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Upcoming Events: The Responsive City (10/28); The Coming Swarm (10/29); Authorship in the Digital World (10/30)

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Upcoming Events / Digital Media
October 23, 2014
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book launch

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.

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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>

book launch

The Coming Swarm

Wednesday, October 29, 6:00pm ET, Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Hall, Room 2012. Free and Open to the Public.

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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>

co-sponsored event

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

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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>

luncheon series

General Counsel of Microsoft, Brad Smith, in conversation with Professor Jonathan Zittrain

Tuesday, November 4, 12:00pm ET, Harvard Law School. Co-sponsored by the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology. This event will be webcast live.

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Brad Smith, General Counsel of Microsoft, will participation in an interview conversation with HLS Professor and Berkman Faculty Director Jonathan Zittrain. Topic TBA.

Brad Smith is Microsoft's general counsel and senior vice president, Legal and Corporate Affairs. He leads the company's Department of Legal and Corporate Affairs (LCA), which has just over 1,000 employees and is responsible for the company's legal work, its intellectual property portfolio, and its government affairs and philanthropic work. He also serves as Microsoft's corporate secretary and its chief compliance officer.

Jonathan Zittrain is the George Bemis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at the Harvard Law School Library, and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

video/audio

Emily Horne & Tim Maly on The Inspection House: An Impertinent Field Guide to Modern Surveillance

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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. In French philosopher Michel Foucault's 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. 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. In this talk authors Emily Horne -- a creator of the webcomic A Softer World -- and Tim Maly -- writer and Fellow at Harvard’s metaLAB -- discuss their new book The Inspect ion House, and paint a stark, vivid portrait of our contemporary surveillance state and its opponents. video/audio on our website>

Other Events of Note

Local, national, international, and online events that may be of interest to the Berkman community:

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See our events calendar if you're curious about future luncheons, discussions, lectures, and conferences not listed in this email. Our events are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted.