Upcoming Events and Digital Media Roundup

BERKMAN CENTER FOR INTERNET & SOCIETY AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
March 18, 2009 // Upcoming events and digital media

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[1] [WEDNESDAY 3/18/09] "The Probability of Privacy" with Paul Ohm, Associate Professor of Law and Telecommunications, University of Colorado Law School (http://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2009/03/ohm)

[2] [THURSDAY 3/19/09] Berkman Blog Group: Roundtable Discussion: Social Media and Local Public Life with Steven Clift of E-Democracy.org (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/bloggroup/2009/03/17/2009-03-19-agenda-steven-clift-on-local-e-democracy/)

[3] [TUESDAY 3/24/09] Berkman Center Luncheon Series: "The Intention Economy: What Happens When Customers Get Real Power" (http://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2009/03/searls)

[4] [TUESDAY 3/24/09] "Community Wireless Mesh Networks, Globally and in Boston" with Brian Worobey and Gabriel Fishman of openairboston.net (http://cyber.harvard.edu/node/5154)

[5] [WEDNESDAY 3/25/09] Web of Ideas: The Wikipedia Revolution -- David Weinberger interviews author Andrew Lih on his new book (http://cyber.harvard.edu/events/webofideas/2009/03/wikipediarevolution)

[6] [THURSDAY 3/26/09] Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group @ Yale (http://cyber.harvard.edu/events/cyberscholars/2009/03/yale)

THE PROBABILITY OF PRIVACY with PAUL OHM
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3/18/09, 12:00, Maxwell Dworkin Hall 119
Hosted and co-sponsored by the Center for Research on Computation and Society

Topic: The Probability of Privacy
Guest: Paul Ohm, Associate Professor of Law and Telecommunications, University of Colorado Law School

Nearly every data privacy regulation separates information into two categories: sensitive and non-sensitive. Often, the rules dole out special treatment for those who transform sensitive into non-sensitive information through anonymization—the elimination of personal identifiers like names and social security numbers. For example, to satisfy regulators, Google anonymizes data in its search query database after nine months and health researchers aggregate statistics before publishing them.

Two recent, newsworthy events have upended our understanding of the privacy-protecting power of anonymization. America Online and Netflix each released millions of anonymized records containing the secrets of hundreds of thousands of users. In both cases, to the surprise of all, researchers were able to “deanonymize” or “reidentify” some of the people in the data with ease.

In part by studying these events, Computer Scientists have recently taken giant strides in developing theories of anonymization and reidentification. Through this research, none of which has been rigorously imported into legal scholarship until now, they have concluded that the utility and anonymity of data are connected. The only way to anonymize a database perfectly is to strip all of the information from it, and any database which is useful is also imperfectly anonymous. This profoundly important result will do no less than reshape every privacy law and regulation and revolutionize every privacy-related policy debate.

For more information and a complete description, see the event web page: http://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2009/03/ohm

[THURSDAY] BERKMAN BLOG GROUP on SOCIAL MEDIA AND PUBLIC LIFE
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3/19/09, 7:00 PM ET, Berkman Center Conference Room

This week, Steven Clift of E-Democracy.org is in town. So we’re hosting a Roundtable Discussion: Social Media and Local Public Life at blog group.

Steven Clift is with E-Democracy.Org, which hosts a 15 community/neighborhood, 3 country online Issues Forums network started in 1994.

Join us on Thursday, 7:00 - 8:00 p.m., followed by optional dinner/drinks out in the area Berkman Conference Room - 23 Everett Street, Second Floor, Cambridge

For more info, background, etc., see Steven’s post: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/bloggroup/2009/03/17/2009-03-19-agenda-steven-clift-on-local-e-democracy/

For more information and a complete description, see the event web page: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/bloggroup/2009/03/17/2009-03-19-agenda-steven-clift-on-local-e-democracy/

[TUESDAY] BERKMAN LUNCHEON SERIES on THE INTENTION ECONOMY
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3/24/09, 12:30 PM ET, Berkman Center Conference Room
RSVP is required (rsvp@cyber.harvard.edu).
Topic: The Intention Economy: What Happens When Customers Get Real Power
Guest: Doc Searls, Berkman Fellow

Ever since Industry won the Industrial Revolution, sellers have made the rules that buyers live by. (For evidence, consider how many times you've clicked "accept" to "terms of service" that nobody reads and give all advantages to the seller.) Even in these dawn years of the Information Age, when individuals have more choice than ever about what they can do with their time and money, big companies still talk about "capturing," "acquiring," "owning" and "managing" customers as if they were slaves. This kind of thinking is formalized in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems that "relate," for example, through call-center mazes that have more in common with cattle chutes than with real human interaction.

The age of Vendor Domination will end, Doc Searls believes, when customers get real power --- when their own Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) tools serve as far better instruments of demand than any of those provided for customers by CRM systems on the supply side. (And will improve CRM systems in the process.)

We will know VRM works when:

- Customers can set their own "terms of service" including ones that may be better for both sides than the ones supplied now by vendors alone.

- When customers are in charge of their own data, and how that data is used by companies, resulting in genuine, trusting, two-way relationships.

- When customers can advertise their intentions to buy X, Y or Z, without having to go through a controlling intermediary, or to reveal unnecessary personal information.

Doc expects an "Intention Economy" to grow around these new forms customer empowerment - one that will out-perform the "attention economy" based on advertising and other forms of guesswork on the supply side.

