Toronto mayor Rob Ford is a controversial character. 2300 words in his 7600 word Wikipedia biography make up a section titled “other controversies“. These controversies include being drunk and picking a fight at a Leafs game, insulting people with AIDS, people of Asian descent, and allegedly groping a female mayoral candidate.

But all that colorful behavior pales in comparison to the accusations he’s now facing. The Toronto Star, a left-leaning newspaper that’s repeatedly reported on mayor malfeasance, reports that they’ve watched a video that shows mayor Ford smoking crack cocaine with Somali drug dealers. Star reporters Robyn Doolittle and Kevin Donovan were approached by a community organizer from Toronto’s Somali community, who was acting as a “broker” for the person who shot the video on a smartphone, a man who alleges that he has sold crack to the mayor previously.

For Americans, the Ford story calls up fond memories of Marion Barry, the Washington DC mayor who was videotaped freebasing cocaine by the FBI and the DC police. (Good news for mayor Ford – after serving a prison term, Barry returned to DC politics under the campaign slogan “He May Not Be Perfect, But He’s Perfect for D.C.”, and retook the mayorship four years after his arrest.) But, if anything, the Rob Ford story is crazier and more complex than the Barry scandal, at least from a journalistic perspective.

While Doolittle and Donovan of the Star have seen video, but when they were asked to pay a six figure sum for the recording, they refused. Their article states unambiguously: “The Star did not pay money and did not obtain a copy of the video.”

That’s not surprising. Paying sources for stories is a controversial practice. In the English-language press, it’s often called “checkbook journalism“, and it’s frowned on in elite US media (though it’s certainly happened through history), though quite common in tabloid media. In the UK, it’s significantly more common, and underpins much of the scandal around the behavior of Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers in the UK. US journalist Jack Schafer argues that there are practical, as well as ethical, reasons to avoid paying sources – you’ll cultivate sources who want to sell you bad information as well as good information.

Nick Denton and the freewheeling opportunists at Gawker Media don’t spend much time worrying about these niceties. Gawker’s tech site Gizmodo paid $5000 for a prototype of a next-generation iPhone, which made some headlines as the site may have paid money for stolen goods. But the attention didn’t damage Gawker, and they are now raising a set of new questions in offering to pay $200,000 for the Rob Ford video.

What’s interesting this time is how Gawker plans to pay for it.

Gawker editor John Cook published an article on Friday titled “We Are Raising $200,000 to Buy and Publish the Rob Ford Crack Tape”. Cook calls the campaign a “crackstarter”, a pun on Kickstarter, but the project is raising money on Indiegogo, perhaps because Kickstarter reviews proposals and rejects many of them, while Indiegogo maintains a more open platform.

The text associated with Gawker’s ask suggests that they might have, in passing, considered that there are some ethical issues involved with paying drug dealers $200,000 for a video recording. Gawker’s sophisticated and nuanced ethical explanations include this thoughtful passage:

Christ, That’s a Lot of Money.
Yes, it is. But they’ve got the video! And it’s not all about greed, though of course most of it is. The owners of this video fear for their safety, and want enough money to pay for a chance to get out of Toronto and set up in a new town. Their fear is not entirely unwarranted. Rob Ford is a powerful if buffoonish man, and he was wrapped up in a drug scene that purportedly involved many other prominent Toronto figures.

Rather than respond to this analysis, I’ll point you to Rosalind Robinson, who notes that the $200,000 Gawker proposes to pay drug dealers, is money that could go towards healing the city of Toronto, not harming it more. In a piece titled “Fuck You, Gawker“, she observes:

Gawker wants to write these criminals a cheque for more money than most of us can imagine having access to in our lifetime. And not a cheque of their money – of *yours*.

All you who bitch about taxes, who need public health care, who are on a waitlist to see a doctor, who work day in and day out, who work hard in crap jobs that don’t pay well – you, joe citizen, who have never broken a law in your life – they’re asking YOU to give this huge amount of money to a group of people who are a violent plague on my city, who risk the lives of both addicts and innocent bystanders on a regular basis.

Thus far, Gawker’s campaign has raised roughly a third of its goal, almost $67,000 at last check. With eight days to go, it’s possible that Gawker will raise the money to purchase the video. Whether they publish the video, or get robbed at gunpoint by their business partners, they’ll surely get a good story out of the experience.

Does raising money to purchase incriminating video represent a new milestone in crowdfunding? Is it a particularly ethically cloudy example of civic crowdfunding? Or just an attention grabbing stunt by Denton and crew?

Writing in Forbes, Maureen Henderson sees this as the latest example of the rich and powerful using crowdfunding to fund projects they could fund through other means. Much as Warner Bros. could have funded a new Veronica Mars movie without $5.7m raised online, Gawker could probably negotiate a deal with their sources to purchase the video at a price they could cover from online ad revenue, as nothing sells like a political train wreck.

What does the Crackstarter mean for online journalism and crowdfunding? When I began working at the Berkman Center ten years ago, John Palfrey offered a helpful rule of thumb for understanding how law worked in cyberspace: “If it’s illegal offline, it’s illegal online.” I’d suggest that the same applies in the realm of ethics: paying a source for a story is ethically suspect both offline and online.

But there’s a dimension to crowdfunding payments to a source that complicates matters. Not only has Gawker’s editorial board made the decision that it’s ethically permissible to pay for the Rob Ford video – so have 2,896 donors, who’ve given their own money to see the mayor inhale. It’s a reasonable guess that few are Rob Ford supporters. This crowdfunding campaign lets Ford opponents vote with their pocketbooks to increase the chances Ford will be forced to resign.

I predict Ford will resign before Gawker purchases and runs the video. But the implications of the campaign are still worth considering. When asked about the ethics of paying drug dealers for the video, Gawker can point to thousands of supporters who didn’t have ethical qualms about paying for the footage. And much as civic crowdfunding raises questions about whether only rich neighborhoods will fund new parks and civic infrastructure, crowdfunding to pay for videos is a trend that seems likely to favor high-visibility politicians with wealthy opponents over lower-attention scandals. Had the city of Bell, California needed to crowdfund evidence to indict city manager Robert Rizzo, it’s unlikely the poor, majority-Spanish speaking community would have ousted corrupt leaders.

More than one online commenter has asked whether Gawker will share revenue from pageviews with their donors if they are able to purchase the Ford video. I’m more curious whether the donors will share the credit and the blame if crowdfunding checkbook journalism becomes the next big thing.

What exactly is a MOOC? Like most interesting things in this world, the term avoids simple definition.

For instance, what constitutes a course? A particular body of knowledge to be delivered? Except maybe in the case of skill-based classes, like a writer's workshop. A start and end date? Except maybe in the case of self-paced, on-demand online courses. Interactions between students and instructors? Except maybe in the case of entirely computer-mediated courses or older correspondence courses. Certification or recognition of completion? Except in courses that don't offer them. A learning experience? That must be too broad, or sitting here reading this post would constitute a course.

If we can't even define exactly what a course is, how can we possibly hope to provide a clear sense of what constitutes a Massive Open Online Course?

One thing that people then do, in the ambiguous space left by our inadequate ability to precisely define, is to use analogies. We define things by comparing them to other things.

In popular discourse of MOOCs, two dominant analogies seem to have emerged in making sense of MOOCs: MOOCs as textbooks and MOOCs as courses. Consider the open letter to Harvard professor Michael Sandel published by the San Jose State University Philosophy Department. The letter explains why the philosophy department refuses to pilot Sandel's JusticeX course.

When trying to explain the threat that JusticeX poses to undergraduate education at San Jose State University and in public higher education more broadly, the philosophers describe JusticeX as a course: "When a university such as ours purchases a course from an outside vendor, the faculty cannot control the design or content of the course; therefore we cannot develop and teach content that fits with our overall curriculum and is based on both our highly developed and continuously renewed competence and our direct experience of our students' needs and abilities." Here the course is defined as whole and integral, an experience designed as a complete substitute, fixed in its boundaries and uneditable.

In other places, when explaining some of the inadequacies of MOOCs, the SJSU philosophers analogize JusticeX to a textbook: "In addition, purchasing a series of lectures does not provide anything over and above assigning a book to read." Of course, to call a MOOC, "just a book" defangs the entity in a double-edged way. If it's not much more useful than a book, then it shouldn't be much more threatening than a book. The MOOC as textbook analogy is what Sandel adopts in response to the open letter, "My goal is simply to make an educational resource freely available--a resource that faculty colleagues should be free to us in whole or in part, or not at all, as they see fit."

In pointing out this discrepancy, I'm not necessarily saying that the SJSU philosophers are being inconsistent. Reading between the lines, the fear is that JusticeX will be introduced by administrators as a textbook—modular, optional, supplementary and incomplete, but will later be used by administrators as a course—a complete substitute for the work of a faculty member and a fully acceptable learning experience for students.

Sandel also borrows from both analogies in his letter. Consider his conclusion: "The worry that the widespread use of online courses will damage departments in public universities facing budgetary pressures is a legitimate concern that deserves serious debate, at edX and throughout higher education. The last thing I want is for my online lectures to be used to undermine faculty colleagues at other institutions." When describing the looming threat, Sandel discusses "online courses." When shifting to discuss his own efforts, he returns to the less threatening "online lectures."

Should professors at Harvard or other elite institutions produce "talking textbooks?" The answer there seems to me to be very simple: an unqualified yes. Universities produce knowledge, and they should produce knowledge accessible broadly to the public.

Should professors at Harvard create collections of educational experiences that could be used as a substitute for courses offered at other institutions, at the risk of undermining faculty at other institutions? As Sandel notes, that is a more complicated question and worthy of further debate. (A good place to start this further debate is with a recent post by Harry Lewis, former Dean of Harvard College, on Harvard's ethical responsibilities here.) As these debates continue, it will be useful to track how people exploring this terrain frame the debate using analogies, metaphors, and other rhetorical tools.

As a final point, I should disclose here, that starting on June 3rd, I'll begin a position as the Richard L. Menschel HarvardX Research Fellow, working for HarvardX from Harvard's Office of the President and Provost. Certainly this appointment will shape my writing on the topic, though of course this space remains the preserve of my personal opinion. My hope, in both writing here and in accepting the position at Harvard, is to see if I can be of service in thinking about how emerging technologies can expand our collective capacity to create the kinds of rich, participatory, challenging, caring learning environments, similar to those that I have been very fortunate to enjoy in my own privileged life.

For regular updates, follow me on Twitter at @bjfr and for my publications, C.V., and online portfolio, visit EdTechResearcher.

- Justin Reich

Deviating from my usual discussions to cover two weeks of books in one post full of tweet length reviews. (Yes, they are all are under 140 characters. I checked.)

Rewire, Signal to Noise, Penny Arcade: Attack of the Bacon Robots, Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Edition, There Goes the Neighborhood

Rewire is Ethan Zuckerman’s forthcoming book - it’s great, go buy it. Love the focus on “digital cosmopolitans,” a phrase I will now be using.

Signal to Noise - quick, depressing graphic novel with text by Neil Gaiman. Beautiful, highly recommend - but will make you very sad.

If you like Penny Arcade, you would like “Attack of the Bacon Robots.” Lots of early strips. Best part is the color commentary.

Philip Pullman retells Brothers Grimm. Again, best part was the color commentary. Realized Sleeping Beauty is secretly about rape culture.

There Goes the Neighborhood: About applying exit/voice/loyalty to race/class dynamics in Chicago neighborhoods. Eye-opening, incredible.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, The Child Catchers, Smart Casual, Adulting, Cinderella Ate My Daughter

Aimee Bender’s prose in 24 Hour Book Club “Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake” is a bit clunky, but story is good. I cried so much. Too much.

Child Catchers is about international Christian adoption. Eye-opening, well-researched, and judging from Amazon reviews, controversial. 

Smart Casual covers modern restaurant culture, like death of Jacket Required. Repetitive, and uninspired, but lots of David Chang mentions!

Adulting is brilliant - a guide to being an adult, from thank you notes to checking out a rental apartment. Wish I’d read it sooner.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter is a book on “princess culture” but awkwardly full of misogyny and slut shaming. Peggy Orenstein, you disappoint.

Access might never be totally open or fully free, but there are such things as more open access and freer culture. I heed David Golumbia’s warning about leveraging (heh) corporate discourse. Publishing is indeed always public, in some sense of the word. And it is true, the old economic regime (e.g. Elsevier) is just being [...]

Peter Suber points out that FaceBook, Yahoo, Elsevier and Yahoo have joined the NetChoice.org lobby that has issued a clarion call against open access that blurs the line between lies and gibberish. Peter blows the statements apart, leaving nothing but clean air and a whiff of ozone.

NetChoice.org is publicizing its monthly “iAWFUL” (Internet advocates watchlist for ugly laws) list of policies that it doesn’t like. The list has little to do with advocating for the Internet, and everything to do with supporting the interests of Internet businesses (“committed to tearing down barriers to e-commerce”). For example, this month’s iAWFUL list includes data breach notification bills and a CT bill that “would force publishers to sell digital books at ‘reasonable” prices to state libraries.” That’s in addition to opposing actions (including the recent epochal White House Memorandum) that support public access to research — often research that the public has paid for. But they have it all bollixed up.

What makes it more distressing, then, is that reputable journals, including Computerworld, CIO and PC World, are running NetChoice’s iAWFUL PR puffery.

Thankfully, Peter Suber is on the case.

From "When Governments Go Bad":

This scandal arises from a larger cultural virus: leakaphobia. Every administration centralizes power more tightly than the one before and is more paranoid about leaks than the one before. Every administration successively narrows the circle of debate, forsaking wide deliberation for the sake of reducing leaks (except the politically useful ones). Why do they do this? Because people who go into government not only have a tendency to want to control other people but also to control information.

…

People can only have faith in a government that self-restrains, and there’s little evidence of that now.

I have no idea why I wanted to post that. It must have reminded me of something else, but I can't quite put my finger on what.

After reading yesterday's post about MOOCs, a colleague asked me why I preferred BY-SA licensing to BY-NC-SA licensing. Now that looks like a technical question about lawyerly alphabet soup, but it is actually a basic question about what HarvardX is trying to accomplish. The faculty should be discussing the nature of the HarvardX intellectual property policy, and if we don't, we'll have another explosion like the one that happened this year when Harvard unwisely sent around detailed proposed revisions to its IP policies and then had to pull them back for reconsideration after a faculty explosion.

To begin with, we need some consensus on what we are trying to accomplish with HarvardX and with our membership in EdX. I think it is fair to assume that among our goals are (1) to extend our educational reach, that is, to spread learning to more of the world; and (2) to cover our costs and to make a profit that can be used to support our traditional educational, research, and scholarly functions. Harvard has articulated other goals, such as to develop tools, and data on teaching and learning that can improve undergraduate education, but I want to focus on the first two, which I don't think are in any way inconsistent with the others.

Now I am not sure some professors even realize that (2) is a goal. Some professors are diffident about any talk of "business models" and so on, but also bemoan the budgetary cutbacks they have experienced to their educational and scholarly efforts. HarvardX presents a potential new revenue source. Of course there are alternatives. Maybe some alum would want to pay the full cost of HarvardX and we would not have to worry about receiving revenues from it. Maybe Harvard could save some money elsewhere and use it to pay for HarvardX. Realistically, I think it makes more sense to try to get HarvardX to pay for itself and more, but that is an assumption. After all, Harvard could in theory decide that undergraduate tuitions should subsidize HarvardX in the long run, and not the other way around. So while I want to mark (2) as an explicit assumption which has not been explicitly stated as far as I know, I hope it will not be controversial.

And of course precisely what policies might work the best to achieve both goals (1) and (2) also depend on how big a profit, per (2), Harvard wants to generate from HarvardX. It's very unclear, to me at least, whether more revenue would come from trying to get a little bit of money from a lot of people or a lot of money from a few people. That is not the only consideration; the latter would, of course, be in tension with goal (1). Tradeoffs everywhere, and doubtless different MOOC providers are going to be experimenting with different approaches.

Now to the question of Creative Commons licenses. A BY-SA license lets other parties use the materials as long as they are attributed to the creator (Harvard in the case of a MOOC) and as long as the derivative materials carry exactly the same BY-SA license. This assures proper credit is given where it is due, and encourages others to add to the "creative commons," the wealth of publicly available raw materials that others can use to construct other creative works.

Now relaxing copyright in this way, it may be argued, carries some risks. Some professors might lose their jobs, the fear voiced by the philosophers at San Jose State University. That is an interesting moral question related to the frictionless information universe, about which I would love to hear Professor Sandel expound a bit more. But that is not today's topic.

Once we make our materials openly available, someone could do something with our creation that we don't like, and we would have surrendered our right of disapproval. True, that is part of the loss of control that comes with greater openness. But even without surrendering any of our copyrights, we are not immune against fair use by others, including harsh criticism and parody. Movie and book reviewers do not need studio or author permission to quote from a work in the process of ridiculing it. We should have enough confidence in the quality of our works to think that they will be used more for good than for harm if we relax control of them.

Another objection is that someone else might make money from some derivative of our works. That may be seen as somehow morally offensive: if anybody is going to make money from our works, goes our instinct, it should be us. That objection is addressed by a separate Creative Commons license, BY-NC-SA, that adds the following "noncommercial" clause:

You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.

Why not use this license instead?

One problem with this language is that it is not clear what exactly it excludes. If materials under such a license get used by the profitable Extension School of Podunk University, is that disallowed, or is it allowed because Podunk U is a nonprofit even if its Extension School tries to turn a profit to be used by other programs of the university?

But another problem with the "NC" clause is that it is not clear why, morally, we should care whether the derivative use is commercial or not. Just to take two extreme examples: Would it really be morally good for our materials to be used by Ohio State University, whose president receives a salary of $1.9 million, plus use of a private jet and other amenities, but morally bad for our materials to be used by a small-scale Mongolian entrepreneur trying to offer a technical education to impoverished Mongolians by creating a private technical institute that charges modest tuitions and turns a small profit?

In fact, the whole element of moral indignation that leads to resistance of the simple BY-SA license is introducing into American copyright an element of "moral rights" that is part of the European, but not American, copyright tradition. Under the US Constitution, the purpose of copyright is not to guard the moral rights of the creator, but "To Promote the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts." And that, surely, should be Harvard's objective, per (1) above, in whatever license it cuts for use of its MOOCs.

Under a simple BY-SA license, any for-profit that made a derivative work using Harvard materials would have to acknowledge that they came from Harvard (but then wouldn't most students prefer to get the materials from their original source?), and would also have to make their modifications and enhancements available to others, commercial or noncommercial, on the same basis. I doubt that for-profits would see taking Harvard materials as a viable business model on those terms. But if one did, and somehow produced educational products that were so superior to ours and could make them available so much more cheaply that it could overcome the natural market resistance to picking Unknown Corp's products over Harvard's, well, more power to them. We shouldn't be using legal barriers to win a game we can't win on the merits.

I expect that a lot of lawyerly thought has already gone into the license terms and business models. I have no real expectation that Harvard will go with a BY-SA license; probably it will come up with its own license terms. But the faculty here and elsewhere are only now coming to grips with the force of the MOOC tsunami, as I suggested in yesterday's post. Since they are not merely actors in this drama but the actual agents of change, they should be engaged in a realistic conversation about the program's means and ends, and what they think about hypotheticals like the ones I have posed.

