Berkman Buzz: September 19, 2014

I'm really excited to share that I launched a new series this week with Al Jazeera America, based on my Berkman lunch talk last April about personal data stories. It's called Living with Data.

The series consists of two parts: articles about the uses of data all around us, and a regular column—The Decoder—that looks into reader-submitted questions about personal data and algorithmic encounters.

I’m really excited to work with Al Jazeera on this project, given their dedication to being “with the people — we tell real stories.”

But I need your help! This series starts with you.

Advising clients on these frontier issues requires embracing the complexity and nuance of the world. As one of my old teachers once said, “if you come to easy answers to questions like these, you just aren’t thinking hard enough.” I’m lucky that Northeastern taught me to think critically and deeply about these policy choices. We saw a lot of watershed events for the music industry in the five years I was at Northeastern – Dangermouse’s The Grey Album, Radiohead’s In Rainbows, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) lawsuits against college kids, and countless others. With each, my classmates, professors, and I sought to understand what it could mean for the future of the industry and how we conceptualize the relationship between artists, fans, and intermediaries. This delicate balancing is the hallmark of all online policy debates today.

Berkmaniacs @zeynep and @judithd on geek culture going mainstream in today's @nytimes http://t.co/Od4izwJBsw
—Berkman Center (@berkmancenter)
 

Uh-oh. Here we go again.

According to Time magazine, Apple is working with U2 on a “secret project” aimed at ensuring that we’ll all pay for the music we listen to in the future. Says the magazine, U2 frontman and doer of good works Bono “hopes that a new digital music format in the works will prove so irresistibly exciting to music fans that it will tempt them again into buying music—whole albums as well as individual tracks.”

About a month ago, I wrote an article about a simple idea. I asked whether anyone really believed that advertising should be the main way we supported content and services on the internet. Given how poorly banner advertising on the web worksGiven that nobody likes banner ads, and given that the current system puts users under surveillance, which in turn seems to inure us to government surveillance, I wondered whether there might be a better way.

Initially, the piece did what I hoped for – it sparked a lively conversation about business models for the web, particularly about business models for news. My friend Jeff Jarvis, whose faith in Google inspires envy in leaders of the Catholic Church, reassured me that once advertising got a little better, I’d like the ads I was reading online, really! I heard pitches for ethical advertising, for different approaches to subscriptions and to micropayments. I’d gotten something off my chest, had sparked a good conversation and was learning from the responses. As a blogger and a media scholar, life was good.

But something unexpected happened halfway through my day in the sun. For a brief and uncomfortable time, I became the most hated man on the internet. Here’s how that happened.

It would seem that Americans do not confidently know how to recognize our government in our daily lives. Out of the many services, experiences, exchanges, pressures, and opportunities we encounter in the course of a day, we cannot pick out the ones that stem from government authority and resources.

Scotland, Social Data and McRussians: http://bit.ly/1qRa2Da Fantastic @digg original by @gilgul packed with social data insight on Scots.
—Andrew McLaughlin (@McAndrew)

Efforts in the tiny West African state of the Gambia, which hasn't been affected by the devastating Ebola outbreak, are being intensified to protect the country from the deadly virus.

A coalition of civil society in the Gambia have launched Ebola Free Gambia to try and keep the country Ebola free. Its Facebook page, created on the 30 August, has over 2,900 likes.