Working toward this goal is a growing community of developers and other individuals gathered around ProjectVRM, which Doc runs here at the Berkman Center. The VRM community is making progress on a number of fronts, which Doc will detail in his talk.

This event will be webcast live; for more information and a complete description, see the event web page: http://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2009/03/searls

[TUESDAY] COMMUNITY WIRELESS MESH NETWORKS
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3/24/09, 4:00 PM ET, Berkman Center Conference Room
RSVP is required (rsvp@cyber.harvard.edu).

Topic: Community Wireless Mesh Networks, Globally and in Boston
Guest: Brian Worobey and Gabriel Fishman of openairboston.net

Brian Worobey and Gabriel Fishman of openairboston.net and Aaron Kaplan of Funkfeuer Austria present a new approach to building citywide WiFi networks from the bottom up, utilizing open-source mesh networking protocols and relying on volunteers from the community. In Europe, a number of communities, such as Vienna, Berlin and Athens, have used this model to create massive community-owned networks. Locally, openairboston.net, a non-profit organization formed by recommendation of Mayor Menino's Wireless Task Force, is building a similar network in the Fenway and Mission Hill neighborhoods.

This talk will briefly describe the history of community wireless networks, as well as their technical aspects and the current status of openairboston.net's efforts. The talk will then focus on the political and social implications of these networks.

For more information and a complete description, see the event web page: http://cyber.harvard.edu/node/5154

[WEDNESDAY] WEB OF IDEAS on THE WIKIPEDIA REVOLUTION
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3/25/09, 6:00 PM ET, Griswold Hall 110, Harvard Law School
Tell us if you're coming on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/editevent.php?picture&eid=57459298780&created&new&m=1#/event.php?eid=57459298780) or Upcoming (http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/2130387/?ps=5)

Topic: The Wikipedia Revolution
Guest: David Weinberger interviews author Andrew Lih on his new book

The Wikipedia Revolution is the first narrative account of the remarkable success story of the "encyclopedia anyone can edit." Andrew Lih, a Wikipedia editor/administrator, academic and journalist, tells how the Internet's free culture community inspired its creation in 2001, and how legions of volunteers have emerged to create over 10 million articles in over 50 languages. The book recounts colorful behind-the-scenes stories of how obsessive map editors, automated software robots and warring factions have come to shape a complex online community of knowledge gatherers. Learn about the historical underpinnings of Wikipedia, of how a Hawaiian vacation and a fringe piece software from Apple Computer inspired the wiki concept, and realized the original read-and-write capabilities of the Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web. While Wikipedia has become firmly planted at the top of Google's search results, what are the challenges as sum of all human knowledge becomes more complete, and its problem is not growth, but reliability? Should we be putting so much trust in a resource created by anonymous nobodies?

Join author Andrew Lih (The Wikipedia Revolution), interviewed by David Weinberger (Everything is Miscellaneous), for a fascinating discussion about how Wikipedia has influenced the Internet and our culture, and its implications beyond encyclopedia writing.

For more information and a complete description, see the event web page: http://cyber.harvard.edu/events/webofideas/2009/03/wikipediarevolution

[THURSDAY] HARVARD-MIT-YALE CYBERSCHOLARS
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3/26/09, 6:00 PM ET, Yale Law School Room 129
Food Provided: RSVP to bjp2108@columbia.edu
Announcement: http://www.law.yale.edu/intellectuallife/6669.htm

Presenters and papers:

- Gabriella Coleman: These are the Best of Times and these are the Worst of Times: Free Software and the Global Politics of Intellectual Property Law

- Thomas Streeter: The History of the Internet in the History of the Internet

- David Thaw: Understanding How Law and Regulation Drive Corporate Information Security Practices

For more information and a complete description, see the event web page: http://cyber.harvard.edu/events/cyberscholars/2009/03/yale

OTHER EVENTS OF NOTE
======================

[1] 3/18/2009 "C4FCM Lecture Series: The Future of Radio, with Bill Siemering,

Sue Schardt, and Henry Holtzman" (http://civic.mit.edu/event/c4fcm-lecture-series-the-future-of-radio-with-bill-siemering-sue-schardt-and-henry-holtzman)

[2] 3/21-3/22/09 Register now for the LibrePlanet Conference at Harvard, organized by the Free Software Foundation (http://www.fsf.org/associate/meetings/2009/)

[3] 4/4/09 "Symposium to Explore the Future of Digital Collections" (http://blogs.law.yale.edu/blogs/reference/archive/2009/02/16/library-2-0-symposium-to-explore-the-future-of-digital-collections.aspx)

[4] 5/2/09 New Media Literacy's "Learning in a Participatory Culture" (http://newmedialiteracies.org/)

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.harvard.edu/interactive.

-RADIO BERKMAN: The Media Cloud (http://cyber.harvard.edu/interactive/podcasts/radioberkman113)

-BERKMAN LUNCHEON SERIES with JEFF HOWE on "The Role of Non-Monetary Incentives in Crowdsourcing and Social Production Projects" (http://cyber.harvard.edu/interactive/events/luncheon/2009/03/howe)

-BERKMAN LUNCHEON SERIES with AL GIDARI on "They Know Where You Are: Location Privacy in a Mobile World" (http://cyber.harvard.edu/interactive/events/luncheons/2009/03/gidari)

-IN SEARCH OF JEFFERSON'S MOOSE with DAVID POST (http://cyber.harvard.edu/interactive/events/2009/03/post)

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

ABOUT US
========

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.harvard.edu.