The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects. To subscribe, click here. Islawmix calls for better fact checking, less sensationalism re: Muslims in the news You have most probably heard by now that three Emirati men were allegedly thrown out of a cultural Janadriyah Festival by the Saudi religious police (pl. mutawaeen) for “being too handsome.” Most reports, however, have claimed the three men were actually deported from the Kingdom, itself, for their ‘seductive' lure that was apparently going to send the attending women into an incontrollable hormonal flux. Fementertainment blog, Jezebel, was amongst the first to reveal the identity of one of the alleged Emirati men, Omar Borkan Al Gala – a photographer, model, actor and poet. The internet went into self-fanning mode as several images of the young man went viral and thousands clamored to follow him on social media websites. Unfortunately, no one in the English press bothered to actually fact check the story. From Islawmix, "The Man Too Handsome for Saudi Arabia Who Wasn’t" About Islawmix | @islawmix Thanks, @oso, for a thorough, fair and helpfully critical review of Rewire. http://t.co/7UvoDjMXre >—Ethan Zuckerman (@ethanz) Ethan Zuckerman critiques Charlie Mann's Atlantic story on energy, oil, and methane hydrate Charles Mann offers a big story in the latest issue of the Atlantic. It’s 11,000 words, and it’s based around an audacious premise: the end of energy scarcity. The peg for the story is Japan’s ongoing research on methane hydrate, an amalgam of natural gas trapped in water ice that occurs in oceans around the world. If methane hydrate can be harvested, Mann tell us, the global supply of hydrocarbon fuels are virtually unlimited. This, he argues, would have massive geopolitical and strategic implications, as the history of the twentieth century can be read in part through the lens of wealthy nations without oil seeking the black stuff in less developed lands. New forms of power might center on who can extract ice that burns like natural gas. From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post, "Big stories and little details: what Charles Mann misses" About Ethan | @ethanz Andrés Monroy-Hernández and Mako Hill explore generativity and originality in remixing Remixing — the reworking and recombination of existing creative artifacts — represents a widespread, important, and controversial form of social creativity online. Proponents of remix culture often speak of remixing in terms of rich ecosystems where creative works are novel and highly generative, however, examples like this can be difficult to find. Although there is a steady stream of media being shared freely on the web, only a tiny fraction of these projects are remixed even once. On top of this, many remixes are not very different from the works they are built upon. Why is some content more attractive to remixers? Why are some projects remixed in deeper and more transformative ways? From Andrés Monroy-Hernández's blog post (co-written with Mako Hill), "The Remixing Dilemma: The Trade-Off Between Generativity and Originality" About Andrés | @andresmh About Mako | @makoshark For those who've asked, you can download a straight PDF of my thesis on activist DDOS actions here: http://bit.ly/12EB0OC —Molly Sauter (@OddLetters) Urs Gasser appointed Professor of Practice Harvard Law School has announced the appointment of Urs Gasser LL.M. ’03, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, as a Professor of Practice. The professorships of practice at Harvard Law School are given to outstanding individuals whose teaching is informed by extensive expertise from the worlds of law practice, the judiciary, policy and governance. From Harvard Law School, "Gasser appointed professor of practice" About Urs | @ugasser Chinese Web Floods White House with Petitions Recently, an unsolved case of poisoning of a 19-year college student in 1994 resurfaced in the Chinese social media sphere. It not only grabbed the wide attention of Chinese netizens, but also triggered a wave of petitions to the White House. From Gloria Wong's blog post for Global Voices, "Chinese Web Floods White House with Petitions" About Global Voices Online | @globalvoices

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Dados do IBGE, vindos da última PNAD [a pesquisa nacional por amostra de domicílio] mostram que a unidade da federação onde o acesso à internet cresceu menos, entre 2005 e 2011, foi o distrito federal, quase exatos 100%. e não podia ser muito mais, pois em 2005 41,1% das pessoas já  estavam na rede, lá. se bem que o IBGE considera “em rede” quem usou a internet nos últimos 3 meses. não é bem isso que “estar em rede” quer dizer, mas esta é a definição, e vamos com ela. a evolução dos estados e do distrito federal está no gráfico abaixo. compare.

quem mais cresceu em uso foi alagoas, até porque sua situação, em 2005, não era nada boa. os estados do nordeste estão no fim da fila, com o maranhão lá no fim. é muita coisa pra fazer, ainda. é hora, também, do IBGE mudar a definição de acesso à internet: uma vez, nos últimos tres meses, é pouco: na próxima pesquisa, menos do que uma vez por semana, talvez por dia… seria fora da rede. e fora da rede está, pelo critério atual, mais da metade da população. no norte e nordeste, 2/3 estão na categoria “sem rede”. olhe o gráfico, agora mostrando a evolução entre os anos de 2005 e 2011.

idosos, categoria na qual me incluo, pois o IBGE só fragmentou idades até chegar em 50 anos ou mais na tabela abaixo, não estão nada bem na foto. menos de 20% desta faixa de idade está em rede, com mais de 4/5 desconectados. não só eles não sabem o que estão perdendo [ou sabem?] mas a rede poderia ser fundamental para suas aspirações, propósitos e qualidade de vida.

há um bocado de divisões na rede, como você poderá ver no texto completo do IBGE, que está neste link. mas uma, em especial, impressiona: a que separa, de forma dramática, o uso da rede por anos de estudo. a faixa de menos de 4 anos de educação formal tem só 1/4 de penetração na rede comparada à média, e menos de 1/7 quando comparada aos que têm 15 ou mais anos de estudo. veja a imagem.

considerando que 96.2% dos estudantes com 10 anos ou mais estavam na rede em 2011 [ainda pelo critério do IBGE] há muitas explicações para a separação dos que estão fora da rede e nela, quando se considera os anos de educação a menos. o começo da história passa pela constatação de que, em média, menos educação leva a menor poder aquisitivo [falta de meios para estar na rede], associado à falta de condições básicas para participar da web de forma cidadã, isto é, na capacidade de ler, entender, assumir uma posição, criticar, escrever, participar dos processos. o danado é que ainda há 41% de jovens brasileiros acreditando que estudar além do ensino médio não melhora sua empregabilidade, como mostra pesquisa recente da mcKinsey, neste link. no mesmo estudo, 48% dos empregadores brasileiros diz que a falta de habilidades para o trabalho pretendido é  a principal razão por trás de vagas abertas e não preenchidas. veja o gráfico…

como é  que o problema, que é grande, é  transformado em oportunidade? como quase todos os alunos estão na rede, pelo critério atual, que tal mudar o critério, para os alunos, todos, para “em rede” ser pelo menos uma hora de rede, por dia, e levar todo mundo pra estudar em grupo, em rede social, na rede?… não se trata de de estudar muito tempo, primeiro, para entrar e estar na rede competentemente depois. isso é o passado, explica o estado atual do gráfico 6 do IBGE, lá em cima.  não se trata de discutir se internet vem antes ou depois da educação. nós já temos evidências suficientes para saber que vem –ou deveria vir- com educação. o que a gente precisa, agora, é criar oportunidades de aprendizado em rede pra um monte de gente, todo mundo, em todas as escolas, jardim à universidade. educado com, na e em rede, este povo todo jamais sairá de lá. e aí o mundo vai mudar. de vez.

vai levar tempo? vai. mudar estruturas sociais como a educacional, em países do tamanho e complexidade do brasil, partindo do estado de coisas representado pelo resultado da PNAD para internet, exige propósito, determinação, investimento, tempo e, com ele, muita paciência. mas os resultados virão. é só começar. é hora.

There is a drive-by quote from me in Nathan Heller's good New Yorker article about Massive Open Online Courses. Reading the story reminds me how hard this kind of writing is -- I spent a long time with Heller, and tried to sell him on the idea of CS20 as an anti-MOOC, but our conversation got reduced to one line about students sleeping through class.

It is interesting to see the MOOC euphoria being replaced by MOOC dread. The best articulation of the worries is that of Prof. Bob Meister of the UC Santa Cruz, after the University's decision to import Justice, Michael Sandel's MOOC course on moral philosophy. It is now becoming apparent, here at Harvard and elsewhere, what is implied when it is said that the Internet will result in disruptive change to higher education. Universities facing crushing budgetary cuts will try to save money. There is no question that the learning experience will change at places like the UC Santa Cruz; the only question is how. The members of the philosophy department do not want to be Prof. Sandel's remote teaching assistants, and Prof. Sandel does not want to be an agent of downsizing philosophy departments elsewhere. Fine, but the UC governors also have the option of not teaching philosophy at all, or drastically consolidating departments, as Rick Scott proposed for anthropology departments in Florida.

So what is Harvard's responsibility in all this? It is a very, very tricky question.

Quite likely the world of MOOCs and other Internet-enabled higher education will recapitulate the history of the Internet. Once information transmission and storage become free, goods that are free or nearly so will undercut the revenue model for information institutions that have been crucial to democratic societies. Nobody involved in the development of the Internet wanted to destroy the newspaper industry, but it is hard to see what they could have done to prevent the havoc that has resulted from the free flow of information even if they had seen coming everything that has happened. -- short of building into the Internet architecture a set of locks and chains that would have been devastating to innovation and entrepreneurship.

In the case of MOOCs (or other ways of chunking online instruction), Harvard could impose burdensome licensing rules in an effort to protect the scholarly professionals elsewhere. (Just as the Wall Street Journal is now Online but hardly Open.) But of course UC would then utilize someone else's product, resulting in lower quality instruction at UC, perhaps at a higher price. Would we at Harvard then sleep better, knowing that if any philosophers had been laid off in California, it was not because of OUR MOOC?

And then there is the fact that in Computer Science, there is no oversupply of academic scholars nor undersupply of teaching jobs. The economic impact of providing CS50X on loose licensing terms would seem to be a huge social win for the world. Perhaps different subjects could be treated differently?

My personal preference would be for Harvard's courses to remain as open as possible, with licensing terms as relaxed as possible, on the theory that we should produce the best materials we can, try to recover our costs and a bit more, but not prevent others who can be even more creative that us from utilizing what we have to offer. Personally I like the idea of a pure Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. I am convinced Harvard could do fine financially on that model and could maximize its impact on the world. (There is as much chance of that happening as of a snowball surviving hell, but that can be for another day.)

In any case, there is no doubt the train is leaving the station. Yale signed onto Coursera today, and Georgia Tech announced an entire Massive Open Online Masters Degree program (hence my MOOD acronym in the title). Which of these institutions will prove to be contestants in a race to the bottom? I don't know, but everybody is going to have to be a lot more candid with each other. Universities should be clear about their revenue ambitions (just to cover costs, or if more than that, to plow the profits into what?). And the faculty are going to have to come to grips with the consequences, good and bad, of openness, and decide whether it really is more noble to be restrictive with its intellectual property than to risk any adverse consequences of sharing its educational creations with a generous and liberal spirit.

I've just finished up the final class in my semester long course for MIT undergraduates in the Scheller Teacher Education program. These students were an absolute delight to teach. They observed classes all semester and blogged about the experience, and while I try to finish grading their papers, I'll use some of their technology-related posts in this space. Here, student Christina Lalani describes her perspectives on the use of an interactive whiteboards in one classroom that she observed:

Today I want to address the use of technology in this class. In particular, my focus will be on the use of SMART Boards in comparison to regular whiteboards/chalkboards. The cost of a SMART Board ranges but this article describes an individual's experience with purchasing a SMART Board: http://www.modernchalkboard.com/article-cost.html Although the estimation of $5,000 may be on the higher end (especially because schools usually receive discounts for bulk purchase), let's estimate around $3,000 for a SMART Board with installation and accessories.

Here are some of the advantages I saw in the SMART Board focusing only on the lesson taught last Thursday:

1) Saving Time: Having the practice problems already typed up and available at the click of a button saved the teachers classroom time and allowed a greater focus of time on problem solving. However, it's hard to say how much of a time-saver this was because time was also lost as the teachers attempted to switch between pages, make changes, etc. Although more training could probably help with any confusion using the technology, more training requires more time and more money.

2) Switching between pages: The ability to switch between pages and come back to topics discussed earlier that day or earlier in the week is really useful in the classroom. For example, Thursday's lesson was focused on graphing parabolas. Ms. Mathews was able to flip back to a practice problem from earlier in the week on finding the axis of symmetry and vertex and then build on that problem to lead into the new topic. This ability is useful in maintaining an underlying focus and connecting topics.

3) Sharing Interactive Media: Because the focus of the lesson was on graphing parabolas, Mr. Johnson pulled up an interactive image of the classroom calculators and was able to show students how to use their calculators for specific tasks related to graphing. This was probably more effective than explaining purely in words with no visual, especially for students who are more visual learners.

Although these three reasons are advantages when compared to a regular whiteboard, the reality is these three things can all be achieved by the "overhead projectors" that most teachers still have in the classroom. Writing practice problems on transparency sheets ahead of time would save time in the classroom and allow the teachers to return to topics later on; putting the calculator on the projector would allow students to visually see how to graph different parabolas. "Overhead projectors" are nowhere near as fancy or high tech but keeping in mind the needs of this math classroom, they could likely have a similar effect.

That's not to say the SMART Board is useless entirely. There are definitely classrooms in which the unique features of the SMART Board, such as its ability to receive input from multiple computers or its features catered toward collaborative work, can contribute substantially to learning. It's just hard to say that this is one of them.

For regular updates, follow me on Twitter at @bjfr and for my publications, C.V., and online portfolio, visit EdTechResearcher.

- Justin Reich

I remember the first time I saw my son’s name on his gravestone. I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach.

This was the name we had chosen for a baby, a name we expected to say as we called him to dinner, cheered him at soccer games or yelled at him for breaking curfew. We expected to see it on Christmas cards, report cards or a wedding invitation. We did not expect to see it on a gravestone.

Our names are so important, so precious to us. Every parent has a story of how they chose their child’s name; from the moment they are born, the name becomes part of them—it becomes them.

I think that’s why, if we lose our child, the name has such power over us.

Every year, Boston Children’s holds a memorial service for our patients who have died. It’s called “A Time to Remember,” and it’s really lovely: there are prayers, poems, speeches and songs. And then the name of each child who has died is said out loud as a flower is laid in a basket. Some of the names are said by family members, some are read by doctors as hospital staff lays flowers in the basket. But each name is said out loud.

It’s overwhelming. And beautiful.

This year, I asked a family if I could say their daughter’s name. They aren’t going to be there. Yes, said the father, you can. So I will say her name and remember her smile, a smile that won everyone’s heart.

That’s the thing: names are full of memories. We say a name and we remember the child learning to say it, we remember calling it across a playground, singing it in a song, writing it on forms, seeing it scrawled across a card. We hear a name and we are filled with stories, with moments that made us happy, angry, frustrated, sad, bewildered, humbled, awed. We hear a name and the images and smells and sounds come rushing in.

When a child dies, we don’t say the name much anymore. Which is understandable—they aren’t there to call to, and it can be painful. But that’s why events like the memorial service are so crucial: we need to say those names, and hear them.

And we need to say them and hear them together. Because that’s how we remember together. That’s how we honor these lives and all they gave us. That’s how we let each other know that the connections between us matter, and that we will never forget.

To my colleagues: please come. Hear the names. See the families. It makes a difference—for them, and for you.

A Time to Remember will be held on May22, at the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School, 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur. The doors open at 6 p.m., with the service from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., and reception immediately following. All are welcome.

 

Google is at the top of its game at I/O, but its biggest challenge is hubris – and that customers will begin to fear its power

Google is at the top of its game. It presides over, if not ruling outright, enormous swaths of modern life. Its market value has never been higher, and keeps heading north. As the company is demonstrating this week at its annual conference for developers, it innovates and experiments at a breathtaking rate. And it exudes an abiding confidence that the best is yet to come.

If all that doesn't have Google CEO Larry Page and his colleagues absolutely terrified, they're not nearly as smart as I think they are.

I write this from Google I/O, where thousands of engineers and hundreds of journalists have gathered to experience the latest and in some ways greatest advances in modern computing and communications. This year hasn't featured a gaudy product announcement like the 2012 first look – via parachute drop from the skies above San Francisco's downtown convention center – at the (still) upcoming Google Glass heads-up computing platform.

But the breadth and depth of Google's current initiatives is more than impressive. There are far too many to list, but consider Google Maps, which is evolving into a deep and rich offering that leverages the company's other data and services, especially search, and moves it well beyond what once was simply a map. Look something up and you can get a host of information about it, including what people you know from the Google+ social network have posted. Get directions as you drive, and based on real-time information you'll be told of alternate routes if traffic gets too heavy. (That feature has been in the competing Waze map product, and I now expect Waze to be bought by Facebook, Microsoft or Apple as a result of Google's move).

Maps is part of a growing array of Google services that grow more and more personal – adjusted for you and your habits – every day. The powerful integration of Maps and other Google services is testament to the company's core infrastructure: unimaginably vast server farms, industry-leading software development and intra-Google communications capabilities that translate to better and better results for users. It's hard to see how competitors can catch up in some cases, Maps being a key case.

No wonder there's such visible confidence among the employees, and delight among the outside developers who have cast at least part of their lot with Google. It's fine to be self-assured. But when that morphs into hubris, danger looms – and Google, from the outside, looks perilously close to that point today.

The company's engineering culture assumes it will solve problems; that data is king; and that anyone with common sense will use the company's solutions. It's true enough, as Google notes, that its search dominance is always one click away from melting. Competition does exist. But the company's culture has has been a factor in some bad ideas and worse moves, and I suspect it could be real trouble down the road.

There have been several privacy mini-debacles that Google appeared to shrug off a little too cavalierly, for example, and as its influence expands in the markets it already dominates, there's every potential for a situation that will scare everyone, not just privacy and policy wonks.

More worrisome, at least to me, is Google's key role as a re-centralizer of data and services. The internet was, from the beginning, all about decentralizing what we do – moving innovation and, ultimately, control to the edges of networks. Google and others are bringing control back to the center in ways that we all may come to regret some day.

I don't see Google's current leaders as the kind of people who would use their potential (and real) power to clamp down to the extent that they could, but I have no reason to believe their successors won't. I don't see what the company is doing now to prevent such an outcome. If I believe it's happening, I'll do my best to extricate myself from its ecosystem; I'll hope I'm one of millions who will do so, and that our combined acts have the kind of financial impact that punishes bad behavior.

That said, Larry Page's appearance at the end of the long, long keynote on Wednesday was reassuring in key ways. He chided the tech industry for its zero-sum mentality, even as his colleagues fired shot after shot across the bow of competitors earlier in the morning, and called for more cooperation to improve the ecosystem as a whole. Yes, there was an element of hypocrisy, but Page seemed to mean it.

Yet what stuck with me at the end of the keynote was a posting – on another worryingly centralized technology platform, Twitter – by an employee for another Silicon Valley "cloud" technology company that inevitably must see Google as a dangerous competitor. She wrote,

OK Google, please be a benevolent overlord.

— Ashley Mayer (@ashleymayer) May 15, 2013

Max Klein's recent posting on Sex Ratios in Wikidata, Wikipedias, and VIAF as well as work by Nathan Matias prompted me to check if I ever published my code behind the Wikipedia vs Britannica gender comparison. Apparently I did not. However, you can now see (and use) the two little functions I used to guess the gender of a biographical subjects: guess_gender_name and guess_gender_pronoun.

Berkman Events Newsletter Template

Upcoming Events / Digital Media May 15th, 2013

berkman luncheon series/book launch Technologies of Choice? – ICTs, development and the capabilities approach Tuesday, May 28, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor. This event will be webcast live. ICT for development (ICT4D) scholars claim that the internet, radio and mobile phones can support development. Yet the dominant paradigm of development as economic growth is too limiting to understand the full potential of these technologies. One key rival to such econocentric understandings is Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach to development – focusing on a pluralistic understanding of people’s values and the lives they want to lead. In her book, Technologies of Choice? (MIT Press 2013), Dorothea Kleine translates Sen’s approach into policy analysis and ethnographic work on technology adaptation. She shows how technologies are not neutral, but imbued with values that may or may not coincide with the values of users. The case study analyses Chile’s pioneering ICT policies in the areas of public access, digital literacy, and online procurement and the sobering reality of one of the most marginalised communities in the country where these policies play out. The book shows how both neoliberal and egalitarian ideologies are written into technologies as they permeate the everyday lives and livelihoods of women and men in the town. Technologies of Choice? examines the relationship between ICTs, choice, and development. It argues for a people-centred view of development that has individual and collective choice at its heart. Discussant: Dr Nancy Hafkin (formerly UN Economic Commission for Africa) Dorothea Kleine is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography and Director of the interdisciplinary ICT4D Centre at Royal Holloway, University of London. RSVP Required. more information on our website> video/audio Justin Reich on Personalized Learning, Backpacks Full of Cash, Rockstar Teachers, and MOOC Madness For decades, policymakers and futurists have heralded digital tools as essential to the the future of learning. Has the moment of disruptive transformational revolution finally arrived? If we are at a watershed moment, what futures are available to us? Justin Reich -- visiting lecturer at MIT, Berkman fellow, and educational researcher -- discusses the intersection of technology, free-market ideology, and media hype in U.S. education reform. video/audio on our website>

Other Events of Note Events that may be of interest to the Berkman community: 5/16-17: Legal Frontiers in Digital Media (Stanford University) 5/16-17: Governing Algorithms Conference (NYU) 5/20: Social Media for Nonprofits (MS NERD Cambridge) 5/23: ICT, Law, and Innovation: Recent Developments, Challenges, and Lessons Learned (Istanbul Bilgi University) 6/6-7: Personal Democracy Forum 2013 (NYC) 6/11: Start-Up City: Building Boston’s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem (Rappaport Institute) 6/16-18: ODR2013 (Montreal) 8/7-11: Wikimania 2013 (Hong Kong)

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to the Berkman Center's Weekly Events Newsletter. Sign up to receive this newsletter if this email was forwarded to you. To manage your subscription preferences, please click here. Connect & get involved: Jobs, internships, and more 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.

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University was founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. For more information, visit http://cyber.law.harvard.edu.

It’s a wonderful time of year for radio! Today, the 2013 Third Coast Festival / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition opened-up shop for submissions.

Radio makers from far and wide will submit their very best audio to the competition by July 10, with an early (discounted price!) deadline of June 19. The highly experienced panel of judges will base their selections on story choice, technical quality, editorial integrity, creativity, writing and use of sound.

From the competition website:

The Third Coast / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition seeks the best audio work produced worldwide in the following categories:

Best Documentary (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Directors’ Choice, Honorable Mention), Best New Artist, Radio Impact, and Best News Feature

Winners will celebrated at Third Coast Awards Ceremony on October 20 in Chicago. Their winning stories will be featured in Best of the Best: The 2013 Third Coast Festival Broadcast, distributed to public radio stations nationwide by the Public Radio Exchange (PRX) this Fall.

Need some inspiration? Curious about what wins? Check out this playlist of past winners on PRX.

Or, listen to the last year’s Best of the Best: The 2012 Third Coast Festival Broadcast:

I use RSS feeds to keep up with academic journals. Because of an undocumented and unexpected feature (bug?) in my (otherwise wonderful) free software newsreader NewBlur, many articles published over the last year were marked as having been read before I saw them.

Over the last week, I caught up. I spent hours going through abstracts and downloading papers that looked interesting or relevant to my research. Because I did this for hundreds of articles, it gave me an unusual opportunity to reflect on my journal reading practices in a systematic way.

On a number of occasions, there were potentially interesting articles in non-open access journals that neither MIT nor Harvard subscribes to and that were otherwise not accessible to me. In several cases where the research was obviously important to my work, I made an interlibrary request, emailed the papers’ authors for copies, or tracked down a colleague at an institution with access.

Of course, articles that look potentially interesting from the title and abstract often end up being less relevant or well executed on closer inspection. I tend to cast a wide net, skim many articles, and put them aside when it’s clear that the study is not for me. This week, I downloaded many of these possibly relevant papers to, at least, give a skim. But only if I could download them easily. On three or four occasions, I found inaccessible articles at this margin of relevance. In these cases, I did not bother trying to track down the articles.

Of course, what appear to be marginally relevant articles sometimes end up being a great match for my research and I will end up citing and building on the work. I found several suprisingly interesting papers last week. The articles that were locked up have no chance at this.

When people suggest that open access hinders the spread of scholarship, a common retort is that the people who need the work have or can finagle access. For the papers we know we need, this might be true. As someone with access to two of the most well endowed libraries in academia who routinely requests otherwise inaccessible articles through several channels, I would have told you, a week ago, that locked-down journals were unlikely to keep me from citing anybody.

So it was interesting watching myself do a personal cost calculation in a way that sidelined published scholarship — and that open access publishing would have prevented. At the margin of relevance to ones research, open access may make a big difference.

I love maps — something that became clear to me when I was looking at the tag cloud of my bookmarks a few years back. One of my favorite blogs (now a book) is Frank Jabobs’ Strange Maps.

So it’s no coincidence that a number of my favorite MIT Mystery Hunt puzzles are map based. Trying to connect the two worlds, I sent Jacobs a write-up of the hunt and of a particularly strange sound-based map puzzle called White Noise that I worked with Don Armstrong to solve in the 2006 hunt. While I wasn’t paying attention, Jacobs did a very nice writeup of my writeup of the puzzle for Strange Maps!

