Berkman Center for Internet and Society: Audio Fishbowl

David Weinberger on What Information Was [Audio]

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:13:34 +0000

Berkman Fellow David Weinberger investigates the origin of modern “information”, trying to understand what about it led us to embrace it as the dominant–paradigmatic–way of understanding ourselves and our world. David Weinberger will present an informal sketch of a direction, suggesting that we leaped into information because it reflected a long-held but squirrely metaphysics. Download [...]

Ellen Goodman and Jake Shapiro on Redesigning public media for the 21st Century [AUDIO]

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:00:58 +0000

Ellen Goodman of Rutgers University School of Law and Jake Shapiro, Executive Director of the Public Radio Exchange (PRX), discuss public media’s role in providing public discourses, advancing democratic capabilities, and empowering publics to communicate and organize. The two investigate whether the United States has a system of public media that is able to support [...]

Elizabeth Goodman on Walled Gardens: Opening the Discussion [Audio]

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:11:40 +0000

“Walled gardens” is a common term for systems that limit the entrance and exit of certain kinds of data. It is a deceptively simple metaphor that relies on the existence of a shared set of assumptions about what gardens are, what walls are, and what it means to build and maintain them. In this talk, [...]

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger presents “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age” [Audio]

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 03:28:04 +0000

A book talk with professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger who examines the technology that’s facilitating the end of forgetting in his book, “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age”. Mayer-Schönberger argues that in our quest for perfect digital memories where we can store everything from recipes and family photographs to work emails and personal information, [...]

Radio Berkman Recent Classics: What the Heck is a Commons?

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:00:12 +0000

It’s been a busy week at the Berkman Center, so we had to forgo a new podcast this week. But have no fear, we did not forget you! We dusted off a recent classic from our archive by popular demand: “Episode 124, What the Heck is a Commons?” David Bollier, author of Viral Spiral: How the [...]

Jesse Shapins and James Burns on Mapping Main Street [Audio]

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:51:22 +0000

Mapping Main Street is a collaborative documentary media project that creates a new map of the country through a dynamic visualization of stories, data, photos and videos recorded on actual Main Streets. The goal is to document all of the more than 10,000 streets named Main in the United States. Two of the project’s founders, [...]

Radio Berkman 134: Small Medium at Large

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:00:58 +0000

Few dispute that the web will be the dominant medium of the 21st Century – swallowing whole newspapers, books, radio, television, and the cinema. And even as the web grows virtually – over a trillion unique urls and growing – it shrinks physically – from laptop, to netbook, from cell phone, to even tinier and [...]

John Clippinger and Oliver Goodenough on Cloud Law, Finance 3.0, and Digital Institutions [AUDIO]

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:51:26 +0000

John Clippinger and Oliver Goodenough of the Berkman Center’s Law Lab discuss the progress made this year by the Law Lab – especially three specific projects that develop new digital institutions and research tools to foster innovation and deepen our understanding of trust, transparency and human cooperation. Liveblogging from the talk by David Weinberger Download the [...]

Herkko Hietanen on Network Recorders and Social Enrichment of Television [AUDIO]

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:31:18 +0000

Television recorders are going online. Device manufacturers are starting to produce consumer devices and software that can be connected to Internet at consumers’ homes. New models of innovation are starting to emerge. This talk proposes the social enrichment of TV offerings may prove to create disruptive innovation to an industry accustomed to control the consumption [...]

Radio Berkman 132: Learning to Share

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:53:41 +0000

Ownership structures for creative works – such as Copyright, Creative Commons, Fair Use, Public Domain – abound. This week, Kenneth Crews, the director of the Copyright Office at Columbia University, speaks with us about some of the distinctions, and the ways to make sure your work is protected as much or as little as possible. Listen: or [...]

Lee Dirks on Transforming Scholarly Communication [AUDIO]

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 23:59:44 +0000

Lee Dirks, Director of Education & Scholarly Communications in Microsoft’s External Research division proposes a vision for the future of research and the need for semantic-oriented computing by exploring eResearch projects that have successfully applied relevant technologies. He suggests that a software + service model with scientific services delivered from the cloud will become an [...]

Calestous Juma on Legal Issues in Broadband Internet for Eastern Africa [AUDIO]

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:26:38 +0000

Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development and Director of the Science, Technology, and Globalization Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School, explores the implications of high speed internet for Africa’s capacity to expand the global market for access devices, creation of content, and development of markets. Click here for notes on the event from [...]

Radio Berkman 129: I Bought the Law

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:01:48 +0000

Steve Schultze is a busy fellow. He is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He recently joined the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy as Associate Director. He also is one of the developers behind RECAP – an ambitious and provocative project that seeks to bring publicly available digital court records [...]

Radio Berkman 128: Tweeting a Dead Horse

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:43:23 +0000

The hype shows no signs of abating. Now that people have moved from just talking-about-Twitter, to the more meta talking-about-talking-about-Twitter, we here at Radio Berkman decided to take on the topic from our own perspective and see if there is possibly anything new left to be said about the popular microblogging service. Turns out there [...]

Radio Berkman Supreme: Is Twitter A Revolution? A Debate

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:19:11 +0000

The Berkman Center for Internet Society was blessed with the presence of dozens of interns this summer – some of the best, the brightest, and most energetic folks in the field of cyber study. Four of them came together earlier this summer for a semi-Oxford style debate on a topic of importance. The question: Is [...]