Upcoming Events and Digital Media Roundup

Jun 10, 2009

BERKMAN CENTER FOR INTERNET & SOCIETY AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
June 10, 2009 // Upcoming events and digital media

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[1] [TUESDAY 6/16/09] Berkman Center Luncheon Series on "Form, Function and Fiction: ICTs and their uses in resource constrained environments" with Beth Kolko, Berkman Fellow (http://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2009/06/kolko)

[2] [TUESDAY 6/16/09] "Cluetrain at 10: So How's Utopia Working Out for Ya?" with Berkman Fellows Doc Searls and David Weinberger, and Berkman faculty co-director Jonathan Zittrain (http://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2009/06/cluetrainat10)

[3] [WEDNESDAY 6/17/09] "Online Discourse in the Arab World: Dispelling the Myths" at the United States Institute of Peace (http://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2009/06/usip)

[4] [6/19-6/20/09] Open Video Conference in NYC (http://openvideoconference.org/)

[TUESDAY] BERKMAN LUNCHEON SERIES on ICTs AND THEIR USES IN RESOURCE CONSTRAINED ENVIRONMENTS
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6/16/09, 12:30 PM ET, Berkman Center Conference Room
RSVP is required for those attending in person (rsvp@cyber.harvard.edu).

Topic: Form, Function and Fiction: ICTs and their uses in resource constrained environments
Guest: Beth Kolko, Berkman Fellow

When we name a technology, we give it a label that comes to represent functions as well as forms -- as assumption that technological artifacts have consistent meaning across social contexts. But while form may ostensibly remain stable, functions vary widely across context -- in turn giving rise to different usage patterns. This talk begins with an examination of what are essentially fictional definitions (what is "the Internet," "an Internet user," a "mobile phone") and discusses how the same collection of circuits and memory can occupy varying cultural meanings across contexts, particularly in resource-constrained environments. These differences have significant implications for design, and the talk then continues with a series of case studies of how technology design addresses (or ignores) differences in function and cultural meaning.

This event will be webcast live; for more information and a complete description, see the event web page: http://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2009/06/kolko

[TUESDAY] CLUETRAIN at 10: SO HOW'S UTOPIA WORKING OUT FOR YA?
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http://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2009/06/cluetrainat10

6/16/09, 6:00 PM ET
Austin East Classroom, Austin Hall, Harvard Law School
Free and Open to the Public

RSVP requested via http://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2009/06/cluetrainat10 or on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=99640854800&ref=nf

Cluetrain at 10: So How's Utopia Working Out for Ya?

with Berkman Fellows Doc Searls and David Weinberger, and Berkman faculty co-director Jonathan Zittrain

The Cluetrain Manifesto, posted in April, 1999, immediately became a touchstone in the digital culture wars. Its four authors – Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger - denounced the mainstream media's portrayal of the Web as an extension of business-as-usual into a medium cheaper than paper and TV time. No, said Cluetrain in 95 "theses" (a number chosen for its resonant overstatement), millions of people weren't flocking to the Web simply because they so loved online catalog shopping. The Web was a place where each individual had a voice, and each of those voices could connect with any and every other voice. The Web is a conversation. And -- in Cluetrain's most famous formulation -- so are networked markets.

Cluetrain.com and the subsequent book of that name are polemics. They express anger at the attempt of the old regime to co-opt the Web and joy at the possibility of building a new set of human connections, free of the dehumanization of the Mass Age. But, that was ten years ago. The Web has gone from millions to over a billion, from frontier to settled land, from unnumbered to Web 2.0, from home pages to Facebook, from laptops to iPhones, from email to Twitter. Entire industries and institutions have collapsed, and many more have been transformed. Spam, identify theft, cyber-bullying and killers leaping straight out of Craigslist are on the scene, as well as Wikipedia, a gift economy, and the online politics of yes-we-can.

On the tenth anniversary of The Cluetrain Manifesto, how's all that freedom, that cyberutopianism, that Internet exceptionalism working out for you?

Harvard Law professor and co-founder of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society Jonathan Zittrain talks with two of The Cluetrain Manifesto's co-authors, Doc Searls and David Weinberger, in an open forum. This event will commemorate the release of the tenth anniversary edition of The Cluetrain Manifesto.

Doc Searls is Senior Editor of Linux Journal and a well-known and widely quoted blogger. His work as a journalist, speaker and advocate of the Internet led to a Google-O'Reilly Open Source Award for Best Communicator in 2005. In "The World is Flat," Thomas L. Friedman calls Doc "one of the most respected technology writers in America." He is a Fellow at the Berkman Center.