“no momento em que você instala um programa, o ambiente muda”. a frase, de meir lehman, que trabalhou por anos na IBM e depois foi professor do imperial college [neste texto] anuncia que software que funciona no mundo real [ou seja, que é  produzido por um time, para resolver problemas de instituições e usuários reais… e “roda” em ambientes reais] nunca será especificado de forma definitiva, porque 1] é impossível entender, ou prever, toda a complexidade do ambiente em que o software será usado e 2] porque, quando o software entrar no ambiente de uso… o ambiente será modificado pelo software. parada dura. lehman seguiu sua frase famosa com outras duas: “evolução é uma propriedade essencial de software no mundo real” porque, claro, “à medida que as necessidades mudam, o critério de satisfação  tem que mudar”. as leis de lehman sobre evolução de software guiaram o desenvolvimento de sistemas em negócios de classe mundial durante quase 30 anos, pois enunciadas em 1974, quando nem se fazia ideia do que viria a ser a internet [apesar dela já existir desde 1969].

as leis de lehman falam de 1] mudança contínua e diminuição da satisfação dos clientes com um sistema que já foi muito bom, mas num passado distante; 2] de aumento constante de complexidade do software, a menos que haja estratégia e investimento para, deliberadamente, reduzi-la; … 6] de crescimento constante do tamanho do software, para atender demandas de usuários por mais funcionalidade e 7] a queda continuada de qualidade percebida, a menos que a manutenção do desenho do sistema seja permanente e conforme as mudanças em suas restrições operacionais.

em suma, lehman diz que software quase nunca é apropriado para fazer o que dele é demandado e, ainda por cima, fica velho. e rápido. e a história não para por aí. o software tratados pelas leis de lehman, os sistemas corporativos, são um problema clássico de engenharia de software: demandam altos investimentos, muito tempo e têm alto risco de dar errado. e há dados globais sobre o tal “dar errado”, resultante de estudos realizados do standish group desde 1994, um resumo gráfico dos quais se pode ver abaixo [deste link, com mais detalhes lá].

leia a imagem assim: nos últimos 15 anos, menos de 1/3 dos projetos de software empresariais são considerados sucessos indiscutíveis. e outros 1/5, em média, nos últimos 10 anos, fracassaram redondamente. o resto, perto da metade em toda a história da análise, teve resultado discutível. esta análise não é  unânime, há  quem duvide de sua validade para todos os tipos de projetos [veja este e este links, por exemplo] e há quem afirme que a taxa de sucesso está acima de 50% [com amostra restrita, no entanto]. imagine que seja este o caso, o que quase dobraria a taxa de sucesso de projetos de software empresariais na última década e meia. isso quer dizer que metade dos projetos de software… fracassa, total ou parcialmente.

e alguns dos fracassos são retumbantes, como foi o caso da modernização de um sistema de logística da força aérea americana, claramente um “sistema de lehman”: a USAF contratou duas das maiores companhias globais de software para adaptar seu sistema de ERP [ou planejamento de recursos organizacionais] às normas de auditoria do congresso dos EUA que vigoram a partir de 2017. o projeto começou em 2006, com um contrato de US$628 milhões. e partia do princípio big bang, ou de refazer a operação de logística da força aérea, envolvendo 250.000 pessoas, a partir do zero. pense no problema. seis anos e US$1.3 bilhões de gastos depois, o projeto foi cancelado no fim de 2012, quando se descobriu que seriam necessários mais US$1 bilhão [no mínimo] e outros oito anos de trabalho, para que se tivesse apenas um quarto das funcionalidades desenhadas em 2006. as referências para a malfadada aventura estão neste, neste e neste links.

fracassos deste porte eram ainda mais comuns nas décadas de 80 e 90 d0 século passado. mas os processos de desenvolvimento de software evoluíram, a partir de um modelo de capacidade e maturidade criado na metade da década de 80 sob a liderança de watts humphrey, seguido pelo movimento ágil, que advoga o desenvolvimento iterativo e incremental de software e, entre outros princípios, o planejamento adaptativo. a gente já viu isso antes, nas frases e leis de lehman; e watts humphrey dizia que o sucesso de um projeto de software é definido lá no seu começo, com um plano preciso. como ele sabia da impossibilidade de ter um, dizia que se não for possível um plano detalhado, que se planeje frequentemente. foi isso, parece, que a USAF e seus contratados não fizeram… e deu no que deu.

dos primeiros programas até a internet, software era feito para computadores. e o primeiro software em um negócio entrou no ar há 62 anos [para calcular o valor de padarias… LEO, na j. lyons & co.] e ficava lá atrás do balcão, num centro de processamento de dados. aliás, o balcão pode ser usado como um referencial para contar a história [e o futuro] dos computadores [e da informática] nos negócios.

pra gente escrever, agora, uma muito pequena história [e futuro] da informática, considere três referenciais nas transações entre as pessoas, empresas e coisas: nas empresas, o balcão; e as pessoas e coisas são seus próprios referenciais.

olhando para empresas [ou instituições, de forma mais geral] a informática que é usada na interação com os clientes pode estar do lado de lá do balcão, o que se dá quando quem nos atende não faz uso de informática [diretamente]. ela pode tomar notas e depois, quem sabe, usar alguma informática para capturar e processar tais dados. assim era LEO, em 1961, e foi o estado da arte até a informática chegar no balcão, como os “caixas” de banco e supermercados. antes, o atendente nem  tinha acesso a computação: os usuários tinham duas pessoas intermediando a transação; no balcão, falamos com quem usa o computador –na verdade, o software, e muita coisa com a qual a gente veio a se preocupar depois não fazia nem sentido lá. quer ver? o sigilo de suas contas: o caixa ficava, o tempo todo, olhando pra elas. hoje, fazendo quase tudo na rede, alguém tem que “invadir” sua conta pra ter acesso a seus dados [e fazer mais, talvez]. isso porque a informática veio para o lado de cá do balcão. o PC do gerente e secretária são parte desta "geração" da informática, bem como o ATM [caixa eletrônico] e PC nas casas, conectado à internet: ele é a frente, o “seu” terminal de um grande sistema de informação em rede [a internet], que habilita o uso, na minha casa ou escritório [e no caixa eletrônico do posto], de funções externas a ele, na rede.

note que se os computadores –e seu software- são como LEO, não é preciso educar muita gente para seu uso. programadores, técnicos e operadores são poucos, em qualquer negócio, comparado com a população da empresa. e os usuários, claro, não chegam nem perto. com as máquinas no balcão, muita coisa muda: os sistemas devem ter uma usabilidade bem melhor do que costumavam ter atrás do balcão, caso contrário o nível de sofisticação dos atendentes tornaria o negócio inviável. a transição para o balcão revolucionou o desenho de interfaces e usabilidade, para preparar o que estava por vir, a ida para depois do balcão. a chegada da internet e a queda dos preços de hardware quase que universalizaram o acesso ao software, da mesa do diretor ao menino na lanhouse. e aí, como sabemos, o mundo mudou de vez, e era só o começo. pra turma do software, era o fim dos sistemas internos e quase todo software passou a ser, potencialmente, pra todo mundo. e teve que se tornar mais simples, efetivo, fácil de usar… o que é, na verdade, o ponto de partida para a revolução –e transformação em rede- de que vamos falar. mas espere um pouco mais até o cenário ficar mais ou menos arrumado.

se a gente deixa balcões para lá e pessoas são o referencial, há duas alternativas: a informática com você, na forma de laptop e celular ou smartphone, ou informática em você, o caso de um implante coclear ou cerebral [para cuidar de efeitos do mal de parkinson, por exemplo]. com você explica coisas sofisticadas como body area networks [BAN], redes no seu corpo, ou seu corpo como a rede ou parte dela, que podem fazer com que o smartphone interaja com tênis, camisa e boné. é provável que sensores em você também estejam nestas redes, possibilitando diagnósticos mais simples e efetivos e criando alternativas de ação externa sobre instrumentos instalados em você. ou em mim, não pense que não vou ter umas coisas destas no meu corpo. perto disso, BYOD [ideia e políticas associadas a você usar seu próprio dispositivo no trabalho] é quase um passado distante.

se coisas são o referencial, há informática pras coisas [sistemas de informação que representam itens de um estoque, por exemplo], e nas coisas, para o que o código de barras na lata de ervilha é o exemplo trivial. mas pense em chips nos produtos e suas embalagens, e comunicação usando tecnologias como NFC, MQTT e 6LoWPAN, para muito curta e qualquer distância. agora… imagine "conversar" com o selo na casca da banana e descobrir [pois ele media seu acesso à informação sobre aquela banana específica] de onde a fruta vem, desde quando está a caminho e por onde e com quem andou até chegar à sua mesa. breve, numa casca de banana [e sistemas de informação] perto de você.

por fim, as coisas, propriamente ditas, podem ser informática, entendidas como uma combinação de capacidades computacionais, comunicação e controle. robôs são o exemplo clássico e vale lembrar a roboCup, copa de futebol de robôs que existe desde 1997 e cujo objetivo inicial era criar, até 2050, um time de robôs humanóides capazes de disputar uma partida, em igualdade de condições, com a seleção humana campeã do mundo de então. quem viver, verá.

pelas regras, os times de robôs mais sofisticados da roboCup são autônomos, ou seja, não podem ter contato com o mundo exterior: capturam informação, fazem o processamento e agem sobre ela, cada um por si, em rede com os outros, mas sem acesso à internet ou computação externa a cada “jogador”. carros sem motorista [o driverless car de google…] também são robôs e, além de capturar informação do ambiente, se comunicam com GPS, poderiam se comunicar uns com os outros [V2V] e com os serviços de google, tornando cada deslocamento, bem… uma viagem. pense nas possibilidades.

resumo? as gerações da informática são [e estão aqui, ao mesmo tempo]: antes, no e depois do balcão; com e em você e pras, nas e as coisas.

onde estamos, agora? no e depois do balcão estão aqui, sustentados por antes, que agora, ao invés do “centro de processamento de dados”, ou CPD de cada negócio, está na nuvem, redes orquestradas de computação e comunicação que fazem parte da internet. informática conosco está na ordem do dia, em larga escala, de laptops a smartphones, passando por câmeras digitais. em cada um? isso está começando a aparecer [google glass, por exemplo], mas vai levar tempo até que você possa ir a um camelô e comprar um olho biônico, como em blade runner. sistemas de informação pras coisas estão aí desde LEO e se tornando universais; a informática nas coisas tem muito a avançar, evoluindo a partir de barras, RFID e SIMs [estes, como se sabe, são portas de entrada para redes e serviços]. e, finalmente, as coisas se tornando informática, elas mesmas, é um horizonte de longo prazo. ou não: viu roomba, aspirador de pó robótico, pra casas? ou  o anúncio da foxconn sobre a instalação de um milhão de robôs nas suas fábricas? aí tem. quer ver? espere…

neste contexto, de sociedade e economia imersas em TICs, o que é uma empresa? conceitualmente, empresas são abstrações. na prática, empresas são conjuntos de métodos e processos [e as infraestruturas, serviços e aplicações de suporte] que entregam produtos e/ou serviços a comunidades de usuários.

e a empresa contemporânea é “escrita” em software: se você está em um negócio, está no negócio de software, era um adágio da comunidade de software nos anos 90. seu negócio tinha que ser bom em escrever software, já que os processos ainda não habilitados por software tinham que passar a tal estágio ou serem descartados. e quanto maior e mais distribuída a empresa, mais clara, urgente e imediata a necessidade de codificar, de informatizar todos os seus processos. senão, como medir e cobrar dezenas de milhões de contas de luz… na mão? como gerir estoques de dezenas de milhares de itens diferentes… à mão? como organizar a produção de sistemas que têm milhões de partes e peças diferentes, como o airbus A380? no dia a dia, como acertar as contas da padaria com o fisco, sem software? pela via da escrita fiscal, à mão, caneta tinteiro e papel borrão?… não, tinha que ser software. e redes.

aqui começa nossa pequena saga: por mais 3 textos, vamos olhar para negócios em rede, que estão em mercados em rede, um mundo de pessoas e coisas conectadas e o software –e suas plataformas- por trás disso tudo. a rede [de performances] que habilita negócios, hoje, também mudou a performance e a economia de software, que deixou de ser feito para computadores, como nos tempos de LEO e até pouco tempo, e passou a ser desenhado em rede. a rede é, agora, o computador. é disso que vamos falar nos próximos textos. boa leitura e até lá.

…going after plagiarists on legal grounds… “Judge Coco Declares Ang Out of Line!” image by flickr user Coco Mault used by permission.

One of the services that journal publishers claim to provide on behalf of authors is legal support in the case that their work has been plagiarized, and they sometimes cite this as one of the reasons that they require a transfer of rights for publication of articles.

Here’s a recent example of the claim, forwarded to me by a Harvard author of a paper accepted for publication in a Wiley journal.[1] The article falls under Harvard’s FAS open-access policy, by virtue of which the university held a nonexclusive license in the article. The author chose to inform the journal of this license by attaching the Harvard addendum to Wiley’s publication agreement. Wiley’s emailed response to her included this explanation:

You recently had a paper accepted for publication in [journal name] and signed an exclusive license form to which you attached an addendum from Harvard University. Unfortunately, we are unable to accept this addendum, as it conflicts with the rights of the copyright holder (in this case, the [society on whose behalf Wiley publishes the journal]). They guarantee the same rights that our copyright forms guarantee, but Harvard University, unlike Wiley, offers no support if your article is plagiarized or otherwise reused illegally.

(It then went on to list various rights that Wiley grants back to authors of articles in this journal, such as posting manuscripts in repositories, all of which are laudable, though they remained silent on their required 12-month distribution embargo.)

I have no problem with publishers requiring waivers of the Harvard open-access policy as a condition of publishing in their journals. They are their journals after all. And in the event, only a small proportion of articles, in the low single digits, end up needing waivers. But I bristle at the transparently disingenuous argumentation for their requirement. They make two separate arguments.

1. The addendum “conflicts with the rights of the copyright holder”, the society on whose behalf Wiley publishes the journal.

   Wait, what? How is the society the copyright holder? Until the author signs a publication agreement, the author is the copyright holder. And the publication agreement itself doesn’t involve a transfer of copyright, but rather, an exclusive license to Wiley on behalf of the society. And anyway, whether it’s an exclusive license or a wholesale transfer of copyright, that doesn’t conflict with the addendum by virtue of the plain words in the addendum: “Notwithstanding any terms in the Publication Agreement to the contrary, Author and Publisher agree as follows:…”.

2. If the addendum were allowed, “Harvard University, unlike Wiley, offers no support if your article is plagiarized or otherwise reused illegally.”

   Suppose that were true. (Though how would Wiley know what support Harvard gives its faculty when their work is plagiarized or used illegally?) Why would that be an issue? Nothing stops Wiley from providing that support on behalf of its authors, with or without the addendum. Either way it still receives an exclusive license from the author. Others illegally using the work are still violating that exclusive license.

   Unless of course the violator received a license by virtue of the prior nonexclusive license to the University mentioned in the addendum. Could that happen? Nope. The university uses its license only to authorize a particular set of uses. You can read them at the DASH Terms of Use page (see the “Open Access Policy Articles” section). They do not include plagiarism as a permitted use, or any illegal uses. (Is it even necessary to point that out?) The university also grants the authors themselves the ability to exercise rights in their article. But if someone explicitly received and exercised rights from a rights-holding author, it’s hard to see how that’s an illegal use.

   More fundamentally, however, there’s a basic premise that underlies this talk of publishers requiring exclusive rights in order to weed out and prosecute plagiarism, namely, that publishers would not be able to do so if they didn’t acquire exhaustive exclusive rights. But there’s no legal basis to such a premise that I can imagine.

   Plagiarism per se is not a rights matter at all, but a violation of the professional conduct expected of scholars. Pursuing plagiarists is a matter of calling their behavior out for what it is, with the concomitant professional opprobrium and dishonor that such behavior deserves. Publishers should feel free to help with that social process; they don’t need any rights to do so.

   Being “otherwise used illegally” gets more to the heart of the matter, as rights violations are presumably what the publisher has in mind. But it’s hard to see how publishers would need any rights themselves just to help an author out in prosecuting a rights violation. Suppose a publisher, rather than acquiring exclusive rights in an article, instead had authors license their articles under a CC-BY license. The publisher could still weed out and prosecute illegal uses of the article. There would be fewer opportunities for illegal use, since CC-BY allows lots of salutary kinds of use and reuse, subject only to proper attribution to the author and journal. But illegal uses might still arise from violating the attribution requirement of the CC-BY declaration. Nothing stops the publisher from looking for such gross plagiarisms of the articles they publish that rise to the level of rights violation, and from prosecuting the plagiarists on behalf of the authors. They could even write that into their agreements: “The Author grants the Publisher permission to prosecute violations of this license on the Author’s behalf, etc.”[2]

   (As an aside, the offer to prosecute plagiarists and rights violators isn’t much of a benefit in practice. How many instances of publishers going after plagiarists on legal grounds based on the publisher’s holding of rights have there ever been? As Jake said, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”)

What’s really going on here is not a mystery. The publisher doesn’t like the idea of the author distributing copies of her work. The primary difference between the rights the publisher wants to grant the author and the rights specified in the open-access policy is that the former stipulates that the author not distribute copies of her article for twelve months after publication. The publisher is objecting so as to force a waiver of the open-access policy license to preserve their ability to limit access to the article. Of course, saying “we won’t accept the addendum because we want to limit people reading your article” doesn’t sound nearly as good as “otherwise we couldn’t go after plagiarists”.

Publishers are welcome to require waivers of Harvard’s open-access policies and the similar policies at other institutions, but hiding behind faux arguments in their explanations to authors isn’t attractive. They should come clean on the reasoning: They think it harms their business model.

Ryan Carson [twitter:RyanCarson] of Treehouse at the Mesh Conference is keynoting the Mesh Conference. He begins his introduction of himself by saying he is a father, which I appreciate. Treehouse is an “online education company that teaches technology. We hope we can remove the need to go to university to do technology.”

NOTE: Live-blogging. Getting things wrong. Missing points. Omitting key information. Introducing artificial choppiness. Over-emphasizing small matters. Paraphrasing badly. Not running a spellpchecker. Mangling other people’s ideas and words. You are warned, people.

Treehouse “treasures personal time.” They work a 4-day week, 8 hours a day, although they pay for a full 40-hour week. He asks how many people in the audience work for themselves or run their own company; half the people raise their hands. “We have a fundamental belief that people can work smarter, and thus faster…We use a lot of tools that decrease drag.” E.g., they have an internal version of Reddit called “Convoy.” It keeps conversation out of email. “We ask people to never put anything in email that isn’t actionable.” A 4 day week also makes recruiting easy.

“As a father, I realize I’m going to die, sooner rather than later. If I work four days a week, I can send 50% more of my life with my wife and kids.”

Q: Why not a 3 day week?

A: It’s a flag to say “We believe personal time is important.” We’ll do whatever we have to. I’ve told people not to send email over the weekend because it makes work for others.

Q: How about flex time instead?

A: We have tried that, and we let people work from home. “People are smart and motivated and want to succeed. We presume that about people.” We’re demanding, and we’ll fire people if they don’t perform. But you have to institute practices, and not just say that you believe in personal time.

Q: Do you have investors? How do they respond?

A: We have $12M in investment. But we didn’t raise money until after we were profitable. I used my experience running 3 prior companies to give investors confidence. And no one asked about the 4 day week. It doesn’t seem to matter to them. My prior company was an events company and it got bought by a company that worked 5 days a week, and it was messy. I think our team there is now working 5 days.

Q: How do you provide 7 day a week support?

A: Our support team time shifts.

Q: How do you control email so that it’s only actionable?

A: It’s a policy. Also, we use Boomerang which lets us schedule when email is sent.

Now Ryan talks about the tools they use to facilitate a distributed team: about 30 people in Orlando, 8 in Portland, and the rest are distributed in the US and UK. “We don’t have a headquarters.” We are an Internet company. We use Convoy: part water cooler, part news distribution. Notes from meetings go there. It took a dev about a day to create Convoy.

We also use Campfire, a chat program. And Trello for task management. And Google Hangouts. (He notes that you have to be wired, not wifi, and have good gear, for Hangouts to work well.)

Q: Do you have to work over the weekend when there’s a hard deadline? And do you put more of an emphasis on planning?

A: Yes, we sometimes have worked over the weekend. And we’ve sometimes had a problem with people working too much. I think some people work without telling us, especially developers and designers. But if they have to work, their managers have failed. And it does mean we have to plan carefully.

Q: What are your annual meetups like?

A: It’s a full week. No agenda, no working. Pure get drunk, have fun. People work much harder if they like each other and believe in each other.

Now on education. By 2020, there will be 1,000,000 jobs in tech than students. Nine out of ten high schools don’t even offer computer programming classes. [Really? Apparently so. Wow.] Treehouse tries to address this, along with Udacity, CodeAcademy, Code School. In a video, Ryan says that Treehouse will cost you about $300 for an entire course of tech education, making you ready to enter the workforce. “The education system is a racket. Universities have milked us dry for ten years.” 40% of jobs in STEM are in computer science, but only 2% of STEM students are studying it. “In 41 out of 50 states coding classes don’t count toward high school graduation math or science requirements.” “In the future, most students won’t get a four year degree, and I think that’s a good thing. We are moving toward a trade school model.”

Q: Many companies use college degrees as a filter. How do you filter?

A: In 5 yrs there won’t be enough graduates for you to hire anyone because Google and FB will pay them $500,000/year. At Treehouse we apply points. You can see someone’s skills.

Q: What will people miss out on if they don’t go to college?

A: People will miss out on the social aspect, but people can’t afford to go into debt for that. College as the next step is a new idea in the past 15 years. [Really?] You’ll have free liberal arts education available through free online courses. You’ll pay for trade school training. “We’ll just have to have faith that people can be responsible adults without going to university.”

Q: How do you help people who complete your courses find job?

A: We’re rolling out an entire department for this. As you learn on Treehouse, you get points and start to establish your rank. Employers will be able to search our database saying, e.g., “I want someone with over 1,000 points in CSS, 800 points in Javascript, and 500 points in business.”

