Berkman Buzz, week of January 14

BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
Week of January 14, 2008

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What's going on... take your pick or browse below.

* Jake Shapiro points out public media's role in the next election
* Doc Searls reminisces about The Good Old Days
* Charlie Nesson invites us to meditate on rhetoric and evidence
* David Weinberger on ratios
* The OpenNet Initiative on zero-sum dangers
* David Isenberg delivers the not bad news
* danah boyd wants a third side
* Weekly Global Voice: Israel defines newspapers

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The full buzz.

"...What’s the point?
Public media has a unique opportunity to cover Campaign 2008 and elevate public engagement around critical issues at stake nationally  and locally.
The democratization of the tools for creating and distributing media has resulted in an explosion of conversation, connection and content.
This in turn creates a critical need for ways to sift, filter and find value amidst irrelevant or even harmful expression.
One important role is to use public media’s presence and journalistic values to showcase and highlight examples of the diverse range of content and conversation already taking place online..."
Jake Shapiro, "Public Media Election Collaboration"

"...Lot of offline talk lately about what’s happened to blogging. One friend sent an email I hope he puts up soon. Among other quotable lines is 'most of the blogosphere has become a full-on commercial wankfest now.'  Not that it wasn’t then. But it was fun to hang out with a bunch of people, most of whose politics were vastly unlike my own — but whose writing was interesting and compelling and fresh and far more personal and open-ended than any op-ed page — and to believe we were beginning to make some kind of positive difference in the world. In retrospect, I don’t think any of us was making a dime on blogging at the time. For what that’s worth. If anything..."
Doc Searls, "Remembering the Good Old Day"

- continued -

"...Evidence in context projects meaning to the mind and heart observing which shines through in character to intelligence in yet another dimension..."
Charlie Nesson, "he [or she] who controls the space controls the universe"

"Control doesn’t scale. That seems to me to say it all. Or, it at least says some of it..."
David Weinberger, "Control doesn’t scale"

"According to Ed Giorgio, who is working with National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell on a proposed cyber-security plan, “privacy and security are a zero-sum game.” (Quoted from The Spymaster, a story about McConnell in the Jan. 21, 2008 New Yorker; story not [yet] available online, but is discussed here.)
Calling privacy and security a zero-sum game is not only inaccurate, it is dangerous..."
The OpenNet Initiative, "Is 'Privacy and Security' a Zero-Sum Game?"

"The news that Time Warner Cable is trialing a plan to charge more when you send or receive more Internet data is not bad news. It is not as great as it could be, but in my opinion it is a huge step in the right direction. It's not worthy of a standing ovation, but it's not the last act. Polite applause are in order.
If you must manage congestion, then doing it explicitly is, at very least, honest. It is better than doing it (a) covertly or (b) indirectly, by injecting artificial interrupts and (c) denying you're doing it -- like Comcast currently does..."
David Isenberg, "Time Warner Cable does the right thing"

"The Economist is doing an 'Oxford-style debate' on the following proposition:
'Social networking technologies will bring large [positive] changes to educational methods, in and out of the classroom'
Given that MySpace and Facebook are ubiquitous, can social networking be defined as the 'collective power of community to help inform perspectives that would not be unilaterally formed' or is it simply a distraction for students? Can these tools could be used in the classroom?
While I think that the Economist's question is quite intriguing (albeit a bit problematically defined), I was sorely disappointed with the two responses..."
danah boyd, "The Economist Debate on Social 'Networking'"

"Israeli web culture is known for having an active talkback (web commenting) scene. Every major news site allows users to submit comments for every single one of its stories. Israeli culture at its best and worst thrives through discussions held within these spaces; discussions which are planned to fall under future censorship, according to the Talkback Law, proposed by Knesset member Israel Hasson.   The  proposal passed initial voting in the Knesset yesterday, January 16th.  According to the proposal, a popular site, defined as one with an average of 50,000 hits or more per day, will be considered a 'newspaper' and thus liable for the damage or harm caused to a person as a result from its user generated content (i.e. - comments). Ironically, the web post describing this case, published yesterday on the popular ynet news site, has already received over 200 comments..."
Gilad Lotan, "Israel: Law for Censorship of Web Comments Passes Initial Knesset Voting"