Berkman Buzz: December 13, 2012

Harvard's metaLAB is "dedicated to exploring and expanding the frontiers of networked culture in the arts and humanities," pursuing interdisciplinary research like this fascinating look at the spread of printing across Europe in the 1400s. Drawing on data from the university's library collections, the animation below maps the number and location of printed works by year. Watch it full screen in HD to see cities light up as the years scroll by in the lower left corner. Matthew Battles, a principal and senior researcher at metaLAB and past Atlantic contributor, describes the research and technology that went into the visualization in an interview below.

“It’s either that or find another war”. From a note from Paul Salopek to his editor at National Geographic, proposing a 5 year walk around the world, retracing the steps of human migration from Ethiopia to Patagonia.

Paul’s walk is now planned to take at least seven years. Speaking to a packed room at Harvard at the launch of his project, Out of Eden, Paul shows us a thin, red line that meanders across a blue globe from Ethiopia, through the Middle East, India, China, Russia, down the length of North America and down through Chile and into Patagonia. It’s a retracing of the journey we made as a species, between 50,000 and 75,000 years ago. It’s a journey that made us fully human as we overcame predators, droughts, famine and learned how to work together and survive. It’s “the long walk into our becoming.”

In October, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan made headlines with his pronouncement for fast-forwarding learning in America’s classrooms.

By putting a keyboard in every student’s hands and replacing printed textbooks with digital ones, Duncan predicted that U.S. graduates would become formidable competitors against their digital-savvy counterparts from countries like South Korea.

But what really happens when the Google Generation joins the workplace? While we agree much stands to be gained, what may be lost as education goes digital?

At the best of times, a problem-solving team is the equivalent of the crooks in The Italian Job – there’s one person who cracks safes, one person who drives cars, etc, and they all make up a killer team that allows them to steal lots of money. At the worst of times, it is a gigantic waste of energy for everyone involved. Unfortunately, in my experience, the latter is far more common than the former.

Let me put a theory on the table: theater is the field that has figured this method of working out. Interdisciplinary collaboration is expected on every single show a theater person works on. Usually, there’s a lighting designer, a set designer, a costume designer, and a director, and they all have to work together to create a cohesive vision and implement a plan. Often they have never met before the first phone call. Sometimes they don’t mean in person at all.

The pop-up, over-the-top library | Harvard Gazette http://t.co/ErScctcH = nice write up on the LABrary and student projects
—Jeffrey Schnapp (@jaytiesse)

When you look at technology-based informal learning through this lens, one of the problems that becomes apparent is that technology-mediated learning systems often only work with two pillars: learners and materials. Developers create an educational website, software, app, or game, and they focus on how the materials engage with the learner without necessarily thinking about the materials could engage mentors.

How the heritage brand Burberry uses digital to reach a new generation of customers http://bit.ly/ZkKCzx
—John Deighton (@HBSmktg)

The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) is an ongoing tribunal in Bangladesh that was set up to investigate and provide justice regarding the war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971.

On 6 December, 2012 the war crimes tribunal accused The Economist magazine of hacking and asked it to explain how it got emails and heard Skype conversations between Presiding Judge Mohammed Nizamul Huq and Mr. Ahmed Ziauddin, a war crimes expert of Bangladeshi origin living in Brussels, Belgium. The two individuals have known each other for 25 years. The court ruling accused the Economist of “interfering into the work of the tribunal and violating the privacy of its presiding judge” as the magazine contacted the judge directly about the conversations.