Q: How are you going to mesh these ideas into traditional education?

A: Sub-par universities will die. Education will be completely different in 10 years. We don’t know what it will be.

Ryan says that he’s not doing this for the money. “People who need education can’t afford it.”

[Judy Lee tweeted that Ryan should have asked us how many in the audience have a university degree, and how many of us regret it. Nice.]

The 2013 Together Fest is underway, and I’ll be playing my part on 2 occasions Thursday (tomorrow!).

First, on Thurs afternoon from 2-3:30pm at the Together Center in Central Square (328 Mass Ave), I’ll be moderating a panel called “Grassroots Digital” featuring three luminaries in the weird world of mediation between DIY/independent and industrial modes of production & circulation: Toy Selectah, Matt Shadetek, and Chris Kirkley. Here’s why I think their co-presence will make for quite a conversation.

Toy Selectah has been making waves for decades, and I could hardly think of a better figure to discuss the ways digital tech has enabled young, independent producers to get their work out there. First, as the DJ Muggs-inspired, sample-wielding producer behind Control Machete, later as the A&R for reggaeton’s massively popular Machete Music imprint, and most recently as the Mad Decent-approved 3ball MTY svengali, Toy has been a major mover and shaker behind the scenes, and in each of these moments he has witnessed the power of emergent technologies when wielded by young artists. Here’s a deep interview with him c/o RBMA in case you need to get up to speed:

Matt Shadetek has been producing street-level bangers for many years, from Berlin to Brooklyn. Especially enamored of the “preset” wielding in genres like grime and dancehall, he makes software sing on his own productions — independently distributed and licensed — and in his instructional work at Dubspot. For our purposes, I’d like to focus on the beyond-his-control but up-his-alley circulation of Craziest Riddim, aka the instrumental from “Brooklyn Anthem.” As Matt detailed in a post back in 2008, unbeknownst to him, his instrumental took on a life of its own, embraced by the “teen bashment” scene in Jamaican-Brooklyn (which, as I commented, is about as good a conferral of cool as it gets). He collected several examples in that post, and many more on the Dutty Artz YouTube channel, but here’s one for your viewing pleasure –

Last but not least, Chris Kirkley, who is presently in Mali, will be (fingers-crossed) reaching us via videolink to join our realtime discussion. You may know Chris from Music from Saharan Cellphones, which is pretty grassroots digital, but he’s also got a more recent project delving into visual culture that I’d like to discuss. According to a blurb from the Portland Museum of Modern Art, Azawad Libre! New Media and Imagined Geographies in the Sahel “examines a burgeoning area of folk art associated with computers and cell phones throughout the Sahel, and the political and personal undertones explored through this recently integrated form of expression.” Both via internet and on the ground in the Sahel, Kirkley has put together a collection comprising “personally crafted avatars, viral propaganda disseminated through cell phone videos, imagined geographies of non-existent states, and personal identities redefined through designers of the digital realm.” Here’s one such example –

In light of a burgeoning movement toward Africans remaking their image via self-representation, Kirkley’s efforts to celebrate and display these examples of personal net-art in US museums is an interesting move, and I hope we’ll be able to consider such complex remediation alongside the ways, say, Mad Decent represents 3ball or JA-BK teens repurpose Shadetek beats.

Once more, here’s the blurb —

From Mexico to Mali to Bed-Stuy, digital tools of production and publication are facilitating new interactions between grassroots culture and industrial capture, informal amateurism and art world remediation. Drawing on the expertise of several actors in this wide, weird world, our panel seeks to explore a few stories of spectacular circulation that shed light on new forms of media exchange and exploitation.

There’s an FB event page if you can (and care to) see that sort of thing (I can’t & don’t). And I’m happy to report that the panel will be streaming at the following link, so please tune in if this sort of thing is up your alley: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/together-2013-panels

///

Second — and this is a BIG second — later on Thursday night you can catch me playing an opening set for Toy Selectah’s Boston premiere at the Good Life for Picó Picante’s special Together edition! I’m beyond thrilled to be a part of this, and I’m definitely going to have a special set ready for the occasion. Don’t miss this one. It’s gonna be a floor burner–

I’ll be on from 11-12, and Toy will close out with an epic 2 hour set. Get there on the early side, because the line is always long (at least it will be warm!) and, hey, there’s a whole night of entertainment lined up! Lots of great local folk on the bill, including the Pajaritos, Ultratumba, Brizgnar, El Poser, and HEXbeam on the visuals. Can’t wait!!

I had a lovely time at the University of Toronto Faculty of Information yesterday afternoon. About twenty of us talked for two hours about library innovation. It reminded me: how much I like hanging out with librarians; how eager people are to invent, collaborate, and play; how lucky I am to work in an open space for innovation (the Harvard Library Innovation Lab) with such a talented, creative group; how much I love Toronto.

As has been widely reported, the U.S. Department of Justice has disclosed that it has obtained two months' worth of telephone records from 20 separate phone lines assigned to the journalists and offices of the Associated Press. The Associated Press was not informed of the investigation before the DOJ acquired the telephone data, which could potentially reveal confidential sources and editorial strategy (among other sensitive information).

The incident has resulted in widespread condemnation of the DOJ's actions by the press and demands for accountability and reform. In response, the DOJ has asserted its commitment to abiding by applicable law and its internal policies, which require special consideration before information may be sought from members of the news media.

This is not the first time that a government investigation into a news organization's operations has led to questions about the sufficiency of protection for the press, and in fact the effects of one prior incident in particular can be seen in these recent events. Examining this incident and its consequences provides a useful lens through which to examine the breadth and limitations of government power to investigate the press.

The First Amendment and the Fourth: Zurcher v. Stanford Daily

On April 12, 1971, four police officers conducted a search of the offices of the Stanford Daily, a student newspaper published at Stanford University. The search, which was conducted pursuant to a court-ordered warrant, was related to an investigation into a disturbance on April 9, during which a group of demonstrators seized the administrative offices of the Stanford University Hospital and engaged in a physical confrontation with police. The Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office asserted probable cause to believe that the Stanford Daily might have negatives, film, and/or images of the disturbance that would assist in the identification of the protesters.

The Stanford Daily filed a civil rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, asserting that the search was unconstitutional. In particular, the newspaper asserted that issuing search warrants for news organizations posed multiple threats to newsgathering, including: (1) physical disruption of the timely newsgathering and publication process; (2) chilling of confidential sources and denial of press access to restricted events; (3) deterrence of note taking and other creation of work product by reporters; (4) exposure of internal editorial decision-making to government scrutiny; and (5) self-censorship by the press to conceal the possession of information of potential interest to law enforcement. Accordingly, the newspaper argued that the First Amendment required different procedures and a higher standard to be met for the issuance of a warrant to search the records of a news organization than is ordinarily required by the Fourth Amendment.

The federal district court agreed, holding that a warrant could not be issued for materials in the possession of a newspaper not itself suspected of being involved in a crime, unless:

• it is established by affidavit would be "impracticable" to request the materials from the newspaper directly via subpoena;
• there is reason to believe that the newspaper would disregard a court order not to remove or destroy the materials sought;
• there is a clear showing that important materials will be destroyed or removed from the jurisdiction; and
• a restraining order would be futile.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's ruling, but in Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U.S. 547 (1978) the U.S. Supreme Court reversed, holding that sufficient protections for First Amendment interests were built into the Fourth Amendment standard for issuance of a warrant:

[P]rior cases do no more than insist that the courts apply the warrant requirements with particular exactitude when First Amendment interests would be endangered by the search. As we see it, no more than this is required where the warrant requested is for the seizure of criminal evidence reasonably believed to be on the premises occupied by a newspaper. Properly administered, the preconditions for a warrant - probable cause, specificity with respect to the place to be searched and the things to be seized, and overall reasonableness - should afford sufficient protection against the harms that are assertedly threatened by warrants for searching newspaper offices.

Id. at 565.

There is some suggestion that the Court recognized that this ruling, albeit consistent with its prior interpretations of the Constitution, nevertheless might be insufficient to protect journalists. Justice White, writing for the majority, commented: "Of course, the Fourth Amendment does not prevent or advise against legislative or executive efforts to establish nonconstitutional protections against possible abuses of the search warrant procedure." Id. at 567.

The Privacy Protection Act

The United States Congress reacted swiftly to Justice White's hint with proposed legislation granting newsgatherers precisely the protection that the Court held the First Amendment did not provide. These proposals eventually resulted in the enactment of the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, 42 U.S.C. § 2000aa et seq. (the "PPA"), which creates protections against searches for the work product or other documents possessed by any "person reasonably believed to have a purpose to disseminate to the public a newspaper, book, broadcast, or other similar form of public communication, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce." In at least one case, this language has been held to be broad enough to protect the publisher of an electronic bulletin board. See Steve Jackson Games, Inc. v. U.S. Secret Service, 816 F. Supp. 432, 440 (W.D.Tex. 1993).

The PPA distinguishes between the "work product" of these individuals, defined as materials prepared and possessed for the purpose of being communicated the public that contain the mental impressions of the person who created those materials, and other "documentary materials," defined as any material upon which information of virtually any type may be recorded in any format. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000aa-7(a, b). The issuance of a warrant for either category is subject to substantial restrictions well beyond what the Fourth Amendment requires.

Pursuant to the PPA, a newsgatherer's "work product" may not be searched or seized, even with a warrant, unless:

(1) there is probable cause to believe that the person possessing those materials has committed or is committing a crime to which the materials relate other than a crime consisting of the possession, receipt, communication, or withholding of the material itself (except where such a crime involves classified or restricted government data, or child pornography, exploitation, or trafficking); or

(2) there is reason to believe that immediate seizure of the materials is necessary to prevent death or serious bodily injury.

Similarly, a newsgatherer's "documentary materials" may be searched and seized pursuant to a warrant only under the conditions for "work product" described above, as well as when:

(3) there is reason to believe that requesting the documents from the newsgatherer by subpoena will result in the destruction, alteration, or concealment of the documents; or

(4) the government has tried to use a subpoena, the newsgatherer has refused to comply with a court order directing compliance with the subpoena, and either (a) the newsgatherer has exhausted their rights to appeal the court order or (b) further delay in production of the materials would threaten the interests of justice.

42 U.S.C. § 2000aa(a, b). Even when law enforcement decides to obtain a warrant for "documentary materials" because further attempts to pursue a subpoena would threaten the interests of justice, the government must still give a newsgatherer an opportunity to submit an affidavit challenging the issuance of the warrant. 42 U.S.C. § 2000aa(c).

A newsgatherer whose rights under the PPA have been violated has the right to file a civil action against the government body and individual state officers involved. A successful claimant is entitled to recover either actual damages or $1,000 in liquidated damages (whichever is more), plus reasonable attorneys' fees and costs. 42 U.S.C. § 2000aa-6(a, f).

The Department of Justice's Policy on Investigating News Media

Critically, the provisions of the PPA discussed above do not apply to records in the possession of third parties, such as the telephone records at issue in the recent DOJ investigation. In fact, the government is not even required to obtain a search warrant for such materials. Pursuant to the so-called "third-party doctrine," when a person voluntarily turns over information to third parties or allows those third parties to collect information about his or her activities, that person has no expectation of privacy in that information protected by the Fourth Amendment. See Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979). As a result, the government can obtain that information simply by issuing a subpoena to a telephone company or other third party. Unlike the subpoenas to newsgatherers contemplated by the PPA, which give newsgatherers the opportunity to object in court, subpoenas to third parties (such as telephone companies) could potentially bypass a news organization entirely.

The Department of Justice's discretion in this regard is not, however, wholly unfettered. Section 2000aa-11 of the PPA required the Attorney General, within six months of October 13, 1980, to issue "guidelines for the procedures to be employed by any Federal officer or employee, in connection with the investigation or prosecution of an offense, to obtain documentary materials in the private possession of a person when the person is not reasonably believed to be a suspect in such offense."

On November 19, 1980, apparently in response to this statutory command, the Attorney General promulgated as federal regulations its "Policy with regard to the issuance of subpoenas to members of the news media, subpoenas for telephone toll records of members of the news media, and the interrogation, indictment, or arrest of, members of the news media" (28 CFR § 50.10, the "Media Policy").

The Media Policy is long on rhetoric and promises of prosecutorial restraint. It begins with broad recognition of the importance of not interfering with the newsgathering function of the press:

Because freedom of the press can be no broader than the freedom of reporters to investigate and report the news, the prosecutorial power of the government should not be used in such a way that it impairs a reporter's responsibility to cover as broadly as possible controversial public issues. This policy statement is thus intended to provide protection for the news media from forms of compulsory process, whether civil or criminal, which might impair the news gathering function.
...
In determining whether to request issuance of a subpoena to a member of the news media, or for telephone toll records of any member of the news media, the approach in every case must be to strike the proper balance between the public's interest in the free dissemination of ideas and information and the public's interest in effective law enforcement and the fair administration of justice.

28 C.F.R. § 50.10(preamble, a).

The Media Policy also lays out a multistep process that the Department of Justice is supposed to follow when considering seeking the records of news organizations, including telephone toll records. With respect to telephone records, the DOJ must:

• take "all reasonable alternative investigative steps" before considering issuing a subpoena for telephone toll records of any member of the "news media";
• negotiate with the affected member of the news media before issuing a subpoena for toll records, so long as such negotiations would not undermine the integrity of the investigation for which the records are sought;
• obtain the express authorization of the Attorney General for the subpoena, based upon a determination that the information sought is essential to a criminal investigation, and a failure to obtain the information from alternative sources.

28 C.F.R. § 50.10(b, d, e, g).

In addition, if the DOJ has previously negotiated with the news media for access to telephone toll records, it must give reasonable and timely notice to the member of the news media that the Attorney General has authorized the subpoena and that the government intends to issue it. 28 C.F.R. § 50.10(g)(2). Even when to protect the integrity of an investigation negotiations did not take place, the DOJ must give notice of the subpoena as soon as disclosure will no longer threaten the investigation (although this could be after a response to the subpoena is received from a third party). 28 C.F.R. § 50.10(g)(3).

Critical Distinctions

It might at first appear that the protections of the PPA for newsgathering materials and the DOJ's Media Policy for telephone toll records are at least comparable. Although the Media Policy contemplates a subpoena rather than a warrant, it at least indicates that whenever possible the DOJ should notify the news organization in question so that the media have the opportunity to intervene and to object to a subpoena to a third party. True, the Media Policy contains no hard-line requirement of a threat to life and limb such as applies to work product; but in the context of non-work product materials, even the PPA prefers a subpoena that a newsgatherer has the chance to challenge in court to a warrant issued without any adversary process. Likewise, the PPA allows the government to work around a news organization by means of a warrant for non-work product materials if alerting the organization in advance would result in the destruction of those materials.

Nevertheless, as a matter of practice the Media Policy's protections turn out to be far less substantial, as the Associated Press has learned. We do not yet know for sure what happened inside the DOJ with respect to the AP, such as whether a determination was made that disclosing the intent to request these telephone records in advance would jeopardize an investigation or whether the Attorney General in fact authorized the issuance of subpoenas. Because the DOJ is not required to seek prior court approval for a subpoena in the way that it must for a search warrant, there was no need for the DOJ to articulate in a transparent manner whatever concerns about urgency or operational security might have existed.

And even if it turns out that rogue DOJ agents disregarded the Media Policy entirely, the Associated Press has no legal remedy. The DOJ has the authority to issue subpoenas for the information that it obtained. Although the Media Policy states that "[f]ailure to obtain the prior approval of the Attorney General may constitute grounds for an administrative reprimand or other appropriate disciplinary action," it further states that "[t]he principles set forth in [the Media Policy] are not intended to create or recognize any legally enforceable right in any person." 28 C.F.R. § 50.10(n). Even the PPA provisions that apparently motivated the Attorney General to adopt the Media Policy suggest that the Policy is only enforceable by the DOJ itself. Section 2000aa-12 of the PPA states,

Guidelines issued by the Attorney General under this subchapter shall have the full force and effect of Department of Justice regulations and any violation of these guidelines shall make the employee or officer involved subject to appropriate administrative disciplinary action. However, an issue relating to the compliance, or the failure to comply, with guidelines issued pursuant to this subchapter may not be litigated[.]

In other words, ignoring the Media Policy might result in a head or two rolling, but the AP would not be able to bring a lawsuit, much less seek statutory damages and attorneys' fees as per the PPA's protection for work product and other materials.

A third distinction between the PPA's core protections and the Media Policy is perhaps less relevant to the AP, but should be of concern to independent online journalists and news ventures. As mentioned above, the PPA uses a more-or-less function-driven definition of the journalists protected under its scope, which while still ambiguous is likely broad enough to shield online publishers. In contrast, the Media Policy simply refers to the "news media" without further definition. There is no reason to believe that the DOJ would read the Media Policy, written in 1980, to apply to anything beyond the traditional institutional definitions of the news media prevalent at that time.

Conclusion

The recent events with the Associated Press echo the experience of the Stanford Daily, with both news organizations facing intrusions into their newsgathering activities that were possibly authorized by the law but nevertheless raised serious concerns as to whether the protections of the law were sufficient.

In the case of the Stanford Daily, the response to concerns over the scope of the Fourth Amendment as applied to news media was the enactment of the strong protections of the Privacy Protection Act. Similarly, the Associated Press investigation has called attention to the fact that the DOJ's Media Policy has significant problems with transparency, accountability, and scope. As a result, we should look carefully at whether further legislative correction is required.

Jeff Hermes is the Director of the Digital Media Law Project. The author would like to thank Andy Sellars for his discussion of ideas reflected in this post.

(Photo courtesy Flickr user daftgirly pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY-NC 2.0 license.)

Picks for a memorable May: Bike Month, Memorial Day, and Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

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May 15, 2013 PRX: Clear as a Bell Hi friend of PRX, You guys. Lots of less-than-transparent stuff going on in the ol’ Beltway…this week especially. At PRX, we think openness is better: You can see every piece every station has licensed for all of PRX history. We have open comments and ratings, yup — add your voice. How well did PRX, producers and stations do last year? No hiding: here’s the skinny from Zeitfunk! -John Memorable May Picks for this month’s holidays Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Peabody-winning series from Dmae Roberts: Crossing East is eight one-hour documentaries plus shorter pieces on the history of Asian immigration into the US. More for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month It’s Bike Month! We’re celebrating Pedal Power with a list of cycling picks. For Memorial Day, we have music specials, travel stories, and reverent remembrances. Full list of picks. Roman-esque Curator/producer/revolutionary Roman Mars was just named one of Fast Company‘s most creative people of 2013. Last year, his series 99% Invisible had the most successful journalism project in Kickstarter history. The show is available in 4:30 episodes for stations or the full director’s cut. Roman also curates PRX’s Remix stream — the best of pubradio on shuffle — available online and stations around the country. Is your station next? And, while we have you… a radio time machine to 2003: Roman’s older series Invisible Ink is archived on PRX. Pride Month Picks for June The Boy Scouts will vote May 20 on whether to partially lift a ban on gay scouts. Westchester Public Radio discusses what that would mean. Gay in the Eyes of God explores how Christians, Jews, and Muslims grapple with the LGBT community. Surprising and fascinating. Listen as a producer sneakily records her brother’s coming out to his parents. FYI: UNBLEEPED. More for Pride Month Other Good Stuff Got an amazing radio piece? Of course you do — it’s time to enter the Third Coast Competition! Early deadline is noon PT on June 19. Follow Us for the Latest Timely Picks Spring Memorial Day Pride Month: June Exclusive Series The Moth Radio Hour True stories told weekly. State of the Re:Union Communities, experiences… life. New season is here. Sound Opinions This week: Legendary bassist Peter Hook remembers Ian Curtis and Joy Division. Snap Judgment Fate, fights, gratitude, Snap. American Routes The iconic program on the music of America. Here’s The Thing New episodes with Alec Baldwin coming this fall. WTF with Marc Maron The popular comedy podcast goes radio. New episodes in May. LA Theatre Works Contemporary radio drama. Public Radio Remix Are you listening yet? PRX Podcasts 99% Invisible: A show about design with Roman Mars. HowSound: What’s behind great radio? Blank on Blank finds lost interviews. You listen. Latitude News: Mexican, undocumented, and Mormon. Forward to a friend Got questions about PRX? Talk to a friendly human! This newsletter is a weekly communication to provide programming suggestions and other relevant information to the staff of stations that use PRX. PRX Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe PRX, Inc. is a non-profit corporation based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. PRX was created through a collaboration of the Station Resource Group and Atlantic Public Media, and continues to receive support from public radio stations and producers, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Knight Foundation and Google Grants. Bike Month image from Shutterstock. Memorial Day image by Tony. Pride Month image by seeminglee.

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What does talk of cyber war mean for our liberties? The United States has a new military command for cyberspace, with the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) as its commander. At the same time, the Secretary of State has announced that the “freedom to connect” is an aspect of fundamental human rights and [...]

jessbennett:

womenofthe113th:

Modification of the last infographic. Congressladies + men = still a ways to go.

Source: Office of the Clerk

This is the most beautiful infographic I’ve ever seen. Paging I Love Charts!

This is fantastic. 

May 14, 12:30pm ET
Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor

What does talk of cyber war mean for our liberties?  The United States has a new military command for cyberspace, with the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) as its commander.  At the same time, the Secretary of State has announced that the “freedom to connect” is an aspect of fundamental human rights and has criticized countries that attempt to filter the Internet.  Computer networks remain insecure, as sensitive data is leaked or stolen at increasing rates.  This talk will examine the legal powers available to addressing network and computer insecurity and their impact on privacy, civil liberties and other fundamental values.

About Tim

Timothy H. Edgar is a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute and is an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. His work focuses on the unique policy challenges posed by growing global cyber conflict, particularly in reconciling security interests with fundamental values, including privacy and Internet freedom.

Mr. Edgar served under President Obama as the first ever Director of Privacy and Civil Liberties for the White House National Security Staff, focusing on cybersecurity, open government and data privacy initiatives. From 2006 to 2009, he was the first Deputy for Civil Liberties for the Director of National Intelligence, reviewing new surveillance authorities, the terrorist watchlist, and other sensitive programs. He has also been counsel for the information sharing environment, which facilitates the secure sharing of terrorism-related information.

