Berkman Buzz: Week of March 24, 2008
BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations. If you'd like to receive this by email, just sign up here.The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
Week of March 24, 2008
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What's going on...take your pick or browse below.
*Jonathan Zittrain talks about sterile and generative technologies
*David Weinberger liveblogs Richard Sambrook's talk at the Media Re:public Forum in LA
*Dan Gillmor looks at the sustainability of citizen media
*Ethan Zuckerman discusses mapping election fraud in Zimbabwe
*Persephone Miel reflects on the disappearance of news
*Doc Searls thinks about the future of BitTransmitters
*Weekly Global Voices: "Argentina: Web Entrepreneurs in Palermo Valley"
*Weekly Berkman@10: "Lessig v. Valenti on the future of intellectual property online"
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"Generative technologies allow consumers to become participants: to change technologies for themselves or to adopt improvements offered by others not operating through the usual mechanisms of the firm. Whether this is a market force depends on how broadly we define the term. Is any voluntary behavior endogenous to a market? Or are only those choices that have to do with purchases? If a group of people coalesces in Central Park for a game of Ultimate Frisbee, is the market for Ultimate working its magic? The question is important because often we rely too readily on the solutions proposed by firms and government..."
Jonathan Zittrain, "Dichotomies and markets"
"Richard Sambrook, Director of Global News at the BBC World Service and a great blogger, is giving the opening talk at a small conference hosted by the USC Annenberg School for Communication and the Berkman Center. The aim of the conference is to talk about how we can begin to assess how the media are changing and what’s going on with participatory journalism. One of the focuses will be on what research we need done (where 'we' = our democracy) and how we can get it done..."
David Weinberger, "[re:pub] Richard Sambrook"
"In a brief but illuminating email thread leading up to a small conference on Friday in LA, we’re looking at key questions about citizen media’s future. One, obviously, is sustainability, which we all agree is key. Another participant in the discussion asked: 'WHY do we need to expect individual initiatives to be sustainable? Is there not merit in the launches of serial enterprises, sequentially launched, within communities, with new ones imparting new vigor, skills and maybe even new goals...'"
Dan Gillmor, "Sustainability in Citizen Media"
"There are lots of ways to rig an election, and it sure helps to be the incumbent if you’re planning on doing so. Morgan Tsvangarai, the candidate from the opposition MDC party, argues that the government has printed over 9 million ballots, which does seem like a lot for a nation of 5.9 million voters - he believes the excess ballots will be used to stuff ballot boxes. Other forms of rigging may be more subtle. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has recruited 90,000 polling officers, who will oversee voting at polling places..."
Ethan Zuckerman, "Mapping electoral fraud in Zimbabwe"
"Think we hardly get any international news in our mainstream media? Right you are. But we don’t get any domestic coverage either, unless it’s about the elections, according to the insightful but not cheerful new State of the Media Report from the great folks at the Project for Excellence in Journalism..."
Persephone Miel, "The incredible shrinking news"
"More than a year ago I suggested to folks from Frontline that they put out their shows on BitTorrent, serving as the Alpha Seed. I’m pretty sure Dave Winer (at the same conference) said the same thing. Maybe I got the idea (like so many others) from Dave. I also remember thinking, if not saying, that BitTorrent distro was inevitable..."
"Twitter has been one of the most talked about tools in 2007, and communites have been created around short messages or microblogging. Many were quick to realize its usefulness or its “fashionable” status. In spite of all of this, Twitter remains in use, with more users each day and with hundreds of thousands of messages per day. In that community, the idea to create a network of Argentine web entrepreneurs was born. Santiago Siri commented that it would be interesting to get together because many web 2.0 iniatives in Argentina appear to be based out of Palermo, one of the more traditional neighborhoods of Buenos Aires...."
Jorge Gobbi, "Argentina: Web Entrepreneurs in Palermo Valley"
"Gather the family, make some popcorn, turn off the TV. As part of the Berkman Center’s ongoing tenth anniversary celebration, Berkman@10, we’re retrieving some classics from our multimedia archive and adding them to our new YouTube channel. In honor of Lawrence Lessig’s upcoming Berkman@10 speaker series talk (April 4; save the date!), and in anticipation of the Berkman@10 conference on “The Future of the Internet,” we are delighted to re-present Jack Valenti debating Lessig on an intimately connected future, “The Future of Intellectual Property on the Internet.”..."
Berkman@10, "Lessig v. Valenti on the future of intellectual property online"
Join us May 15-16 for what promises to be a unique gathering of Internet luminaries, cyberlawyers, entrepreneurs, activists, geeks, media makers and journalists, students, and more. The Berkman@10 Conference offers a chance to reflect critically on the last ten years of the development of the Internet and to look ahead to the crucial questions we face in the next ten years of cyberspace.
Register at here.