIA: Watch and Listen
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Did you miss this week's luncheon talk? Catch up with Berkman videos, podcasts, pictures, and dig in to our archive at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive.

-ETHAN ZUCKERMAN, HAL ROBERTS, and JILLIAN C. YORK on "Independent Sites and Distributed Denial of Service Attacks" (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/luncheon/2011/01/ddos)

-Radio Berkman 173: The Portrait of the Self-Published Artist (Rethinking Music II) with AMANDA PALMER and DONALD GLOVER (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/podcasts/radioberkman173)

-ANDY ORAM on "Making Cloud Computing Truly Free and Open" (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/luncheon/2011/02/oram)


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BERKMAN CALENDAR & UPCOMING EVENTS PREVIEW
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See our events calendar if you're curious about future luncheons, discussions, lectures, conferences, and more: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events. All of our events are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted.


ABOUT US
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The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University was founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. For more information, visit http://cyber.law.harvard.edu.