Prior to his government service, Mr. Edgar was the national security and immigration counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, where he spearheaded the organization’s innovative left- right coalition advocating for safeguards for a number of post-9/11 counterterrorism initiatives, including the USA Patriot Act. He frequently testified before Congress and appeared in major television, radio and print media.

Publications include contributions to Patriot Debates (American Bar Association 2005), America’s Battle Against Terrorism (with Nadine Strossen) (Greenhaven Press 2005) and Women Immigrants in the United States (Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars 2002), and Constitutional Governance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 25 Texas International Law Journal 207-237 (with Michael D. Nicoleau) (Spring 2000).

Mr. Edgar was a law clerk to Judge Sandra Lynch, United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He has a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he served on the Harvard Law Review, and an A.B. from Dartmouth College.

Links

The Obama Administration's approach:

• Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel’s speech at RSA in 2013.
• Executive Order 13636, "Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity," 78 Fed. Reg. 11739 (Feb. 12, 2013)
• Barack Obama, Taking the Cyberattack Threat Seriously, Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2012.

A few recent "must read" press articles:

• David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker, "Broad Powers Seen For Obama in Cyberstrikes," N.Y. Times, Feb. 3, 2013.
• William Wan and Ellen Nakashima, "Report Ties Cyberattacks on U.S. Computers to Chinese Military," Washington Post, Feb. 19, 2013.
• "The Digital Arms Trade," The Economist, March 30, 2013.

A useful pair of articles on the debate over "cyber war":

• John Arquilla, “Cyberwar Is Already Upon Us,” Foreign Policy, March/April 2012
• Thomas Rid, “Think Again: Cyberwar,” Foreign Policy, March/April 2012

Last week, I gave a lecture at the Berkman Center with the intentionally provocation title: Personalized Learning, Backpacks Full of Cash, Rockstar Teachers, and MOOC Madness: The Intersection of Technology, Free-Market Ideology, and Media Hype in U.S. Education Reform. Both of the regular readers of this blog will recognize many of the ideas that have been presented here in the past, now linked together in a larger and hopefully more coherent shape. This post has gobs of media for you to enjoy, visualizations, slides, video and my textual notes from the talk. By way of introduction, let me share this fabulous visualization from Willow Brugh.

In the talk, I try to role model the discipline of asking three kinds of questions when examining new forms of education technology or online learning. First, what values or lessons does the structure of the learning environment teach (irrespective of the content in the learning environment)? Second, what's new? To what extent do new technologies merely res-kin old, and sometimes very tired, ideas? Third, what are the second and third order consequences of implementing new learning technologies? If something is a good idea for an individual student in a particular circumstance, does it follow that enabling all individuals in similar circumstances will create a better system?

The talk starts by investigating personalized learning, which I chose as a starting point since that particular buzzword has been celebrated by people with very different ideas of education. I try to ask the three questions above: what values are encoded in systems of personalized learning? what features of personal learning systems are actually new? and what might be the unintended consequences of reorienting educational systems to make the individual the unit of analysis of pedagogy and policy.

The edge of personal learning is very sharp and seductive. Who will intuitive object to a "focus on each individual child." It's easy to see how these ideas might enter established systems. The back of the wedge may prove to be quite thick. I'm interested that this wedge doesn't fracture some of the things we most care about in schools systems. In focusing on children as individuals, can we prevent children from being treated as batches, while still enabling people to learn in communities? That is one of the essential pedagogical and policy question that we face.

Below is the video from the talk, my slides, a Storify of tweets from the event, and my unedited talking notes (which, unfortunately, are a bit sparse in some places where I've simply memorized sections that I've discussed frequently). Enjoy.

<noscript>[<a href="http://storify.com/bjfr/berkman-luncheon-may-7-personalized-learning" target="_blank">View the story "Berkman Luncheon, May 7, Personalized Learning" on Storify</a>]</noscript>

For regular updates, follow me on Twitter at @bjfr and for my publications, C.V., and online portfolio, visit EdTechResearcher.

- Justin Reich

One of the central features of H2O is the ability to edit collages. Collages, for those new to H2O, are what we call edited cases or other texts. In H2O, users can layer, highlight, and/or annotate portions of a case or other text. Layering, in particular, allows users to decide what part of a text will be displayed by default and, conversely, which parts will be hidden by default—though even hidden text can be read by clicking the ellipses indicating what part of the text has been layered.

A key part of the design overhaul of H2O is our attempt to make it easier and more seamless to edit collages. In the current version of H2O, users have to click the beginning and end of the portion of the text they want to edit, and then click through a series of pop-up windows to make their edits. The process is not as intuitive as it could be.

To make it easier for users to edit their cases and other texts, the design overhaul will now allow users to layer, annotate, and highlight their collages with a persistent right side bar. Teachers will no longer have to click through a series of pop-up windows. Instead, they will be able to make multiple its in the side bar without the page needing to reload each edit.

PRX is always looking for ways to improve distribution tools and platforms for producers.  While we have mostly focused on getting completed programs to audiences across broadcast and digital, we are also increasingly hearing from producers and stations that the task of managing audio archives is a constant challenge.

So when we first heard of the remarkable efforts of Anne Wootton and Bailey Smith – the dynamic duo behind Pop Up Archive (winner of the 2012 Knight News Challenge) – we knew we should join forces.

An awesome partnership was born, and for the last several months PRX’s development team has been working with Anne and Bailey to create an easy-to-use web application that archives audio and a lot more.

Today the official announcement of the Pop Up Archive beta site is out (see below), and interested producers can request an invite to take it for a spin.

Among other things, the Pop Up Archive:

• Generates automatic transcripts and keywords so that audio is both searchable and easy to organize.
• Provides access to an archive of sound from around the world.
• Has options for both private and public storage.
• Saves time and money for producers, creators, radio stations, media organizations, and archives of all stripes.

Pop Up Archive is integrated with PRX so members of both can use their existing accounts, and will have the option of publishing their audio to PRX for distribution.

The beta site is open to testers for a limited time! Request an invite here.

The official press release is below.

---

NEWS RELEASE
Contact: Anne Wootton, 510-463-4066, edison@popuparchive.org

Pop Up Archive to create open search and access for audio

Web platform stores, transcribes, and organizes digital media

We gather sound to tell stories. Memories fade and material can easily get lost or degrade. But when it’s easy to archive, it’s easy to find the threads that create stories when you need them.

OAKLAND, Calif. – (May 13, 2013) – Pop Up Archive and PRX are elated to announce the launch of Pop Up Archive, a web-­based system that brings audio to life. The service is a lightweight web application that allows users to search and access audio files from anywhere, opening a door for content creators and journalists to strengthen their work. It is currently being developed as an invitation ­only pilot, but will open to the public in summer 2013.

Pop Up Archive allows media creators to save, organize and find audio without installing any software or managing a server. The system is capable of ingesting large amounts of digital sound and providing automated transcripts with subject tags, timestamps and robust indexing for powerful search. Visitors to Pop Up Archive can also access a quickly growing database of international sound from oral history archives, universities, media organizations and individual collectors. With this audio comes the potential to liberate undiscovered histories, bring new voices into media, and make archiving an integral and painless part of production workflows.

“Most small and independent multimedia publishers have not developed good systems for archiving and sharing their work,” said Michael Maness, vice president for journalism and media innovation at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. “Pop Up Archive opens a real opportunity for these content creators to increase the value of their work by allowing them to organize and access audio content and preserve it for future generations.”

Pop Up Archive is a winner of Knight Foundation’s 2012 News Challenge.

Voices from archives around the world are waiting to be discovered in previously
unsearchable audio.

Interested producers can request an invite at popuparchive.org to join the beta test. Pop Up Archive provides unlimited free public storage through the Internet Archive, a San Francisco nonprofit founded to build an Internet library with permanent access to historical collections that exist in digital format. For more sensitive material, private storage options are also available.

The entire Pop Up Archive system will be free for a limited time, with tiered service plans in the future. Planned future improvements to the service include editable transcripts and keywords, additional options for handling rights and access to audio, group memberships and enterprise services for digital audio collections.

For larger media organizations, Pop Up Archive acts as a layer on top of existing content management systems and production workflows. Its simple web interface integrates with reporter habits to strengthen newsrooms — no clunky software. A simple drag-­and-­drop functionality allows users to add audio that becomes immediately searchable with context beyond the typical YouTube search result. Pop Up Archive is building a dynamic archival body of content that can be easily searched and accessed via API, informed by related efforts such as the American Archive Content Inventory Project and the Public Media Platform.

Request an invite today at popuparchive.org for a free account to start making your audio searchable. Archive entire collections of raw audio and completed work — save time and rediscover amazing material by revolutionizing how you organize it.

About PRX
PRX is an award-­winning public media company, harnessing innovative technology to bring significant stories to millions of people. PRX operates public radio’s largest distribution marketplace, offering thousands of audio stories for broadcast and digital use, including signature programs like The Moth Radio Hour. PRX mobile apps include This American Life, KCRW Music Mine, Radiolab, and Public Radio Player. Contact: Jason Gordon, 212­627­8098; jason [at] pkpr [dot] com.

About Pop Up Archive
Pop Up Archive is building a collection of sound from around the world with partners and clients from a growing body of media organizations, oral history archives, and journalists. Born at the UC­ Berkeley School of Information and supported by the Knight Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the system is a lightweight web application that makes audio searchable without requiring technical expertise from users. Contact: Anne Wootton, 510­463­4066; edison [at] popuparchive [dot] org.

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. The foundation believes that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org. Contact: Andrew Sherry, 305­908­2677; media [at] knightfoundation [dot] org.

 

Lá no passado não havia supermercados. ou fábricas. muito menos empresas de transporte ou hospedagem. as pessoas tinham que conseguir o que queriam [pois não sabiam, não podiam ou não tinham tempo para fazer] umas das outras. este é o metamodelo original para o que hoje chamamos de P2P. negócios [ou transações] entre pares, normalmente mediados por algum tipo de rede social, que habilita as conexões, relacionamentos e interações e ainda serve de substrato de confiança para as transações. que são de bem perto, por sinal. olhe para airBNB: redes de pessoas que querem uma casa ou um quarto,  por um prazo que varia de um dia a um ano, e não querem a experiência pasteurizada [mesmo dos melhores hotéis] e, pelo diferencial de hospedagem que conseguem, ainda vão pagar menos. nunca tentou? tente, nunca deu errado pra mim. e pode ser muito interessante do lado do fornecedor, também. olhe o gráfico abaixo…

nos EUA e UK, quase 1/3 da população abaixo de 47 anos usou um serviço P2P para economizar dinheiro recentemente; mais de 1/3 da mesma faixa achou novas fontes de renda oferecendo algum serviço no mesmo modelo e muito mais de 1/3 aprendeu algo ou usou algum tipo de serviço de estranhos em plataformas P2P. isso é muito, para algo que não só deixou de existir há anos, ainda mais quando se leva em conta que, agora, o relacionamento é  com “estranhos”, gente que a gente achou na rede. este, claro, é apenas um dos efeitos das redes sociais na economia e na sociedade: como é que você iria alugar um quarto em londres, em julho, de um estranho, numa boa, sem todo o contexto –inclusive as referências- que a rede lhe dá, hoje?…

no canto do ringue estão as corporações. os gráficos do texto são de um relatório da JWT intelligence [travel: changing course, neste link] e as respostas abaixo dizem muito de um mundo em que as redes sociais tornaram as pessoas bem mais próximas e, em rede, em tempo real, começaram a entender melhor o que são as empresas e o que elas querem de nós, seus usuários. neste processo, um monte de negócios não sobreviverá: os que não entenderem que estão em rede, queiram ou não, irão primeiro. porque empresas são abstrações, em rede. depois, vão sumir as que, mesmo em rede, não tiverem uma performance “na rede”, “de rede”. o que sobrar estará e será em rede, ali no nível 9 de competência social. por que? olhe só a figura abaixo… 56% de todos os americanos e ingleses [68% entre os de menos de 34 anos!] acham que é massa as pessoas poderem evitar o relacionamento com negócios tradicionais através de plataformas P2P, realizando as coisas umas com as outras. leia as outras respostas você mesmo, enquanto pensa sobre o evitar da primeira.

algo me diz que estamos em um tempo de  grande oportunidade para as empresas que quiserem, de fato, mudar [e sobreviver]. descubra se você está numa delas, e rápido. se não, peça demissão agora. seu futuro pode depender disso…

thejogging:

Straightened Out ‘@’ Symbol, 2013

Digital image

✍

The long tail was there all along.

Immaginiamo di stare parlando di un ragazzino pelle e ossa. Gracile. Denutrito. In qualsiasi paese rispettoso della logica, prima di discutere di quanto in fretta il ragazzino corre i 400 metri piani, o di quanto bene suona il violoncello, o di come se la cava con le traduzioni da Euripide, tutti si preoccuperebbero della sua gracilità, della sua malnutrizione. Direbbero: "diamogli da mangiare, curiamo la sua dieta, diamogli ricostituenti, e poi, solo poi potremo iniziare a parlare del resto." Logico, no?

Logico - ma in Italia non funziona così.

In Italia plotoni di opinionisti, consulenti, funzionari e politici discettano imperterriti delle prestazioni del ragazzino debilitato come se nulla fosse, come se fosse un ragazzone pieno di muscoli. E se l'ingenuo della situazione fa timidamente notare che il ragazzino è pelle e ossa, gli rispondono con un sospiro infastidito: "Vabbè, ma a parte quello...". Oppure: "E' vero, lo riconosciamo, mangia solo un tozzo di pane al giorno; ma lo mangia in maniera inefficiente, sprecando un sacco di briciole. Che pensi a mangiare in maniera più efficiente le risorse esistenti e poi, solo poi si potrà discutere - austerità permettendo - di passare a 1.1 tozzi di pane al giorno...".

Ma c'è dell'altro.

In Italia il ragazzino debilitato, per qualche prodigioso motivo, riesce comunque a correre i 400 metri piani arrivando appena dietro ai ragazzoni pieni di muscoli francesi e tedeschi.... Ciò gli procura forse medaglie, prime pagine sui giornali, apprezzamenti e magari anche una mela, oltre al tozzo di pane? Ma neanche per idea. Gli si rinfaccia che è arrivato mezzo secondo dietro ai primi. Gli si rinfaccia che nella sua catapecchia non riesce ad attrarre abbastanza ragazzoni dalla Finlandia o dall'Olanda, guarda caso scarsamente interessati a catapecchie e tozzi di pane. Gli si rinfaccia che non è abbastanza servizievole nei confronti dei ricconi che ogni tanto passano sul marciapiede davanti a lui: se lo fosse, magari ogni tanto gli tirerebbero una moneta. E così via.

Strano paese, l'Italia. Un paese che ha abolito la logica. Un paese dove l'ipocrisia e la malafede hanno davvero troppo spazio.

Scritto pensando soprattutto alla ricerca e all'università italiane. Di cui, sia chiaro, conosco benissimo i difetti e i limiti, che è un dovere combattere. Ma ciò non toglie che la parabola sia in larga parte valida, secondo me.

read more

I was in National Airport in DC yesterday and came upon this scene. The vets are being welcomed by passengers waiting for planes and by people who came especially for the event. It’s a trip sponsored by the Honor Flight Network, a non-profit that brings vets to DC for free to see the memorials and sights. It was a genuinely heartwarming scene. For all the books I’ve read about WW II and the movies I’ve seen, I still can’t imagine what it took to serve.

BTW, Honor Flight’s page — HonorFlight.org — warns us not to be confused by HonorFlight.com. That’ll teach you: If you’re a .org, grab the .com for another $15/year.

The on-site installation of GHOST at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art involves iPads distributed in ten locations within the museum. All are running GHOST live via wifi in the kiosk mode, so that as a landing screen visitors experience the open pages of a Guest Book where the (erased) titles of the six database documentaries fade in and out intermittently. The titles vanish the moment one touches (or mouses over them), even as the piece launches. Once launched, the title video for GHOST plays, followed by the title of each individual piece written in charcoal on the Guest Book’s pages. Next comes the Zeega.

Below are some photographs documenting the on-site installation.

In an earlier post (Trusting Anonymous Twitter Users) I wrote about how ordinary citizens in Mexico are using Twitter to stay informed about areas of immediate risk in their cities. In our social media research we saw some anonymous Twitter accounts begin to amass large numbers of followers as they gained repute as trusted sources in the dissemination of information related to shootings, explosions and areas of danger in some Mexican cities. If you are not familiar with this earlier blog post you may want to take a look at it since I am about to describe the rest of the story as we discovered and recently published it (The Rise and the Fall of a Citizen Reporter) at the WebScience 2013 conference.

The limits of “Big Data”

While the data and the narrative we presented in the paper “Hiding in Plain Sight: A Tale of Trust and Mistrust Inside a Community of Citizen Reporters” were very interesting, my co-authors and I had the feeling that we had not discovered the full story. For one thing, who really was @GodFather, the person behind the pseudonym we had created for the prominent account in our data? Was it a real person? What if it was merely one of the successful tweet-bots that researchers have launched in the past? Or, maybe it was some guy tweeting from Scotland posing as a young woman living in Mexico. Importantly, what about the accusation that she was not really interested in the well-being of her community, but was instead working for the Zetas, the criminal drug cartel that has been accused of some of the more heinous crimes of the Mexican drug-war. Was there any truth to it?

Furthermore, there were several events that we had discovered and had not written in the paper or the blog post. Looking at the aggregate data, my co-author Eni Mustafaraj and I discovered some important developments in the lives of these citizen reporters: Shortly before the accusation against @GodFather appeared, the City had seen a lot of violence and the authorities had failed to act quickly. @GodFather had tried to organize an informant movement of  “eagles” (aguilas) on Twitter to report on the actions of the “hawks” (halcones). Hawks is the name given to low-level cartel associates working on street corners using cellphones to communicate with their bosses. These hawks are seen as important actors informing cartels about the movement of the Mexican Army and Navy so they can escape after an attack. Therefore, another distinct possibility was that @GodFather was accused because she was becoming annoying to a specific cartel.

 

What was really happening? Was @GodFather one of the prominent citizen reporters informing the people about areas they should avoid on any given day? Was she a traitor working for the Zetas? Or perhaps a fake account? Why was she attacked, and why did she subsequently stop tweeting? Was she still tweeting from another account name or had she disappeared from the community?

 

 

Using a Berkman talk to make the connection

Though we wanted to find out more, our big data analysis was not helping much. We needed verification on the ground. But we could not contact @GodFather directly (we figured that, “Hi, I am a researcher from the US and would like to verify your identity…” would not take us far). We knew that her account had been compromised in the past, so she had every reason to hide her identity. Moreover, there existed several accounts with similar-sounding names, some of them clearly belonging to trolls attacking her, and we did not want to end up talking to them by accident!

How could we uncover the truth? The Berkman Center and a measure of good luck helped us make a breakthrough. In July, 2012, the Berkman Center asked my co-author Andrés Monroy-Hernández and me to give a talk (“Narcotweets: Reporting on the Mexican Drug War using Social Media”) on our earlier work. I knew that Berkman talks are advertised, attended and tweeted widely online. Though not very likely, it was possible that some “tuiteros” from Mexico would follow our talk live. If I told them what we had discovered, even using pseudonyms, members of the citizen reporter community would certainly recognize the real identities to which the pseudonyms referred, and perhaps they would be willing to talk to us.

Indeed, by the end of the talk (available for viewing), Mariel Garcia, a Berkman intern from Mexico who was tweeting about the talk, showed me a couple of tuiteros accounts that had shown active interest in the talk. They were offering to answer any questions I might have. Of course I jumped on the opportunity; a few hours and many direct messages later I had established connection with one of the prominent citizen reporters of the community.

From that citizen reporter Eni and I learned that we had missed an important point in the data analysis. One of the reasons that @GodFather had stopped tweeting was that her anonymity had been compromised in late July, 2011. One of the trolls that had been attacking her throughout the year revealed her real name, her street address, and her picture. Now that we knew where to look, we went back to the data and found the relevant tweets. Her pictures had been deleted on the Web but we were able to look through archives and locate several of them. Now that we knew a lot about Melissa Lotzer, the pseudonym used the by the owner of the @GodFather account, all we needed was a way to contact her. We wanted to interview her about her motives and threats she had received.

For reasons that will soon become apparent, we can reveal some details about the community we were studying. Our community of Twitter users is located in Monterrey, Mexico, and they have been using the tag #MTYfollow to stay informed about dangerous situations in their city. The prominent citizen reporter, @trackMTY (aka @GodFather) was owned by a young woman who, like many such reporters, spent many hours a day informing and being informed by her sources. Melissa Lotzer (not her real name, but the one with which she is known in the community) became an active citizen reporter in March 2010, shortly after the #MTYfollow tag was adopted by the community. The drug war had hit the town of Comales, in the neighboring Tamaulipas region, where a drug cartel was reportedly holding some citizens hostage. Melissa and some of her some friends formed a Facebook group, Mexico Nueva Revolucion, and sent an open letter to President Cardenas begging for him to send the Army to free Comales. Following the discussion on various blogs, we see that Melissa and the MNR group received credit for their initiative.

But not everyone in the community was happy with these developments; Melissa’s accounts were attacked several times by trolls. But by early 2011, her reputation in the community was strong enough that Twitter shut down some of the trolling accounts after the outcry of the community. Her later initiative to organize the aguilas movement, however, was not as successful. While more than 80 aguilasMTY accounts were created within 2 days (!) ready to support her cause, many of her old friends did not follow her in this movement. Renewed troll attacks and troll collaboration with an editor of the famous Blog del Narco proved to be too strong for Melissa’s reputation to withstand.

 

We connected with Melissa and established a trusted two-way connection. We were able to verify her identity not only from the pointers of other citizen reporters, but also because we could go back and verify her claims through our tweet corpus. You can read more about our interviews with her in the later sections of the paper The Rise and the Fall of a Citizen Reporter, and you can find our slides from the WebScience 2013 talk online.

Communities of Citizen Reporters.

