Berkman Center for Internet and Society: Audio Fishbowl

Radio Berkman Minis: A Failing Fantasy of Intellectual Property

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:00:57 +0000

We’ll be back soon with more full episodes of Radio Berkman. In the meantime, we’d like to share a clip from a short interview we did not long ago with Lawrence Liang of the Alternative Law Forum on piracy, media, and culture. Excerpt: “When culture reaches the point of ephemerality which allows it to flow in the [...]

Joe Karaganis on Media Piracy in Emerging Economies [Audio]

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:31:09 +0000

Joe Karaganis discusses findings from a forthcoming six-country study of media piracy, including work on Russia, India, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa. The study provides a rare empirical look at the organization of piracy and enforcement in developing countries, and explores the transformation of both as the optical disk economy give way to digital distribution. [...]

Joel R. Reidenberg on Transparent Citizens and the Rule of Law [AUDIO]

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:03:34 +0000

How could the transparency of personal information available online erode the rule of law? And what should government be doing about it – if anything? Joel R. Reidenberg – Professor of Law and the Founding Academic Director of the Center on Law and Information Policy at Fordham Law School – explores the erosion of [...]

Julie Cohen on Configuring the Networked Self [AUDIO]

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:30:10 +0000

Berkman Faculty Fellow and HLS Visiting Professor Julie Cohen explores the effects of expanding copyright, pervasive surveillance, and the increasingly opaque design of network architectures in the emerging networked information society. Based on a chapter from her forthcoming book, Cohen argues that “access to knowledge” is a necessary but insufficient condition for human flourishing, and [...]

Jeremy Bailenson on Transformed Social Interaction in Virtual Reality [AUDIO]

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:59:09 +0000

Unlike telephone conversations and videoconferences, avatars – representations of people in virtual environments – have the ability to control their physical appearance and behavioral actions in the eyes of their conversational partners, strategically enhancing or hiding features and nonverbal signals in real-time. Jeremy Bailenson – founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab – [...]

Tarleton Gillespie on The Politics of Platforms [AUDIO]

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:00:44 +0000

Though online media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook often make the promise to openly and impartially host all content, they actively make decisions about where the edges of these platforms should be: what should and should not appear, how content should be organized, what should be featured or squirreled away, and how it should [...]

Radio Berkman 141: Signaling in the Wild, Signaling Online

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:45:43 +0000

When under threat from an approaching feline, gazelles will repeatedly leap up and down in the air – even when logically it seems they should run. It’s an example of a signal – used to communicate a concept to trigger a reaction. In this case, “I am strong and fast – if you chase me [...]

Fernando Bermejo on Mapping Online Advertising: From Anxiety to Method [AUDIO]

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:47:10 +0000

Advertising pays for a significant portion of online content and services. But in contrast to other forms of content and service provision, it expects a return on investment despite not being backed by any kind of legal structure or binding agreement, resulting in anxiety on the part of the advertising industry. Fernando Bermejo – Associate [...]

Stephen M. Kosslyn on Why We Probably Will Never Have a Perfect Lie Detector [AUDIO]

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:00:18 +0000

Different brain systems are used when one produces lies in different ways, such as by fabricating lies spontaneously “on the fly” versus fabricating them on the basis of a previously memorized story. This discovery indicates that there is no single “lie center” in the brain, and makes it unlikely that a single neural pattern of [...]

Brett Glass on Lessons from Laramie: Broadband Innovation on the Wireless Frontier [AUDIO]

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:00:43 +0000

8 years ago, Brett Glass — an electrical engineer, inventor, and technology columnist — established LARIAT, the first terrestrial wireless Internet service provider (WISP), in Laramie, Wyoming. What’s it like to roll up your sleeves and roll out high speed connectivity to underserved and unserved areas with, literally, one’s bare hands? What are the logistics? [...]

Radio Berkman 140: Three Trends of 2009

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:00:55 +0000

The closing of another year brings with it an excuse for celebration. And what could be more fun than looking back at the year that was and trying to distill some of the top trends in the web, technology, and society? David Weinberger attended Supernova 2009 in San Francisco, where some of the biggest names in [...]

Sahara Byrne on Parent vs Child Reports of Internet Behaviors [AUDIO]

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:10:04 +0000

A nation-wide survey of 1,812 parents of web-savvy children shows parental support for various strategies to protect their children from negative effects. But strategies resulting in the least disagreement from the children in this survey included those that empower the youth to protect themselves, as well as legal consequences or suspension from school for people [...]

Radio Berkman 139: My Fair Economy

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:00:35 +0000

Is it hard to imagine a world in which people are treated fairly? Paid a fair wage for the work they contribute? Rewarded monetarily for the successful intellectual products that they help to produce? Did you just scoff? If so you might be a knowledge worker who toils day in and day out on information [...]

Andrew McAfee on his new book, Enterprise 2.0; The State of An Art [AUDIO]

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 01:00:02 +0000

How are the tools and philosophies of Web 2.0 making their way into organizations (even traditional ones)? Berkman fellow, MIT Scientist, blogger, and tweeter Andrew McAfee talks about his new book Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges. Download the MP3 …or download the OGG audio format! Share and Enjoy:

Rey Junco on Twitter in the College Classroom [AUDIO]

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:00:15 +0000

Dr. Rey Junco – Associate Professor and the Director of Disability Services in the Department of Academic Development and Counseling at Lock Haven University – is at the helm of one of the first experimental studies to assess whether first-year college students’ use of Twitter affects student engagement and success. Here he talks about some [...]