David Weinberger is the author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined (2002) and Everything Is Miscellaneous (2008). He writes frequently for many major journals, is a frequent contributor to National Public Radio, advises start-ups and non-profits, and has been an adviser to two presidential campaigns. He is a Fellow at the Berkman Center.

Jonathan Zittrain is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, is a co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and served as its first executive director from 1997-2000. He is the author of The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop It.

Map to Austin Hall at HLS: http://map.harvard.edu/level3.cfm?mapname=camb_allston&tile=F6&quadrant=C&series=M

This event will be webcast live; for more information and a complete description, see the event web page: http://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2009/06/cluetrainat10

[WEDNESDAY] ONLINE DISCOURSE IN THE ARAB WORLD: DISPELLING THE MYTHS
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6/17/09, 10:00 am ET, at the United States Institute for Peace in Washington, DC

Full details, including RSVP for the event/webcast, at: http://blogsbullets.eventbrite.com/
This is a public event.

Bruce Etling and John Kelly will present the Berkman Center's new study of the Arabic blogosphere, which analyzes over 10,000 blogs from 18 countries and which follows last year's "Mapping Iran’s Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere." The Arabic blogosphere findings will be discussed by an exceptional panel of speakers, with the online participation of bloggers from the Middle East.

Speakers

Bruce Etling, Harvard University, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
John Kelly, Morningside Analytics
Daniel Brumberg, Georgetown University, Acting Director of USIP's Muslim World Initiative
Saad Ibrahim, Voices for a Democratic Egypt
Hisham Melhem, Al Arabiya, Washington Bureau Chief
Sheldon Himelfarb, United States Institute of Peace (Moderator)

Bloggers from throughout the Arab world will also participate live online and via video, including Raed Jarrar (Iraq), Nora Younis (Egypt), Laila El Haddad (Palestine), and Amira Al Hussaini (Bahrain).

This event is part of the USIP Center of Innovation for Science, Technology, and Peacebuilding's ongoing “Blogs and Bullets” initiative examining the relationship between online discourse and violent conflict.

RSVP for the event and learn more about the webcast at: http://blogsbullets.eventbrite.com/

Media Inquiries: Please contact Lauren Sucher (lsucher@usip.org) in the USIP Office of Public Affairs and Communications.

[6/19-6/20/09] OPEN VIDEO CONFERENCE
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in New York City

The upcoming Open Video Conference (June 19-20 in NYC) will tackle a range of issues surrounding online video. The conference is asking big questions regarding the future of the medium.

Open Video Conference
June 19-20 in New York
http://openvideoconference.org

Speakers Include: NYU's Clay Shirky, Harvard's Yochai Benkler, Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin, DVD Jon, Free Press' Josh Silver, EFF's Corynne McSherry, and many many more. Check out the full agenda.

About the Open Video Conference: At this very moment, in 2009, we have a chance to ensure that internet video retains these key characteristics. It's still early and things are looking good, but we need devices that play nice with each other, networks that aren't totally neutered, and playback and production tools that are low-cost (ideally free/open source) and easy to use. Developments like Hulu are pretty good for the user, because they can watch what they want, when they want. But we don't want internet video to be a glorified TV on demand service. We want video to be a dynamic medium that invites clipping, archival, remix, collage, repurposing, and many other uses that are currently inhibited by law or by lack of tools.

OTHER EVENTS OF NOTE
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[1] 6/1-6/8/09 Internet Week NYC (http://www.internetweekny.com/)

[2] 6/18-6/20/09 19th Annual Conference for Law School Computing // CALI (http://w.cali.org/conference/)

[3] 6/22-6/24/09 Open Translation Tools 2009 (http://aspirationtech.org/events/opentranslation/2009)

[4] 6/26-6/28/09 8th International Conference of Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry (http://cepe2009.ionio.gr/) // Berkman Executive Director Urs Gasser will give a keynote.

DIGITAL MEDIA: Watch and Listen
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Did you miss this week's luncheon talk? Catch up with Berkman videos, podcasts, pictures, and dig in to our archive at http://cyber.harvard.edu/interactive.

-BERKMAN LUNCHEON SERIES: "Second and Third Enclosures" with Berkman Fellow LEWIS HYDE (http://cyber.harvard.edu/interactive/events/luncheon/2009/06/hyde)

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BERKMAN CALENDAR & UPCOMING EVENTS PREVIEW
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See our events calendar if you're curious about future luncheons, discussions, lectures, conferences, and more: http://cyber.harvard.edu/events. All of our events are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted.

ABOUT US
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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.harvard.edu.