In recognizing Melissa we recognize the thousand of other citizen reporters who spend long hours daily informing their fellow citizens about important and dangerous events unfolding in their cities and neighborhoods. Like most of the citizen reporters involved in supporting the communities of Monterrey, Saltilo, Reynosa, Veracruz and elsewhere, she is an idealist who wants to help others. Her experience has made her stronger despite the risk to which she has been exposed. Even after all her experience she would choose to do it all over again because, as she says:

I’m completely sure that trackmty was the reason why many people started using twitter. I receive comments daily by followers that are opening a twitter account to a family member just to follow me [...] They tell me: please take care of my mom, she will be reading your tweets, she will not be reporting cases because she doesn’t know how to use a blackberry. Many similar cases like that happen every day.

Voice of Melissa Lotzer (@trackMTY) Click the play button to hear.

 

PS. We also found out more about the identity of one of Melissa’s trolls: A young clerk at a local policy station inspired by WWF characters and with a hobby of posting photographs of prostitutes and gays on his blog.

 

 

 

Back when the Digital Public Library of America was gearing up, I oddly got invited to participate in a day of brainstorming about what could be done to make the US. State Department Diplomatic Reception Rooms more accessible to the public.

About twenty of us spent the day talking in the Rooms themselves, and we also got a tour of some of the inner offices on Secretary Clinton’s floor. I don’t know how much the day helped the State Department, but it was certainly an interesting day for me. I think my only contribution was suggesting (along with Martin Kalfatovic) that State give the DPLA its spreadsheet of objects + metadata, which I think they are getting close to doing.

The Rooms are ornate and even palatial, which strikes a discordant note for a humble democracy. On the other hand, are we supposed to pretend to visiting dignitaries that the U.S.A. can’t afford to do up a room real nice? And, most important, the rooms are filled with 5,000 museum-quality pieces of furniture, paintings, ceramics, and bric-a-brac, many with particular historic significance, such as the desk on which the Treaty of Paris was signed. You could spend days there just admiring the objects on display…if you were lucky enough to be invited to a workshop held in these rooms. Or, I suppose, if you were a visiting head of state with a surprisingly light schedule.

But what’s perhaps oddest about the Rooms is that they are stuck inside the Harry S. Truman Building, the State Department’s headquarters.

The building was designed in the 1950s, was dedicated in 1961, and from the outside looks like an upscale high school. Its large open lobby is quite pleasing, and must have been more so before all the security machinery was installed. Then the elevators open onto the 8th floor and you’re in a dream of the 18th century.

So, last night I went to a reception in the Rooms for people who had contributed to them. Very much a pinstripe and wingtip affair for the guys, and whatever is the suitable generalization for the women. There were perhaps 100 people there, and I can guarantee that every person there contributed far more to the Rooms than I had. Many had donated very substantial sums of money, for the Rooms are paid for and maintained entirely by donations; no tax payer money was harmed by these rooms. Other people have put in considerable time and effort. Not me. But I was in DC for the morning, so I had accepted the invitation.

It was a big enough occasion to rope Secretary Kerry into attending. He appeared about twenty minutes after it began, and the experienced handlers at State immediately had us form a line. As you approach Sec. Kerry, you hand a card with your name on it to an assistant; you were given this card when you went through security. You approach the Secretary as your name is read, alas, with no trumpets. The Secretary says something placeholdery to you if he doesn’t know you from Adam, puts his arm around you, and smiles for the camera. What a job.

To me the Secretary pleasantly said — having just heard my name announced — “Dr. David Douglas Weinberger. That’s a very long name.”

I’d say that that was the most insipid thing I’d ever heard, but I’m afraid I topped it. “I voted for you many times,” said I.

I was surprisingly flustered. When he put his long arm around me, I put mine around his waist, which I think violated both protocol and security procedures. I was not wrestled to the ground, and the Secretary handled it like a pro. Not me. I’m pretty sure I was staring at his collar when when the photo was taken. The man wears a beautiful collar.

Smile. Click. Next.

After the reception line, Secretary Kerry gave some quite appropriate remarks about the importance of our history despite its comparative brevity, and about the good in the world the US does, pointing specifically to the seven-fold increase in the number of kids in school in Afghanistan, and the rise from single digits to 40+% enrollment of girls. If you’re going to pick examples of US beneficence, that’s a good’un. John Kerry is smart and serious and I am happy to have him as our Secretary of State, although I’ll be happier once Ed Markey wins the election to be his replacement in the Senate.

Then it was time for massive mingling, which is never my strong suit. There was a table of excellent all-American cheeses, and a variety of all-American wines. As the bartender pointed out each wine’s state of origin, she noted that wines are made in every state. “Even Nebraska?” I asked rather randomly. “I didn’t say they were all good,” she replied, thus confirming that she is not a State Department employee and never will be.

I spent a lot of time in the comfort of Martin [twitter: UDCMRK] and Mary Kalfatovic, DPLA buddies and people I am enormously fond of. After about 30 minutes of post-Kerry mingling, we went out for Thai food.

Thus we departed the locale of what certainly should be an upcoming Nicolas Cage movie — National Treasure: Diplomatic Reception — with the Abigail Adams tiara in my pocket and no one the wiser.

Este é  o último texto de uma série sobre o sustainable brands rio 2013, um seminário sobre marcas e sustentabilidade. na sessão tendências e direções, o blog tentou entender o que é uma marca [primeiro post desta conversa], o que é sustentabilidade [que um sistema, como se pode ver no segundo post] e, hoje, partindo da ideia de que a performance contínua de atores e suas agendas em redes sociais transforma todos os brands em serviços, vamos tentar entender o que é a sustentabilidade de uma marca. simbora. leia os posts anteriores, porém, senão este aqui não vai fazer muito sentido…

partindo do pressuposto acima e levando em conta que redes sociais, no contexto de marcas e sustentabilidade, está muito além do que as redes “virtuais”, se pode dizer que um brand, de bem mais de uma forma. é definido por sua presença em rede. depende de como a cadeia de valor da marca se articula com fornecedores e consumidores e tem tudo a ver com o contexto onde tais transações ocorrem. os recursos à disposição de todos, seja a água dos rios, o dinheiro para investir, o ar que se respira e se polui, a paciência do consumidor pelo acerto do serviço de seu fornecedor, tudo tem limite. e o contexto, cada vez mais, exige que se use cada vez menos do que o limite natural de cada um permite. não é porque seu negócio pode e tem os meios para gerar energia a partir de carvão vegetal que o contexto, cioso da mata, aqui e lá longe, vai aceitar isso como um fato consumado. redes sociais mediam todas estas transações que, no fim, resultam na construção de significados e conhecimento.

lá no SBrio13 eu disse que não sabia nada de marcas e sustentabilidade, o que é a mais pura verdade. como ignorante no assunto, tratei de montar uma pequena teoria para me ajudar a entender do que tinha que falar, que a gente vai ver [e ver se faz sentido] agora. e a conversa é centrada em contexto, o que é apontado pela forma especial em que a palavra aparece na imagem acima, que era um dos slides.

tenha um pouco de paciência para as fórmulas abaixo; elas não foram buriladas e isso não é um texto científico, mas uma tentativa de exprimir, de forma simples, a conversa sobre marcas e sustentabilidade. vamos lá.

primeiro, considere um sistema de n processos, S…

…definido pela performance simultânea e interativa de seus processos. na figura acima, cada p_i é um processo, os p_i  são performances de processos individuais e P vai representar a performance de uma certa rede de processos, como abaixo, denotando a performance simultânea de n processos.

isso aí em cima pode representar um sistema [de forma beeem abstrata, claro]. o próximo passo é definir os contextos C, num sistema S, em relação a um processo p_k, o que é mostrado a seguir. C_k são todas as possíveis redes de performances de 1, 2… n-1 processos, excluindo p_k. daí, os contextos C_k são…

…o que nos leva a dizer que um sistema S é sustentável se…

para qualquer k, não existe nenhum contexto c, no conjunto de todos os possíveis contextos C_k, para o qual a performance de p_k no contexto c se aproxime de um nível inaceitável [representado pelo símbolo matemático para indefinido]. como uma marca é uma performance, dentro de um sistema e seus contextos, é fácil concluir que o problema de sustentabilidade de uma marca, desde sempre e antes mesmo das redes sociais virtuais, é um problema de sustentabilidade das redes da [ou associadas à] marca. todas as redes. todos os contextos. como performance, um brand é necessariamente um conjunto de fluxos [de partes, peças, produtos… …serviços, informação, conhecimento] em rede. este é o contexto de castells, no qual, num sistema [sociedade] em rede [e seus contextos… fluxos são…

e P, I, C…, acima, quer dizer pessoas, instituições e coisas; as reticências são para deixar implícito que tudo, alguma hora, vai estar em rede e será parte de fluxos. a coisa, propriamente dita, ou sua representação virtual e conectada, quando não as duas, ao mesmo tempo. os fluxos de castells envolvem, em rede, tudo o que existe ao nosso redor, digitalizado, conectado, móvel e cada vez mais programável…

e, em quase todos os sentidos, pode-se dizer que…

…quando se trata marcas, redes, processos, sistemas, contextos, performance e sustentabilidade como tratamos aqui. claro que isso não explica como você vai fazer o que para tornar sua marca sustentável, nem era essa a ideia. o que se quis foi tentar sistematizar um pouco o pensamento sobre marcas e sustentabilidade em rede, que anda meio contaminado por um excesso de achos [i think that…] e casos [cases…] que têm pouco ou quase nada a ver com os reais problemas que as marcas, em rede [algumas contra à vontade], estão enfrentando. além dos tres Ps originais do triple bottom line de 1994, quando ainda não havia internet, menos ainda os primórdios da internet de tudo que temos hoje e vamos ver tomar conta de tudo em breve [2o anos?…], precisamos de um quarto: fluxos são presença em rede, causa e consequência de presença em todo lugar, em qualquer contexto.

para serem sustentáveis, as marcas contemporâneas têm que tratar, equilibrada e simultaneamente, pessoas, planeta, prosperidade e presença. nenhum destes Ps é mais importante do que outro e nenhum dos processos associados a qualquer deles, a qualquer tempo, deve levar qualquer processo associado a qualquer outro a ter uma performance inaceitável. e boa parte da “aceitabilidade” pode ser efeito colateral da presença de sua marca em rede o que dá a presença um papel pelo menos igual aos outros Ps mas, até aqui, negligenciado na política e estratégia da vasta maioria das organizações. se é o caso no seu lugar… se ligue. ainda é tempo.

os slides usados na palestra estão neste link. até a próxima.

Several news organizations are reporting today that the U.S. Government, through the Department of State, through the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), sent a letter to the organization Defense Distributed, requesting the immediate removal of several "data files" (in their words) off of their DEFCAD website that they claim violate federal law, including the plans for the "Liberator" 3D-printed handgun. The letter was phrased in the manner of a request, but one can be sure that sanctions would follow should Defense Distributed simply ignore the letter. (The Atlantic Wire was kind enough to post the letter in question, available for download here.) Defense Distributed has complied and removed the files from their website, but has indicated that they will "appeal." In this case, that appears to mean requesting a formal determination from the DDTC as to the status of the files in question, which could provide the basis for further legal review.

There's a lot to unpack in this story. Let's talk law first.

 

I. Data Exports, International Arms Trade, and the First Amendment

The obvious concern this action raises is one of free expression. It's hard to argue with the conclusion that the Department of State just threatened to punish Defense Distributed for disseminating information about how to make a 3D-printed gun (at least, without asking the government's permission first). And as tempting as it is to use this as a launching point for the code-as-speech debate, this case is not even that nuanced. The target here was not the executable object code of software; what DEFCAD was hosting were "computer aided design" or CAD files, which are to design blueprints what Word files are to books. Their regulation by the government is obviously and inherently done for the expressive content that they convey.

But before doing a full First Amendment analysis one should start with the crime alleged. The letter cites 22 U.S.C. § 2778, the law authorizing the President to "control the import and export of defense articles and defense services" by creating a list of such articles and services (the "United States Munitions List") and creating a licensing regime around them. The regulations promulgated by the Department of State have long extended the application beyond the physical items and into the informational: 22 C.F.R. § 120.10 regulates the export of "technical data," defined as information "required for the design, development, production, manufacture, assembly, operation, repair, testing, maintenance or modification of defense articles." Important exceptions exist, however, for information in the "public domain" (defined here as information available to the public through sales "at newsstands and bookstores," through publicly-accessible trade publications, through public libraries, and a few other needlessly technical avenues), as well as information "concerning general scientific, mathematical or engineering principles commonly taught in schools, colleges and universities." As patent doctrine so often cautions, one should not mistake the first application of knowledge with the discovery of the relevant knowledge itself. I'm not sure there's much in the components of this gun that a gunsmith doesn't already understand. It is therefore possible that this information is outside of the claimed authority altogether, which would make this a very short blog post.

Courts considering the First Amendment application to "technical data" exportation regulations have held that the fact that the restriction is applied to international trade is quite material. The leading authority on point is a 1978 case from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, raised in the context of exporting blueprints for missile cases. The court upheld punishment notwithstanding a First Amendment challenge, but only after adopting a narrow framing of this statute and holding that the prohibition on the distribution of this information was a permissible "incidental limitation" on speech, suffered as a consequence of the governments legitimate authority to regulate "international arms traffic." Even then, the court seemed inclined to apply the law to raw information only if the defendant knows it is to be used for military purposes. In his The First Amendment and the Export Laws (58 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 368, 381 (1990)) Allen Shinn notes that, following this case, the Department of Justice limited application of the law to circumstances where the government could show a specific arrangement with a foreign party. (I don't know if the past twenty years has eroded that prudent limitation.) A 1989 Ninth Circuit case and a 2012 Ninth Circuit case reapplied the doctrine to later dissemination of technical data to foreign powers; these cases analyzed the application of the law under United States v. O'Brien's speech/conduct distinction, which I think is a completely inappropriate place to begin, but even if you accept that, the limitation still only appears valid when giving technical data to foreign powers directly.

If the law only survives First Amendment scrutiny under such obviously international applications, and only applies to technical data beyond the scope public knowledge, it clearly should not apply to the work of Defense Distributed. In fact, there's something profoundly dangerous in the Department of State's attempt to draw this within the scope of its authority. The letter to Defense Distributed, and the law under which the letter claims authority, clearly contemplate the international trade of arms, and asserts the power Congress has given to the Executive Branch to regulate importation and exportation of arms. I don't see the justification for that position beyond the fact that Defense Distributed is publishing on the Internet. If our government takes the position that all material published online is treated with the scrutiny we used to reserve for international defense contractors, we have just placed severe limitations on persons Congress never sought to control when it passed these international trade statutes. We simply cannot justify limitations on freedom as necessary for foreign affairs, only to turn around and apply such restriction to obviously domestic conduct.

 

II. Plans for Undetectable Firearms and the First Amendment

There is another layer of potential criminality here as well, although it has not yet been asserted against Defense Distributed. Namely, the plans appear to be for the creation of a device which itself might be proscribed under the law. 18 U.S.C. § 922(p)(1)(A) declares it unlawful for "any person to manufacture, import, sell, ship, deliver, possess, transfer, or receive any firearm" that is not detectable through walk-through metal detectors to the same level as a "Security Exemplar" created at the direction of the Attorney General for testing of detection equipment. The "Liberator" handgun was designed to include a six-ounce steel cube inside it in order to avoid this issue, but the plans themselves do not require its inclusion, and thus could easily be used to create an unlawful undetectable gun. What, then, should be the culpability of the person that tells you how to create the prohibited object? What if instead of the State Department issuing such a letter it was the FBI arresting Defense Distributed members for aiding a § 922(p)(1)(A) violation?

This is a question of considerable precedent, though less straightforward than one may initially expect. In the realm of advocacy for criminal activity, we have the very high bar put forth by the Supreme Court's Brandenburg v. Ohio case, which prohibits the punishment of advocacy of unlawful conduct except when there is both an intent on the part of the speaker for the listener to engage in said unlawful conduct and it is likely that the advocacy will result in imminent unlawful action. While this is the most direct case on point for crime-inducing speech, some courts have endeavored, either explicitly or implicitly, to identify a separate category for speech that facilitates a crime instead. Some courts have found that such "crime-facilitating speech" (to borrow a phrase from Eugene Volokh's excellent article on the topic) might be punished under a lesser standard than Brandenburg. Other courts hold true to Brandenburg, and the Supreme Court has yet to weigh in and indicate which is correct.

A classic example of the lesser standard is Rice v. Paladin Enterprises, a case concerning a book called Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors. While delivered in the form of narrative fiction, the book provides detailed instructions on how to kill undetected, and an individual named James Perry followed such instructions to the letter when killing three individuals as a paid hitman. In the subsequent wrongful death lawsuit, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit rejected application of Brandenburg, finding it limited solely to "advocacy" of crime, and instead found that this could be punished as the aiding and abetting of a crime, at least where (as the parties had stipulated there) the author knew and intended that the information be used for the commission of murder. (The strategy behind such a damning concession is lost to history.) The limited nature of the holding has been used by other courts to avoid its application, and several other circuits have rejected this narrowing of Brandenburg.

Another past example is the The Anarchist Cookbook, which quite famously contains instructions on how to create all sorts of devices of destruction and chaos, many of which are prohibited by law. Despite the book's 40-year history, however, there are no major cases addressing the constitutionality of The Anarchist Cookbook. A FOIA request for FBI information related to the Cookbook reveals a memo from the Assistant Attorney General Robert Mardian to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (page 123 of the PDF), wherein the Attorney General's office could not find a federal law that the mere publication of the Anarchist Cookbook violated, though they did not opine on whether a law that did criminalize the publication of such books might pass First Amendment scrutiny. The application of the First Amendment to such generalized information is coming back into public debate; reports seem to agree that the Tsarnaev brothers used Internet instructions for the pressure cooker bombs used in the Boston attacks last month, and one can only assume a corresponding demand will be made for the restriction of such speech online.

But assuming the Brandenburg provides the proper standard for this case, any punishment of Defense Distributed's members would have to show both that they intended that this technology be used to make unlawfully undetectable guns and that such unlawful manufacture was imminent. There are reasons to doubt the government's ability to do either. It is worth mentioning again that the gun includes within its conception a steel cube which would avoid the undetectability issue. This does not mean, of course, that Defense Distributed does not intend to have users make guns that do not include that cube, but it's at least circumstantial evidence to suggest the opposite. Beyond the question of intent, the question of "imminence" in the context of online speech is one that plagues scholars, and given the considerable length of this post it's a discussion best left for another day. It is safe to say that the deployment of a CAD drawing to a 3D printer is about as imminent as one can get online, though it is not the mere minutes or hours that one could assume is the standard from Brandenburg.

 

III. First Amendment Policy and the "Liberator" Handgun

There are also considerations that go deeper than the dry application of the law as it stands today – which I do think favors Defense Distributed both in the scope of the statute and the First Amendment rights at stake. I'd like to explore the policy of the doctrine as well.

It may seem counterintuitive, but there are good reasons for our reluctance to prohibit the dissemination of information on how to commit crimes. Volokh's aforementioned article notes several. To begin with, the description of crimes may instruct law-abiding citizens on how not to run afoul of the law. This is laughable when considering instructions for murder, but it is quite important when considering discussions of tax evasion, or producing handguns that may or may not trigger liability under the Undetectable Firearms Act. It can also train citizens on how to be aware of the commission of crimes – for example, knowledge about frauds and scams can help a person detect when someone is trying to scam them, and knowing the material components and construction of a (possibly) illegal firearm can better inform the public about what to look out for in the world. Turning to more Miklejohnian justifications, instructions on how to commit crimes can greatly inform the public as they debate the proper nature and scope of punishment under the law. If our tortured history of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act teaches us anything, it's that Congress can do great harm to our justice system if they do not understand what they are criminalizing. Beyond the serious, one must also consider the more inarticulable desire to understand the world around us. The truth is many people (including me, and I'm willing to bet a lot of you) have read The Anarchist Cookbook out of mere curiosity. We like "true crime" as a genre and complain when movies are unrealistic in portraying a heist or hit. Something less obvious, less weighty and serious, but no less significant is lost when we starve the public's curiosity because we worry about what people may do with the information learned.

I'll freely admit that it's hard to keep these good things in mind when considering a new and uncertain evil. Owen Fiss makes an important observation at the beginning of his The Irony of Free Speech that a lot of the legendary 1960s First Amendment cases – while dressed in the trappings of an existential crisis – were actually rather tame occurrences. The speech in Brandenburg was not the out-and-out call for armed rebellion it is made out to be; it was a gathering of a dozen racists on an Ohio farm where Clarence Brandenburg said, "we're not a revengent organization, but if our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race, it's possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken." The greatest violence he did that day was to the dictionary. The triviality of the harm was dispositive in Watts v. United States: an 18-year old at a public rally saying, "I have already received my draft classification as 1-A and I have got to report for my physical this Monday coming. I am not going. If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is LBJ." The Pentagon Papers, as power an image as they are, were at heart a history of unethical and perhaps unconstitutional behavior of since-gone presidential administrations, circulated after a new President took office. Again, the urgency of the case is made larger in hindsight. Paladin Enterprises is, of course, the counterfactual and the counter-result: a triple homicide was directly linked to book at issue, and the court found a way to punish that activity. It is this fear of the existential crisis that leads me to worry that a court considering the "Liberator" gun would strain to punish this activity notwithstanding First Amendment doctrine and policy.

So as we assess the danger here we should be mindful of what happened to Hit Man after it was adjudicated to be unlawful in Paladin Enterprises: it found its way to the Internet, and is now freely available on the Pirate Bay, right alongside The Anarchist Cookbook and the blueprints for the "Liberator." And we can take some comfort in knowing that the Anarchist Cookbook's instructions for making a zip gun and the Hit Man's instructions on how to use it have not combined to form a pandemic of murder. We should keep that in mind when we think about the "Liberator."

And if I could truly have my way (and with no small sense of irony after this lengthy post), I would urge the courts, the legislatures, and the public to ignore Defense Distributed's handgun altogether. It distracts from the actual issues surrounding America's profound problem with gun violence. In our dreams of a 3D-printed arsenal we soon forget that the "Liberator" cannot be made using something as simple as a MakerBot in someone's basement. This requires a 3D printer costing thousands of dollars and over a hundred dollars in raw material in order to build a gun that will probably only fire once before melting. Meanwhile, This American Life reported a few weeks back that the black market rate for a real handgun in Chicago can be as low as $25. To put it bluntly, we will see far more handgun deaths due to black market firearms this week than we will see from 3D printed guns in our entire lifetime.

