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Berkman Buzz: June 13, 2014

The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects.
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Alison Head interviews Katie Davis about the learner of tomorrow

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We draw a connection between the app mentality and an increasing risk aversion that we saw manifest in the way youth approach various aspects of their lives, including their schoolwork. After all, when one's technology lays out a clear path from point A to point B, there's no need to consider or explore alternate, less certain routes. The learner of tomorrow may need support to break free from an app mentality that demands instant, unambiguous answers to all questions.

 

From Alison Head's latest interview for Project Information Literacy (PIL), "Katie Davis: Who Is the Learner of Tomorrow?"
About Alison | @alisonjhead
About Project Information Literacy

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.@globalvoices covers the brief @MLDI filed in Delfi v. Estonia (along with @DMLPBerkman and 22 others) http://bit.ly/1jok6Lo
Andy Sellars (@andy_sellars)

 

Willow Brugh speaks to Doctors Without Borders about technology as a means to equality

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The gist of the talk I gave (15-minute video follows) is that technology is a means to more equality in the world – a way to be inclusive. That there are many people in the world who want to use their technical skills to help groups like MSF out, but we absolutely need them at things like hackathons. That there are many people with voices and connections to the globe now, and that groups like MSF have a responsibility to listen to them directly. And that technology, when done in codesign, will be aligned with what their needs are, and is an ongoing relationship, not a one-off delivery.

 

From Willow Brugh's post for Geek Without Bounds, "Technology as a Means to Equality"
About Willow | @willowbl00

New paper from Primavera de Filippi and Katarzyna Gracz on the failure of copyright law in the digital world

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The article explores the mechanisms that led to the current crisis of copyright law in the digital environment (understood as its inability to regulate social dynamics as regards the production, dissemination and access to creative works) by applying the concept of law as an autopoietic system. It analyses how the copyright regime (a subsystem of the legal system) evolved over time, by scrutinizing the interdependencies between copyright law and the other constitutive systems of its environment: the creative system (concerned with the creation, reproduction, distribution and access to creative works), the political system (comprising both the State and the Church), the economic system (ruled by right holders and intermediaries on the market for creative works) and the technological system.

 

From Katarzyna Gracz and Primavera De Filippi's paper in the International Journal of Law and Information technology, "Regulatory failure of copyright law through the lenses of autopoietic systems theory"
About Primavera

Ethan Zuckerman explores civic efficacy at a local town meeting

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Town meeting government is peculiar to New England and especially strong in Massachusetts, where almost 300 of the state’s municipalities are governed by an annual meeting of town residents. My town is under the population threshold of 6000 at which towns can choose to elect representatives to town meeting. In small towns like ours, we are required to hold an open town meeting, at which any residents may speak and ask questions and where registered voters vote on any major discretionary spending and on changes to the town’s bylaws.

These aren’t the question and answer sessions with national-level elected officials that became infamous for revealing how angry and partisan many American are. They are dead practical discussions of individual line items in the annual budget of a small, mostly volunteer-run organization. (Lanesborough has three elected selectmen, who appoint a paid town manager. The selectmen are nominally compensated for their work, and most committee members are volunteers. The town’s budget of $10 million, goes almost exclusively towards salaries for teachers, school administrators, police and highway workers.) The conversations that take place aren’t the sort that play well on cable TV news – instead, they’re familiar to anyone who’s served on the board of a budget-constrained nonprofit organization.

 

From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post, "Town Meeting and a lesson on civic efficacy"
About Ethan | @ethanz

After an Indian Minister Says ‘Sometimes Rape is Right', #MenAgainstRape Stand Up in Pakistan

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Is it easier to condemn rape when it happens elsewhere? How about when it happens right across the border? The #MenAgainstRape hashtag started trending again, this time in Pakistan, reportedly after Babulal Gaur, an Indian state minister, said this about rape, 'sometimes it is right, sometimes it's wrong'.

Hundreds of young men from Pakistan started standing up to join the hashtag campaign.

 

From Sana Saleem's post for Global Voices, "After an Indian Minister Says ‘Sometimes Rape is Right', #MenAgainstRape Stand Up in Pakistan"
About Global Voices Online | @globalvoices

This Buzz was compiled by Rebekah Heacock.

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