Upcoming Events: The Inspection House (10/21); The Responsive City (10/28); The Coming Swarm (10/29)

The Inspection House: An Impertinent Field Guide to Modern Surveillance

Tuesday, October 21, 12:30pm ET, Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Hall, Room 3018. This event will be webcast live.

In 1787, British philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham conceived of the panopticon, a ring of cells observed by a central watchtower, as a labor-saving device for those in authority. While Bentham's design was ostensibly for a prison, he believed that any number of places that require supervision—factories, poorhouses, hospitals, and schools—would benefit from such a design. The French philosopher Michel Foucault took Bentham at his word. In his groundbreaking 1975 study, Discipline and Punish, the panopticon became a metaphor to describe the creeping effects of personalized surveillance as a means for ever-finer mechanisms of control. Forty years later, the available tools of scrutiny, supervision, and discipline are far more capable and insidious than Foucault dreamed, and yet less effective than Bentham hoped. Shopping malls, container ports, terrorist holding cells, and social networks all bristle with cameras, sensors, and trackers. But, crucially, they are also rife with resistance and prime opportunities for revolution. The Inspection House is a tour through several of these sites—from Guantánamo Bay to the Occupy Oakland camp and the authors' own mobile devices—providing a stark, vivid portrait of our contemporary surveillance state and its opponents.

Emily Horne lives and works in Toronto, Ontario. She is the photographer and designer for the webcomic A Softer World, and freelance edits books for kicks. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Coast and Tor.com. She is @birdlord on Twitter.

Tim Maly writes about design, architecture, networks and infrastructure. He is a Fellow at Harvard’s metaLAB and is big into cyborgs. His work has appeared in Wired, Medium, The Atlantic and Urban Omnibus. He is @doingitwrong on Twitter. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data Smart Governance

Tuesday, October 28, 12:00pm ET, Harvard Law School Library. Co-sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Harvard Law School Visiting Professor and co-director of the Berkman Center Susan Crawford joins Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone, Mayor of Somerville, MA, Jascha Franklin-Hodge, Chief Information Officer for the City of Boston and Harvard Business School Professor and Chief of Staff to Mayor Menino, Mitchell Weiss, for a lively discussion around her new book, The Responsive City. The talk will be moderated by Harvard Law School Professor and co-founder and Director of the Berkman Center Jonathan Zittrain.

The Responsive City is a compelling guide to civic engagement and governance in the digital age that will help municipal leaders link important breakthroughs in technology and data analytics with age-old lessons of small-group community input to create more agile, competitive and economically resilient cities. The book is co-authored by Professor Stephen Goldsmith, director of Data-Smart City Solutions at Harvard Kennedy School, and Professor Susan Crawford, co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. more information on our website>

The Coming Swarm

Wednesday, October 29, 6:00pm ET, Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Hall, Room 2012.

In her new book, The Coming Swarm: DDoS, Hacktivism, and Civil Disobedience on the Internet, Molly Sauter examines the history, development, theory, and practice of distributed denial of service actions as a tactic of political activism. Together in conversation with journalist and activist Laurie Penny, Molly will discuss the use of disruptive tactics like DDoS, online civil disobedience, and the role of the internet as a zone of political activism and speech. There will be a book signing following the discussion.

Molly Sauter is a research affiliate at the Berkman Center, and a doctoral student at McGill University in Montreal. She holds a masters degree in Comparative Media Studies from MIT, where she is an affiliate researcher at the Center for Civic Media at the Media Lab. Laurie Penny was born in London in 1986 and is not dead yet. She is, in no particular order, a writer, a journalist, a public speaker, an activist, a feminist, a reprobate and a geek. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Authorship in the Digital World: How to Make It Thrive

Thursday, October 30, 3:30pm ET, Harvard University, Lamont Library, Forum Room. Co-sponsored by The Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication, The Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and the Authors Alliance

The internet has had disruptive effects on many aspects of the ecosystem in which authors reach readers. The roles of publishers, retailers, libraries, and universities, and other participants in this ecosystem are evolving rapidly. Amazon.com, in particular, has been the source of considerable controversy in its dealings with authors and publishers.

In order for authors to navigate these turbulent waters, they need to be strategic in their partnerships and careful in contracting. Copyright is supposed to help even authors with no legal expertise, but how good a job does it do? Could some changes in that law help authors reach readers more effectively? Looking beyond the law, what steps can authors take now to realize the full impact of their writings?

With these questions in mind, the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society are co-sponsoring the Authors Alliance in bringing a panel discussion on the challenges and opportunities facing authors in the digital age to the Harvard campus.

The discussion will be preceded by remarks from Katie Hafner, a journalist, the author of six books, and a member of the Authors Alliance and advisory board.

Jonathan Zittrain will moderate a panel that will include: Rachel Cohen, a Cambridge-based author and creative writing professor at Sarah Lawrence College; Robert Darnton, university librarian at Harvard and member of the Authors Alliance advisory board; Ellen Faran, director of MIT Press; Mark Fischer, a copyright lawyer at Duane Morris LLP; Katie Hafner, a journalist, memoirist, and nonfiction writer; Alison Mudditt, director of UC Press; Sophia Roosth, a Harvard historian of science; and Pamela Samuelson, Authors Alliance co-founder and law professor at U.C. Berkeley. Registration Required. more information on our website>

Rebecca Weintraub on Digital Badges for Global Health Delivery Skills

Healthcare professionals worldwide often have extensive non-clinical skills in management, public health, policy, or other fields which are not officially recognized through a degree. In this talk, Rebecca Weintraub, MD -- Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Faculty Director of the Global Health Delivery Project at Harvard University -- introduces the concept of digital badges for healthcare professionals, a means for demonstrating skills and experience to potential new employers, grant-giving organizations, and others. Like other well-known badge and certification systems -- such as Fair Trade and organic standards for food, or LEED certification for buildings -- digital badges can improve the quality of health services, and help others to recognize the skills of healthcare professionals. But how should such a system be implemented? video/audio on our website>