Andy Sellars is a staff attorney at the Digital Media Law Project, and the Corydon B. Dunham First Amendment Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Thanks to Jeff Hermes, Phil Malone, and Kit Walsh for their thoughtful input.

Visualization of the "Liberator" handgun from Flickr user Electric-Eye, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivatives 2.0 License.

Slowly but surely, our team is moving along in the judging process for the STEM Story Project! The next round of judges will be going through proposals this week. (We know that waiting isn’t fun, so thank you for your patience!)

We’ve spent the past couple of weeks parsing through proposals about practically everything–from nanoparticles to redwood trees, hacker space to outer space, the physics of rhythm to algorithms, evolution to technological revolution, drone music to prime number symphonies, neurons and brains to zombies and calculus. Without a doubt, we’ve received quite a spectrum of story proposals! Trust us when we say that we’re just as eager as you are to hear them.

For now, hang tight. Back to you soon!

Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the #PRXSTEM hashtag on Twitter to see tweets about the proposals we’ve received!

Got pieces to upload? Programs to buy for air? Don’t do it from 3 a.m. – 7 a.m. Eastern on Sunday, May 12. You should be sleeping anyway!

Seriously though, PRX.org will have a scheduled outage and will be down during that time as our hosting provider migrates our servers from one datacenter to another.

We’ll be monitoring our Help Desk during that time and will have a maintenance page in place at PRX.org where we will provide a status update if the work extends beyond the maintenance window. However, we’re expecting this to be a smooth move.

Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns.

Thank you!

-The PRX Team

Now, relax and listen to Bruce Springsteen.

This post was written with Andrés Monroy-Hernández. It is a summary of a paper just published in American Behavioral Scientist. You can also read the full paper: The remixing dilemma: The trade-off between generativity and originality. It is part of a series of papers I have written with Monroy-Hernández using data from Scratch. You can find the others on my academic website.

Remixing — the reworking and recombination of existing creative artifacts — represents a widespread, important, and controversial form of social creativity online. Proponents of remix culture often speak of remixing in terms of rich ecosystems where creative works are novel and highly generative. However, examples like this can be difficult to find. Although there is a steady stream of media being shared freely on the web, only a tiny fraction of these projects are remixed even once. On top of this, many remixes are not very different from the works they are built upon. Why is some content more attractive to remixers? Why are some projects remixed in deeper and more transformative ways?

We try to shed light on both of these questions using data from Scratch — a large online remixing community. Although we find support for several popular theories, we also present evidence in support of a persistent trade-off that has broad practical and theoretical implications. In what we call the remixing dilemma, we suggest that characteristics of projects that are associated with higher rates of remixing are also associated with simpler and less transformative types of derivatives.

Our study is focused on two interrelated research questions. First, we ask why some projects shared in remixing communities are more or less generative than others. “Generativity” — a term we borrow from Jonathan Zittrain — describes creative works that are likely to inspire follow-on work. Several scholars have offered suggestions for why some creative works might be more generative than others. We focus on three central theories:

1. Projects that are moderately complicated are more generative. The free and open source software motto “release early and release often” suggests that simple projects will offer more obvious opportunities for contribution than more polished projects. That said, projects that are extremely simple (e.g., completely blank slates) may also uninspiring to would-be contributors.
2. Projects by prominent creators are more generative. The reasoning for this claim comes from the suggestion that remixing can act as a form of cultural conversation and that the work of popular creators can act like a common medium or language.
3. Projects that are remixes themselves are more generative. The reasoning for this final claim comes from the idea that remixing thrives through the accumulation of contributions from groups of people building on each other’s work.

Our second question focuses on the originality of remixes and asks when more or less transformative remixing occurs. For example, highly generative projects may be less exciting if the projects produced based on them are all near-identical copies of antecedent projects. For a series of reasons — including the fact that increased generativity might come by attracting less interested, skilled, or motivated individuals — we suggest that each of the factors associated with generativity will also be associated with less original forms of remixing. We call this trade-off the remixing dilemma.

We answer both of our research questions using a detailed dataset from Scratch, where young people build, share, and collaborate on interactive animations and video games. The community was built to support users of the Scratch programming environment, a desktop application with functionality similar to Flash created by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. Scratch is designed to allow users to build projects by integrating images, music, sound, and other media with programming code. Scratch is used by more than a million users, most of them under 18 years old.

To test our three theories about generativity, we measure whether or not, as well as how many times, Scratch projects were remixed in a dataset that includes every shared project. Although Scratch is designed as a remixing community, only around one tenth of all Scratch projects are ever remixed. Because more popular projects are remixed more frequently simply because of exposure, we control for the number of times each project is viewed.

Our analysis shows at least some support for all three theories of generativity described above. (1) Projects with moderate amounts of code are remixed more often than either very simple or very complex projects. (2) Projects by more prominent creators are more generative. (3) Remixes are more likely to attract remixers than de novo projects.

To test our theory that there is a trade-off between generativity and originality, we build a dataset that includes every Scratch remix and its antecedent. For each pair, we construct a measure of originality by comparing the remix to its antecedent and computing an “edit distance” (a concept we borrow from software engineering) to determine how much the projects differ.

We find strong evidence of a trade-off: (1) Projects of moderate complexity are remixed more lightly than more complicated projects. (2) Projects by more prominent creators tend to be remixed in less transformative ways. (3) Cumulative remixing tends to be associated with shallower and less transformative derivatives. That said, our support for (1) is qualified in that we do not find evidence of the increased originality for the simplest projects as our theory predicted.

We feel that our results raise difficult but important challenges, especially for the designers of social media systems. For example, many social media sites track and display user prominence with leaderboards or lists of aggregate views. This technique may lead to increased generativity by emphasizing and highlighting creator prominence. That said, it may also lead to a decrease in originality of the remixes elicited. Our results regarding the relationship of complexity to generativity and originality of remixes suggest that supporting increased complexity, at least for most projects, may have fewer drawbacks.

As supporters and advocates of remixing, we feel that although highly generative works that lead to highly original derivatives may be rare and difficult for system designers to support, understanding remixing dynamics and encouraging these rare projects remain a worthwhile and important goal.

Benjamin Mako Hill, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Andrés Monroy-Hernández, Microsoft Research

For more, see our full paper, “The remixing dilemma: The trade-off between generativity and originality.” Published in American Behavioral Scientist. 57-5, Pp. 643—663. (Official Link, Pay-Walled ).

Remember when I asked — rhetorically and remixically — whether there were limits to your love for Soundcloud? Well, it took a little over two years, but the super smart sample-sniffers over at Audible Magic have apparently finally decided that one of the two mashups I made by way of commentary / limit-testing should be removed for possible copyright infringement. Here’s the notice I received today:

When one clicks through to options, note that there is no recourse for anyone who does not own the copyright or have permission. In other words, there is NO FAIR USE in this world. Soundcloud does not want to be in the business of adjudicating the lines of transformative use; it wants to be in the business of datamining and other forms of monetizing all the activity on the part of users which makes the site what it is: yet another popular privately-owned public space.

I won’t go into all the lurid details yet again. I’ve said enough about Soundcloud’s practices & policies, as have others. But I promised “to keep you posted” on this little experiment, so I had to share this development here.

I can protest all I want. I can include lines like the following in my description: “I contend, especially for the purposes of critical commentary and educational applications, that this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of all materials.” But the bots won’t care, and I doubt the humans will either. Best I can do, if I really care about this audio residing on Soundcloud (which I don’t), is to upload again, perhaps with a little more sonic camouflage.

No need to bother with that. The limit has been reached. That said, I’ll be curious to see when/whether the “content protection system” (a rather Orwellian ring to it, no?) figures out that the removed mashup’s mirror-image twin, the “Feisty version” — the better/weirder, and the more popular of the two, as it happens — is still just sitting there, brazenly violating copyright–

Plus, I’m happy to note that the Blakey version is still available, with helpful visual tracking, c/o Vimeo:

Limits to Your Love (Blakey Version) from wayneandwax on Vimeo.

Finally, my commitment to never paying Soundcloud for their “service” remains strong as ever. We’ll see how long my account lasts over there. Considering that I neither hold the copyright nor have permission for ANY of my uploads (which I suspect is the case for the majority of users), despite all of them bearing rather audible marks of my creative labors, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them disappear one by one. Get em while they’re there, and when they’re not, come get them here.

I am back from a few days in Germany, which have made me appreciate some things about Germany and some things about the US. I was in Berlin and Dusseldorf, and I love how open and uncongested these cities are, with quiet, efficient streetcars everywhere (by contrast, I took the Green Line home from Logan, and was crushed and suffocated). There is a lot of green and many open areas for walking; in Dusseldorf several downtown blocks near the Rhine are given over to pedestrian walkways with shops and restaurants, streetcars providing the only vehicular traffic.

On the other hand, I was struck by the absence of two things I take for granted in the US: (1) A robust consumer health products economy -- there is nothing like a CVS or Walgreens, so small purchases like aspirin, reading glasses, and some diabetic supplies I needed, things that can be gotten on any block in any American city, require finding an Apotek -- which may not have them and probably is closed on Sunday. And (2) simple fire safety regulations -- in one of my (otherwise superbly well appointed) hotels, the only way to lock the door against possible intruders was to insert a key in the inside door handle and turn it 360 degrees to throw a deadbolt. Getting out requires reversing that process. That could lead to disaster in case of a fire -- I think the way doors work in hotels has been tightly regulated in Boston since the Cocoanut Grove fire of 1942. (See today's New York Times for a gloss on fire safety: the lack of regulation is an object of pride in Texas, where some communities lure businesses on the basis of their lack of fire laws.)

My main reason for going was to speak at an awards ceremony for the Vodafone Foundation at Vodafone's Dusseldorf facility. The Foundation recognized several scientists and engineers, in particular cryptographer Ueli Maurer. I was asked to speak on Anonymity, and was glad to have the opportunity to pull together some thoughts on the issue. My basic question was, how can we protect the right to anonymity (which is stronger in the US than in Europe, cf. Common Sense and the Federalist Papers) and yet try to keep the (sometimes systematiclally generated) anonymous dreck in the comment sections of news stories and so on from influencing public opinion destructively? I hope I gave the audience something serious to think about in an occasion that was otherwise celebratory and fun.

My hosts were kind and generous and the event served as a kind of pre-opening gala of the new Vodafone facility, a spectacular building with many green features. Many local dignitaries and politicians were present--including the head of the Dusseldorf Opera, whose controversial production of Wagner is written up in today's New York Times. On opening night, the staging included scenes of Nazi executions and gassings. After a public uproar, the production eliminated most of the staging and stuck to singing and music. It did not help matters that the murder trial of a defiant neo-Nazi woman had begun in Munich almost simultaneously.

In any case, my visit could not have been nicer. The weather was beautiful, and I was able to walk down to the Rhine from my hotel and stroll along the embankment, pausing to enjoy some fresh fish in one of the cafes that line the river in the area near downtown.

As as side trip, my old friend Prof. Johann-Christoph Freytag of Humboldt University invited me to Berlin. (Christoph is second from the left in my 1982 "family photo," next to Margo Seltzer.) I spoke on my "flipped classroom" experiment at the University and then on engineering education at Harvard to a gathering of the Berlin Harvard Club. The talk on the flipped classroom was well attended and the audience was quite engaged in the topic. At the Harvard Club talk I was able to spice up a general discussion of SEAS and the excitement surrounding the growth of engineering at Harvard with some details of the life and loves of our great donor Gordon McKay. I won't retell the story I wrote up a few years ago for that Harvard Magazine article, but I'll share some of the illustrations that I showed in Berlin but could not include in Magazine. Here, for example, is a photo of part of the ceiling of the grandiose mausoleum McKay built to glorify himself in Pittsfield, MA.

And here is a section of one of the five codicils to McKay's will, each of which crosses certain ladies off his list of annuitants and adds others.
There is not much doubt, even at the time, what was going on here. Here is part of an anonymous semi-literate letter which I excerpted and cleaned up for Harvard Magazine:

Ironically, McKay more or less followed these instructions, to "do some good in this world" and "take some poor little waif and educate them." When the last of these many female annuitants had died, Harvard got the full principal, whose value is now in the hundreds of millions of dollars, to support education and research in engineering. This was a fun talk to give, especially to an audience (including one of my AM 110 students from the early 1980s) which had been sipping wine for an hour or so before I started speaking.

I met up in Berlin with my Roxbury Latin classmate and old friend John Fortunato, a civilian clinical psychologist for the US Army posted to one of the bases in Germany. John is doing important work on the treatment of soldiers affected by PTSD -- see this recent article to learn more about his influence.

Christoph kindly showed us around Berlin, a vibrant and youthful city with many green spaces and, again, a wonderful riverbank cafe culture. Our hotel was in the old East Berlin, where I had visited for a few hours in 1970; most of the grim architecture is now gone, thank goodness, and there is ongoing construction everywhere. With all the building and rebuilding, the old buildings retain the pockmarks of the blasts and gunfighting in the closing days of WWII; a few sections of the Berlin wall still stand but its full trajectory is marked with cobblestones. A one-hour riverboat tour took us past some stunning modern architecture (given many American failures, I wonder how Germany managed to do so well in its selection of daring architects for important public buildings) We were a few blocks from the memorial to Marx and Engels, which the Berliners have had some trouble figuring out how to think about.

This photo of the three of us was taken at the Bebelplatz, and the building behind us, known as the Kommode for some reason, was originally the Royal Prussian Library (it's now occupied by the Law Faculty of Humboldt U.). We are standing on the very spot where, exactly 80 years ago today, the Nazis burned the books of Jewish authors and anything they decreed to have "un-German" ideas.

There was a kind of "read-in" going on; visitors were welcome to pluck books off shelves set up on the plaza and settle down on one of the cushions and hammocks for the privilege of reading whatever they wanted in the sunshine. It is a great reminder that when we hear things from our politicians like "No to decadence and moral corruption! Yes to decency and morality!" as they try to control the free flow of information, they are echoing the words of Joseph Goebbels on May 10, 1933, inciting the mob to throw more books onto the Berlin bonfires. Let us remember: Never again.

It's good that Google and Adobe are experimenting with business models, but that doesn't mean their plans will succeed

YouTube and Adobe don't have a great deal in common, apart from being key players in the media-technology ecosystem. But their evolving strategies demonstrate a shift that more and more companies in the media and tech worlds see as a key part of their futures: subscriptions. They highlight the fundamental reality for everyone in this business and related ones: in a world where we are almost always online, change happens at an accelerating rate.

First, YouTube: Google's huge video unit is planning to turn on its head, at least in a small way, the very basis of its existence until now. It's going to create subscription-based "channels" – that is, collections of content that it hopes people will pay for directly, as opposed to being supported by advertising.

This should be surprising to no one. YouTube, which has turned itself into the default video upload-and-display site, has been experimenting with premium services based on advertising as a business model. This hasn't worked out well, so far, as Peter Kafka recently reported at All Things Digital. So it's a logical experiment to try a model that pay-video channels like HBO and, more recently, Netflix have done: getting people send money on a regular basis in return for content they don't mind supporting.

For many video producers, YouTube could become a source of ancillary revenue, just as newspapers are trying to restore some of their lost (paper) subscriptions online via paywalls. Or, even better, this might become the first step in an overdue process of unbundling cable and satellite TV, which force customers to pay for all kinds of channels they don't want in order to get the ones they do watch.

The obvious question is whether YouTube can offer anything people actually want to support this way, and whether creators of online content will see enough upside as well. I'd expect Google to pump some serious money into the operation, at least at the outset. But a generation of video watchers has become accustomed to YouTube as a free or ad-supported service. I'm agnostic, verging on skeptical, about the prospects, but I'm also glad to see this kind of experimentation.

Likewise, I'm intrigued – and more skeptical – about Adobe's strategy shift. The company said it would stop selling almost all of its retail (boxed and downloaded) software, and move its major products – PhotoShop, Illustrator, InDesign, AfterEffects and Dreamweaver – into a "cloud-based" model where customers would work in a blended desktop/online platform, for a monthly fee. What had been known as the "Creative Suite" will henceforth be called the "Creative Cloud" – a software platform that will require a broadband connection and will cost about $50 a month for individual users ($70 for corporate sites that need administrative tools), and $20 a month for a single application.

For people who absolutely must use these products and routinely upgrade to the latest versions, $600 a year will be a good deal. But I wonder what people who've been doing fine with older versions of Adobe's desktop software will decide when it becomes necessary to upgrade. My bet is that a lot of them will look for alternatives.

I asked my Google+ and Twitter followers what they'd recommend, and got some useful responses. (As a Linux user my options have always been more limited, since Adobe treats Linux like a poor stepchild, at best.) Meanwhile, LifeHacker helpfully suggests ways to "build your own adobe creative suite with free and cheap software." Again, for some Adobe users, there are no serious alternatives to the originals; for the rest of us, there are plenty.

Adobe's move isn't unique, of course. Gaming companies have been trying to urge, if not coerce, their players into hybrid systems for several years now. Microsoft, the king of desktop software, has taken increasingly big steps in this direction, most recently with its Office 365 product, though it still offers basic desktop versions.

This can go both ways; Google's online office competitor, Google Docs, can run offline. Everyone is encroaching on everyone else, trying everything to see what will work – and this will only accelerate.

My colleague Tracy Sockalosky very kindly shared her recap of the recent Edcamp Boston meeting on May 4. Enjoy, and peruse the #edcampbos hashtag to get a richer sense of the event, or check out some of the other recaps by Chairman Dan Callahan or Emily Looser. Thanks to all of the edcamp organizers out there bringing these events together for teachers. (This is cross posted from Tracy's blog, Learning, Teaching and Technology)

On Sunday night I jumped in on #edchatma. I was still on the extreme passion high from Edcamp Boston and wanted to further the conversations started on Saturday. During the chat, someone asked what made #edcampbos such a special event. I tried to capture it in 140 characters, but it just is not possible. On Monday morning I saw a tweet urging Edcampers to share not just that we learned, but what we learned.

Here are my top five:

1. Student voice is extremely powerful. Edcamp Boston participants had three opportunities to engage in sessions led by students. It was the highlight of the day for me. A group of 5th grade students from Pine Glen Elementary School in Burlington blew me away.

Of course their knowledge and creativity was engaging, but to me it was the thoughtful and eloquent way in which they responded to questions and added their own ideas that I found the most incredible. Ten year olds that handled themselves better than many adults I know! Cramming math facts or force feeding content is not the answer. Letting kids create and explore, then share their knowledge and learning, this is the transformation that needs to occur. Bethany Rogers joined Katrina Kennett again this year after wowing the crowd last year at Edcamp Boston. Erin McGurk’s tweet below shows perfectly the impact Bethany had on the educators in her session.

2. In the midst of the morning schedule build, I was chatting with fellow organizer Liz Davis about the sessions she was putting up. She told me that she had a new name for 21st century learning, “I call it today.” I laughed, but it was not out of humor. I am growing more and more tired of the term as it is continually being used as a term to denote some goal we are striving to reach. We are 13 years into this century. Jobs, skill sets and lifestyle have transitioned, why is it okay for schools and educators to act as if it is understandable that schools and educators have not kept pace? It is unlikely that I will be able to fix this problem in the short term, but at least I can help reposition the lingo. No more 21st Century spoken like it is sometime beyond, it is TODAY. Thank you Liz Davis.

3. There are some amazing teachers out there. We all know that this must be the case, we hear about them and work with many of them, but it is never more clear to me than at an Edcamp, and Edcamp Boston epitomized this belief. An absolutely gorgeous Saturday, and yet more than 200 teachers were building a schedule at 8:30 in the morning with such excitement and passion, it was astounding. And then the wall went up. I often know which sessions I want to go to, but with this wall, I was perplexed. Voting with my feet was not going to solve the problem that I only have two feet and they have to choose. The good news for me was that there were no bad choices. I am still trying to process all the discussions and ideas. The sharing on twitter was incredible, and I was torn whether I should try and jump around. I was happy with my choices, but still wondered what I had missed. Just before the smackdown, I went into one of the session rooms and found this:

- Rumor has it that Steve Guditus was responsible for this board!

4. In the afternoon I had the privilege of hearing a 9th grade student, Sam Mahler, eloquently testify that students should not have to fight to have access to tools that allow them to learn. Sam is both dyslexic and disgraphic, but with the help of the amazing Karen Janowski and incredibly supportive parents, he has learned to use the iPad as a tool to allow him to overcome the challenges that his learning disabilities present, making it possible for him to engage in his education. The quote that most impacted me was when Sam Mahler discussed the impact of taking the iPad away from him for assessments in school. ”I am an A, sometimes a B, student on projects and assignments. I am a C or D student on tests and quizzes…they are keeping me from Harvard.” Wow. How can educational institutions continue to allow this to happen?

5. Learning and sharing is exciting and there is no better form for a teacher than an Edcamp. I work with some incredible teachers in my school; however, all too often when we gather for “professional development” time, our time is distracted by discussions/complaints of a new policy or new initiative. The atmosphere often turns toward pessimism. Not at an Edcamp. I saw this post from Christine DiMicelli and could not agree more.

Edcamps are engaging and enlightening. Edcamps are inspiring and they are thought-provoking. On a clear and beautiful May weekend, dedicated teachers filled the rooms at Microsoft and the atmosphere was electric. Below is what I wrote before heading off to sleep on Sunday.

Hope to see you all at Edcamp BLC in July!

For regular updates, follow me on Twitter at @bjfr and for my publications, C.V., and online portfolio, visit EdTechResearcher.

