At the Corner of Hollywood and Web: Discussion & Screening; Scientifically Verifiable Broadband Policy; metaLAB & the Arboretum

At the Corner of Hollywood and Web: A conversation + a screening of a new indie movie

Monday, November 19, 6:00pm ET, Harvard Law School.

What happens when a movie maker looks to the Web to work around the traditional entertainment system in which he is one of the leading figures? Rob Burnett is the executive producer of "The Late Show with David Letterman" and CEO of the production company, Worldwide Pants Incorporated ("The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" and "Everybody Loves Raymond)." He and his writing partner Jon Beckerman were also the creators of the much admired "Ed" and "Knights of Prosperity." But, they decided the traditional Hollywood route was wrong for their new indie movie. "We wanted to let it find its right audience," says Burnett. So, they turned to the Web. Join us for a conversation with Rob Burnett about what they've learned as entertainment industry insiders trying to use the Web to let "We Made This movie" find its audience. The conversation will be held with the Berkman Center's David Weinberger, Jonathan Zittrain, filmmaker Elaine McMillion and other special guests. Afterwards, there will be a screening of "We Made This Movie," where five high school seniors set out to make a silly comedy movie, but accidentally end up making a dramatic and moving movie about their actual lives.

RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Scientifically Verifiable Broadband Policy

Tuesday, November 20, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor. This event will be webcast live.

Measurement Lab (M-Lab) is a collaborative effort founded by Vint Cerf and a large body of network researchers, dedicated to creating an Internet-scale ecosystem for truly open network measurement. In the policy space, this means the facts can speak for themselves, and the rhetoric can adapt. To make this happen, Measurement Lab allows researchers the ability to run open source broadband measurement tools on well-managed, near global infrastructure. All data collected by these tools is made publicly available. This public repository of M-Lab data comprises by far the biggest such resource on the planet (and other planets, I assume), with over 600 terabytes of raw, real-world, globally comparable network measurement data (!!). This data is being used by researchers as the basis for peer-reviewed papers furthering network science. It's also being used by governments and national regulators. Canada recently joined Greece, the US, and the European Union in choosing M-Lab and M-Lab's ope n data as the backbone of their upcoming broadband study. M-Lab's creates a model in which scientists, policy-makers, and consumers have access to good information drawn from the same pool of open, scientifically-sound broadband performance data. This means that conclusions made based on these data are verifiable, and that debate can focus on data, not hearsay. Very cool, right? So come learn about M-Lab's tools, M-Lab's data, how M-Lab is creating a paradigm for collaborative science as the foundation for good, data-based policy. Meredith Whittaker is a Program Manager for Google Research. Thomas Gideon is the technical director for the Open Technology Institute at New America Foundation. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Trees and Physical-Virtual Borderlands: metaLAB and the Arnold Arboretum

Tuesday, November 27, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, Cambridge, MA. This event will be webcast live.

Say the idea is to re-awaken our feelings for plants even at our hyper-networked speed—do we want digital tools to do the re-wiring or are we convinced their auto-brightness and push notifications divert us from the living, breathing nonhuman sensorium? Maybe we have to begin to think more dynamically about cycles of mediation and flows, even floods, of informational-environmental perception. We know Boston's maples can get deeper access to us when the Web shows us what science has to say about them; what would it mean to experiment in crafting avenues for trees to traffic and transform our physical-virtual borderlands? Kyle Parry will initiate a conversation along these lines by way of a discussion of Digital Ecologies, metaLAB's work-in-progress collaboration with Harvard's Arnold Arboretum. Kyle Parry is a Researcher at metaLAB and a PhD student in Film and Visual Studies and Critical Media Practice at Harvard. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

RB209: Crisis Spotting (Drone Humanitarianism II)

What if you could witness a crime taking place from space, and even step in to prevent it? A group of researchers at Harvard’s Humanitarian Initiative are trying to do exactly that. video/audio on our website>

Has Politics Gone Peer to Peer?

An election eve conversation with Steven Johnson, author of "Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked World" and Harvard Law School's Yochai Benkler, Susan Crawford & Lawrence Lessig. video/audio on our website>