- Justin Reich

Acabou no rio de janeiro o sustainable brands rio 2013, onde um monte de gente boa estava discutindo conceitos e exemplos associados a marcas e sustentabilidade. na sessão tendências e direções, o blog tentou entender o que é uma marca [que é o primeiro post desta conversa] e o que é sustentabilidade. podem parecer perguntas com respostas óbvias, mas não são. imagine o que você acha que é uma marca e vá ver o que a gente disse que é no primeiro post desta série. e sinta-se à vontade pra discordar, porque você provavelmente tem uma definição bem mais apropriada. a pergunta de hoje é… o que é sustentabilidade?

a resposta deveria ser óbvia. mas não é: em um estudo publicado no journal of cleaner production [a cross-national comparison of sustainability in the wine industry, neste link] a pergunta foi feita a 55 produtores de vinho de 7 países e, como retorno, houve 55 respostas diferentes. uma para cada produtor. todas, de alguma forma, articulavam alguma forma de respeito mútuo pela prosperidade do negócio, pelo planeta [ou ambiente, incluindo o de produção] e pelas pessoas ou, mais vagamente, pela sociedade e suas instituições.

talvez a gente pudesse sintetizar que a sustentabilidade de um negócio depende, no mínimo, da performance nos fundamentos do negócio propriamente dito e nos condicionantes ambientais e sociais que definem seu contexto. a sustentabilidade, então, deve ser avaliada como uma performance, parte de um sistema. é isso que o slide abaixo, do debate no SBRio2013, quer mostrar. note que onde há profit, o lucro, na nomenclatura internacional, fala-se de prosperidade em português. fica mais fácil, mas não necessariamente é a tradução apropriada em todo contexto. os termos vêm da noção de triple bottom line, do que deveriam ser os fundamentos equilibrados para performance de negócios, enunciados por elkington em 1994.

prosperidade é uma propriedade que tem que ser tratada, em qualquer negócio, no longo prazo. ser lucrativo hoje e sofrer uma multa do tamanho do mundo amanhã, por jogar rejeitos tóxicos no arroio ao lado da fábrica, não passa no crivo. cuidar do planeta e das pessoas tem a mesma condicionante temporal: fingir-se de verde plantando umas árvores só pra fazer propaganda na TV… não dá; tentar fazer com que pessoas comprem mais do que podem [ou, mais radicalmente, devem] só para você atingir as metas de crescimento e lucratividade [juntas, as duas querem dizer prosperidade?…] não é, no mínimo, do bem. o que põe em xeque uma boa parte da indústria de gadgets, que tenta viciar consumidores na compra pra ter, porque se alguém tem, você teria que ter também…

então… onde é que um brand está em relação à performance que o sustenta?…

a resposta é uma longa história, mas o resumo em um parágrafo é o seguinte: dada uma performance, no tempo, e um conjunto de ações informacionais associados à marca [o marketing é só parte da história; educação sobre a marca pode ser muito mais relevante, em muitos casos], que obedecem a uma certa ética e sofrem, hoje, os efeitos de rede de forma muito mais intensa do que antes da internet, há atores, no mercado [isso não quer dizer só consumidores…] que vão construir, de forma dinâmica, a reputação associada à performance em questão e isso, ao fim do dia, é o que vai ser o tal do brand que a gente estava tentando definir.

resultado? em mercados [inclusive de conversações] em rede, o que define brands são as suas redes. uma forma de entender os mercados de forma abstrata é o que mostramos no slide abaixo, relacionando a estrutura [medida quantitativamente] e a conjuntura das redes, que é avaliada de forma qualitativa. a estrutura de uma rede social é definida por conexões, relacionamentos e interações; a conjuntura é, sobre tal plataforma, o processo de criação e troca de significados e a construção de conhecimento na rede.

aqui a gente chegou onde queria: marcas, hoje, são conversações em rede. e cada marca depende cada vez mais dos atores que não detém sua propriedade formal. marcas são performances em rede, e sua sustentabilidade depende disso como a nossa vida, na terra, de água. um efeito colateral das marcas serem conversações [ou performances, contínuas, de atores em rede] é a dificuldade cada vez maior de distinguir as ações de branding de serviços ou produtos. o slide abaixo diz isso e mais: marcas são serviços em tempo real. se você pensa que faz um produto… não faz não: em rede, seu produto são as conversas sobre ele, e ele se torna um serviço, fora de seu alcance, inclusive, se você não participar, ativamente, das conversas…

mas o que é uma marca sustentável? ou, mais radicalmente, a sustentabilidade de uma marca depende do que? como se chega lá?… este é o assunto de amanhã. e, se tudo correr bem, do último post desta pequena série. até lá.

This is the third post in a series about about Understanding Digital Inequalities, based on a workshop at the American Educational Researchers Association. The first post examined the the evolving Digital Fault Line, and the second post looked at Power, Policy, and Leadership. During this AERA workshop, we held an interactive, collaborative session to surface key themes related to the evolving digital divide (or what I call, the Digital Fault Line with its ever opening and closing divides). As presenters, we committed to producing a "flash publication" this week where we put our collective insights into writing and quickly get them out in the public sphere. In this final post, we report out on our discussions about parents and teachers and some of Mark Chen's thoughts about the Normal and the Marginal. My hope is that for scholars, this provides an opportunity to document and extend our conversations. For practitioners, I hope this provides a more transparent window into how researchers are theorizing the evolving digital divide.

First, I want to share Mark Chen's terrific visual summary of our conversation. It's worth clicking on to see at full size. The main topic areas from our discussion are in blue, and then Mark highlighted our challenges and obstacles in orange and our opportunities and solutions in green. As you can see, digital inequality is a complex space, and the challenges and opportunities are linked in nuanced ways.

"Normal"

Mark recently posted some very provocative thoughts on his own blog about how the "normal" gets framed in discussions of inequality. He draws on his own doctoral research about World of Warcraft gamers to describe how changing technologies empower certain practices and marginalize others—a kind of meta-framing for change that's helpful in thinking about the specific issues of social inequalities. He offers these provocative questions towards the end of his post:

I guess all this is to say that there's a lot more at stake than the simple construct of the "digital divide." Progress always leaves someone behind. Forming and reforming new ways of doing things will always marginalize someone. How as educators do we minimize this as much as possible, and when do we sit back and realize that the costs may not outweigh the benefits? How do we recognize when to intervene and in what ways?

Parents and Teachers

I facilitated a small group that discussed the domains of parents and teachers. If any single theme connected our ideas, it was that we can't think of addressing digital inequalities exclusively at the level of the individual student. As I've written before, if it takes a village to raise a child, you have to teach the village. We discussed both the importance and the lack of intergenerational learning spaces and learning opportunities. We talked about the challenges of teacher training, where the teacher education curriculum is both very difficult to change in most institutions and yet in most programs teachers learn very little about new technologies, and the digital dimensions of social inequalities go unexamined.

We began to brainstorm ideas about design principles for effective interventions that reduce inequalities in digital learning; interventions that don't just create new opportunities but create opportunities in ways that disproportionately benefit the students we most hope to serve. We discussed the importance of having work that is culturally situated and culturally responsive, engages participants in the design of new opportunities for learning, imagines possibilities for intergenerational learning, and ensures that learning opportunities are available in multiple languages and provide multiple access points for entry. These are only a few ideas, but they are beginning of what I think would be a very productive project to categorize the commonalities behind successful efforts to address divides along the digital fault line.

Janet Kolodner, of Georgia Tech and the National Science Foundation, offered some of the final words of our session. She suggested that we stop using one word that comes up frequently in these discussions: intervention. It's a funny word to use in education, with a history (I think) from the psychology literature. People (myself included) use the term to mean an intentional effort to change someone's thinking, behavior or learning, usually in the context of some kind of research study (e.g "the intervention in our experiment was giving child a mainframe computer and a stack of punchcards..."). Janet critiqued the word as both too cold and clinical and too modest. "We don't need interventions; we need innovation."

Many thanks to all of our participants for sharing their time and insight with us, and I look forward to staying in conversation.

For regular updates, follow me on Twitter at @bjfr and for my publications, C.V., and online portfolio, visit EdTechResearcher.

- Justin Reich

This post was written with Benjamin Mako Hill. It is a summary of a paper just published in American Behavioral Scientist. You can also read the full paper: The remixing dilemma: The trade-off between generativity and originality. It is part of a series of papers I have written with Mako Hill using data from Scratch. You can find the others on my website.

Remixing — the reworking and recombination of existing creative artifacts — represents a widespread, important, and controversial form of social creativity online. Proponents of remix culture often speak of remixing in terms of rich ecosystems where creative works are novel and highly generative, however, examples like this can be difficult to find. Although there is a steady stream of media being shared freely on the web, only a tiny fraction of these projects are remixed even once. On top of this, many remixes are not very different from the works they are built upon. Why is some content more attractive to remixers? Why are some projects remixed in deeper and more transformative ways?

We try to shed light on both of these questions using data from Scratch — a large online remixing community. Although we find support for several popular theories, we also present evidence in support of a persistent trade-off that has broad practical and theoretical implications. In what we call the remixing dilemma, we suggest that characteristics of projects that are associated with higher rates of remixing are also associated with simpler and less transformative types of derivatives.

Our study is focused on two interrelated research questions. First, we ask why some projects shared in remixing communities are more or less generative than others. “Generativity” — a term we borrow from Jonathan Zittrain — describes creative works that are likely to inspire follow-on work. Several scholars have offered suggestions for why some creative works might be more generative than others. We focus on three central theories:

1. Projects that are moderately complicated are more generative. The free and open source software motto “release early and release often” suggests that simple projects will offer more obvious opportunities for contribution than more polished projects. That said, projects that are extremely simple (e.g., completely blank slates) may also uninspiring to would-be contributors.
2. Projects by prominent creators are more generative. The reasoning for this claim comes from the suggestion that remixing can act as a form of cultural conversation and that the work of popular creators can act like a common medium or language. People want to remix famous pop stars because people will be more likely to appreciate the remix if they recognize the remixed track.
3. Projects that are remixes themselves are more generative. The reasoning for this final claim comes from the idea that remixing thrives through the accumulation of contributions from groups of people building on each other’s work.

Our second question focuses on the originality of remixes and asks when more or less transformative remixing occurs. For example, highly generative projects may be less exciting if the projects produced based on them are all near-identical copies of antecedent projects. For a series of reasons — including the fact that increased generativity might come by attracting less interested, skilled, or motivated individuals — we suggest that each of the. We call this trade-off the remixing dilemma.

We try to answer both of our research questions using a detailed dataset from Scratch, where young people build, share, and collaborate on interactive animations and video games. The community was built to support users of the Scratch programming environment, a desktop application with functionality similar to Flash created by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. Scratch is designed to allow users to build projects by integrating images, music, sound, and other media with programming code. Scratch is used by more than a million users, most of them under 18 year old.

To test our three theories about generativity, we measure whether or not, as well as how many times, Scratch projects were remixed in a dataset that includes every shared project. Although Scratch is designed as a remixing community, only around one tenth of all Scratch projects are ever remixed. Because more popular projects are remixed more frequently simply because of exposure, we control for the number of times each project is viewed.

Our analysis shows at least some support for all three theories of generativity described above. (1) Projects with moderate amounts of code are remixed more often than either very simple or very complex project. (2) Projects by more prominent creators are more generative. (3) Remixes are more likely to attract remixers than de novo projects.

To test our theory that there is a trade-off between generativity and originality, we build a dataset that includes every Scratch remix and its antecedent. For each pair, we construct a measure of originality by comparing the remix to its antecedent and computing an “edit distance” (a concept we borrow from software engineering) to determine how much the projects differ.

We find strong evidence of a trade-off: (1) Projects of moderate complexity are remixed more lightly than more complicated projects. (2) Projects by more prominent creators tend to be remixed in less transformative ways. (3) Cumulative remixing tends to be associated with shallower and less transformative derivatives. That said, our support for (1) is qualified in that we do not find evidence of the increased originality for the simplest projects as our theory predicted.

We feel that our results raise difficult but important challenges, especially for the designers of social media systems. For example, many social media sites track and display user prominence with leaderboards or lists of aggregate views. This technique may lead to increased generativity by emphasizing and highlighting creator prominence. That said, it may also lead to a decrease in originality of the remixes elicited. Our results regarding the relationship of complexity to generativity and originality of remixes suggest that supporting increased complexity, at least for most projects, may have fewer drawbacks.

As supporters and advocates of remixing, we feel that although highly generative works that lead to highly original derivatives may be rare and difficult for system designers to support, understanding remixing dynamics and encouraging these rare projects remain a worthwhile and important goal.

Benjamin Mako Hill, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Andrés Monroy-Hernández, Microsoft Research

For more, see our full paper, “The remixing dilemma: The trade-off between generativity and originality.” Published in American Behavioral Scientist. 57-5, Pp. 643—663. (Official Link, Pay-Walled ).

Sal Khan and his traveling team of six teachers and developers from Khan Academy are on campus at Phillips Academy this morning.  We are delighted to welcome them to a special faculty meeting.  We are pleased to welcome friends from the Andover public schools ( Superintendent Marinel McGrath and AHS Principal Christopher Lord), the Lawrence public schools, and the Pike School as well.

Sal tells the story of being a hedge fund analyst who began by making short videos to help teach a young family member, a cousin in Louisiana who was having a hard time with unit conversions (gallons to ounces).  They worked together on mathematics tutoring by speakerphone and Yahoo! Instant Messenger.  That grew into videos and exercises.  Today, there have been 85 million users to date.  Each month, there are 6 million unique users on the Khan Academy site.  In total, there have been 260 million lessons delivered and over 1 billion problems answered on the related exercises.

This year, we have been exploring the professional development theme of Connected Learning at Phillips Academy.  We’ve heard from Mimi Ito, Katie Salen, a group working on the Amplify tablet, and others.  Sal Khan has already been most generous with us, joining a class I taught in winter (on hacking) by Skype and also Skyping with a group of faculty and administrators in preparation for this visit.  Sal and his team are here at a special faculty meeting, the last in this series for the year, and then will be with a class of students in chemistry and a class of students in math.  The day will end with what I expect may be a mob of students in the Mural Room of our dining hall, Paresky Commons.

At a minimum, it is fascinating to hear his story first hand.  The narrative of Ann Doerr sending first a $10,000 check, then meeting him at an Indian buffet, then sending a $100,000 wire is a great Silicon Valley tale of entrepreneurship and the importance of foresight and angel capital.  There’s then the chapter of Bill Gates and Walter Isaacson on stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival talking about “this new site” Khan Academy.  I am a fan of Sal’s new book, The One World School House, and have used his videos and exercises in classes that I’ve taught and with my own kids to help explain topics that I don’t know much about.

We are exploring more than the minimum.  Could we imagine what would happen if Phillips Academy teachers and students were working in real partnership with Khan Academy?  As they develop the interactive side of Khan Academy, and especially assessments in fields like math and science (and many more), we might be able to help.  As Sal tells us, the videos are helpful, but they are not the focal point — that should be the problem-solving, the exercises, the interaction.  At Phillips Academy, our faculty has been at this teaching-and-learning thing for 235 years; the faculty members are not that old, but as a group, are deeply experienced and at the top of their game.  They teach in a range of field that is much broader than what is currently offered, well anyway, through the web — mostly, in the arts and humanities, which have not been the focus in the digitally-mediated education world (yet). The faculty at Phillips Academy (and, I suspect, our peer schools here in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts) also know that we don’t know everything.  And there’s a very positive sense that we need to keep learning and exploring new modes of teaching.  Sal Khan and his team certainly know some things we don’t about reaching lots of people through their digital teaching methods.

Questions from the faculty and students ranged from math and science teachers asking hard questions about what the implications of these forms of teaching might be to humanities and arts teachers asking if there is any implication of this type of learning for their fields.  It’s plain that a great, rich education — at any level — is about many different forms of learning in many different fields, including language, culture, music, visual arts, athletics, and so forth.  A great education has a lot to do with the face-to-face experience of students and adults in the same physical spaces.

We are talking today about what truly blended and connected learning might look like — taking advantage of the best of residential education and the best of digitally-mediated experiences, and mitigating the problems/limitations associated with both.  Even those of us who are the most enthusiastic about the reach and implications of the digital revolution for education — and I count myself in that number — should recognize the value of the residential, the social-emotional, the expressive, the experiential, and many other aspects of learning that are (today, anyway) experienced in the analog world.

Sal also offers advice for students in what he calls “big brother” mode.  We are discussing what impresses Sal and his colleagues when they are hiring new staff: they are impressed by what students have *made*.  “The more artifacts that you can create over the course of your life,” Sal said, “the better off you’ll be when it comes to getting hired.”  The idea of building a digital portfolio, badging, and other artifact-creation (how about a painting?) is one way to respond to this challenge.  Another bit of advice from Sal: don’t think of “test prep” as a dirty word.  Consider it a chance to master the skills and information that matter in the course of your education.

It’s an exciting moment in education.  At Phillips Academy, we are devoted to seizing it.  This session in our auditorium and classrooms this morning is a great starting point.  It’s an electric morning here in Andover.

Ontem e hoje está rolando, no rio, o sustainable brands rio 2013, instância local de um encontro global sobre o que o nome diz, marcas e sustentabilidade. e o blog foi chamado a contribuir na sessão de abertura, sobre tendências e direções. pra começar, é bom dizer que há um debate global sobre o que é [mesmo] um brand, uma marca. e eu fui atrás de uma discussão que fugisse da norma sobre o assunto e encontrei uma bem aqui, relato de entrevistas feitas por debbie millman com um monte de gente que pensa sobre brands. é lá que rob walker diz que um brand é …uma ideia que está ligada a algum objeto, serviço ou organização. lá, daniel pink revela porque a gente acaba se relacionando com muitas marcas aos gritos [de nós pra eles]: segundo ele, uma marca, para o cliente, é uma promessa. mas, para o fornecedor, talvez seja uma promessa. e haja ligações para o call center.

a definição de seth godin é uma das que provoca mais reflexão e está explicitada em um de meus slides, mostrado abaixo.

a definição é quase toda de godin [veja que há um + logo depois do sobrenome]; eu mexi um pouco para que representasse o contexto em que tentei contribuir para a discussão. a definição original não tem o “{ou associadas a}” que aparece em verde no slide. no mundo [das marcas] em rede, produtos, serviços e negócios até podem fazer promessas ou criar expectativas para seus brands… mas há um componente cada vez maior das marcas que é definido na [e em] rede, por um número de atores bem maior e mais diverso [e inesperado, muitas vezes] do que aqueles a serviço do brand. na rede, marcas podem, mas nem sempre começam, conversações. ainda é o caso de algumas [muitas?] marcas apenas reagirem à rede, quase por obrigação, gastando a maior parte de sua energia na mídia clássica, que também é um virtual, pois que debate, informação ou promoção da marca, mas não a marca, em si. mas a “mídia” analógica, unidirecional por natureza, não permite a participação direta da comunidade na construção da marca. e redes são comunidades, coisa que não existe em broadcast, onde falamos e tratamos de audiência.

mas a conversa era sobre sustentabilidade de marcas. se não é fácil definir o que é uma marca, o que é mesmo algo sustentável?… bem, este é o assunto de amanhã. e, depois, a gente combina tudo, pra tentar dizer o que é uma marca sustentável…

The Mansion of Happiness, Shades of Grey, The Dispossessed, Present Shock, Old Man’s War.

Jill Lepore’s The Mansion of Happiness is billed as “A History of Life and Death”, which was a bit of an overstatement. It might have been more accurately categorized as a “Selection of New Yorker pieces about Life and Death.” The chapters each take on a topic related to life, birth or death - from breastfeeding to children’s literature to the history of the board game Life. Lepore has expanded and edited many of the pieces since they were originally published, and sometimes there are ties between them, but the book still reads like a collection of New Yorker pieces and not like a book. Overall, I enjoyed the topics covered, but felt that this kind of compilation is not a strong format - it would have been much better to actually weave the themes together in a cohesive way.

Shades of Grey, not to be confused with 50 Shades of Grey, is a dystopian novel by Jasper Fforde. Its set in a world where the there is a strict social hierarchy determined by the percentage of a given color you can see. Of course, all that is based on a pseudoreligious text with a specific set of slightly capricious rules. Like much of Fforde’s other work, the reader is sort of thrown into the deep end of the world without a ton of explanation about why things work the way they do - for example, spoons are super valuable and important, because of some relationship with postal codes that was not entirely clear to me. As long as you can roll with those punches, this book, like Fforde’s Thursday Next series, is an entertaining piece of social criticism, with the added advantage of a solid central mystery.

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin is a piece of classic scifi, complete with alien worlds and incomprehensible physics. The main character is a physicist who is born and raised in a communitarian world and travels to one where things are more capitalistic. The book focuses pretty heavily on theories of government and human nature - and the struggle between the character’s desires and the political structures of the world he is on. There’s a great twist in this book that comes near the end that I don’t want to spoil, but it played heavily on expectations surrounding works like this. 

Present Shock was one of my least favorite books I’ve read so far. It’s buzzword heavy, as Rushkoff makes up words like fractalnoia (which he defines somewhere, but is still utterly incomprehensible to me). Moreover, it is occasionally utterly incoherent in its pairings of examples and theoretical assumptions, thin on evidence and heavy on anecdote. In short, I  might agree with some of his conclusions, but find the way he gets there odd in the extreme.

Old Man’s War, which I’ve been mentioning in blog posts for weeks, is a genuinely well thought out version of the “Space Marines” idea. The old men in this case are actual old men and women - the army of space marines is made up of the transplanted consciousnesses of senior citizens from earth. Slight spoiler there, but that’s only the beginning. A great new take on an old format, one that makes sense and adds some much needed backstory. 

Keynote presentation software has what seems to be a needless limitation on how large you can scale an object using their animation capabilities: you can take it up to 200% and no larger. A few years ago I poked around in the xml save files and manually increased the scaling on an object to 1000%, and it animated just fine. So I don’t know what was in the designer’s minds when they limited the user interface. Actually, I’m sure they had a good reason, so I already regret the use of the word “dumb” in my headline. A little.

“Dumb” is appropriate, however, for me, given how long it’s taken me to realize a way around the limitation in some circumstances.

Keynote has a really helpful slide transition called “Magic Move.” If you duplicate a slide and move around the objects in the duplicate slide, and resize them, then when you click from the first slide to the second, the objects will smoothly animate into their new positions and sizes. It is occasionally finicky, but when it works, it can save an enormous amount of manual animation. For example, if you have a slide with a square made up of 64 little squares, and you want to animate those little squares flying apart, rather than animating each of their movements, just duplicate the slide and drag the little cubes where you want.

So, duh, if you want to animate one of those cubes so it grows larger than 200%, just duplicate the slide and enlarge the cube to whatever size you want. Apply the “Magic Move” transition to the first slide, and Keynote will do the deed for you.

This doesn’t work for all situations, but in the ones that it works in, it’s very handy. And, yes, I should have realized it a couple of years ago.