You don’t need to be a crowned Ranger class master hacker to sneak into someone’s email or facebook account these days. Which means that you’re not simply being a nervous nellie if you’re worried about security.

In fact, users of public WiFi should be worried. If you use WiFi to access some of the most popular email and social networking services, like, gmail, yahoo mail, hotmail, and facebook, your account information floats around in the air, often completely unsecured.

You want some more fear with your coffee? Chris Soghoian, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, took a look into WiFi and account security to find out just how scary the situation is.

Listen:
or download
…also in Ogg!

The Reference Section:
See Chris’ Open Letter to Google
How to protect your gmail
Secure all your google utilities in Firefox
Chris is soon to be a free agent but his research is needed! Hire him!

CC-licensed music this week:
General Fuzz - Cream
Arslkhan - Love Odyssey

Subscribe to Radio Berkman

See a partial transcript after the jump.

Radio Berkman 126: G-Fail 2009-07-07_soghoian

Could public Wi-Fi be toxic when mixed with services like gmail, yahoo mail, and facebook? The answers to this question and more on this week’s Radio Berkman.

[MUSIC START]

Maybe this has happened to you. You’re at a coffee shop, using their wifi typing an email, chatting on Facebook, writing your treatment for Twitter! The Musical in a google document. When all of a sudden you feel those eyes staring at you. You turn around just in time and - you’ve caught them in the act! Some peeping Tom - or Tammy - has been looking over your shoulder noting every keystroke, every profile you look at, every password you type.

Sure, this scenario is a little unrealistic. Why would Tom or Tammy settle for looking over your shoulder, when they could just go the high tech route and hijack your account by grabbing bits out of midair? If you’re on public WiFi, in fact, all it takes is some off the shelf parts and elementary hacking to track what someone is looking at on their computer across the room. And in many cases it’s nearly impossible to protect yourself. Users of some of the most popular free email and social network services are often SOL when it comes to keeping their information secure when using public WiFi.

Chris Soghoian is a Fellow at the Berkman Center who looked into the methods that companies like google, yahoo, and facebook use to secure your data. He sat down with David Weinberger for some good old fashioned scaremongering on privacy.

[LEAD IN TO - INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]

Chris Soghoian is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University. He blogs at dubfire.net. Chris is looking for more support for his research next year. You can support his work! Find his email on our website: blogs.law.harvard.edu

This episode of Radio Berkman was produced by me, Daniel Dennis Jones, at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University in Boston.

[MUSIC END]

Metadata:
Instructions for putting encryption on gmail
 customizegoogle.com

Hire me! http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2009/04/hire…
 csoghoian at gmail.com

MUSIC:
General Fuzz - Cream
arslkhan_-_love_odyssey

Download the MP3

…or download the OGG audio format!

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. The Web is a conversation. And — in Cluetrain’s most famous formulation — so are networked markets.

On the tenth anniversary of The Cluetrain Manifesto, co-authors David Weinberger and Doc Searls sit down with Jonathan Zittrain to discuss how much of their vision for the web has become reality, and what we should expect for the next ten years.

Download the MP3

Download the MP3

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A renowned group of social and political theorists have argued that Commons-Based Peer Production (CBPP) and the spread of non-rival informational goods could eliminate North-South inequalities in the knowledge-based economy (see, for example, Benkler 2006; Weber 2004). Some of them have even gone further to depict non-rival knowledge production as an oppositional response to Neoliberal Globalization consistent with Karl Polanyi’s (1944) theory of “The Double Movement” and a “disembedded” market economy (Evans 2005; Jessop 2007; O’Riain 2006; Weber and Bussell 2005). In this talk, Shaw traces the theoretical bases of these claims and revisit the relationship between CBPP and the market in the context of the global Information Technology industry. He argues that the logic of production underlying commons-based innovation strategies in the field of IT does not contradict ideologies of the free market. Building on the Polanyian critiques of global neoliberalism, he proposes an alternate framework for assessing commons-based industry and commons-based development policies along the dimension of “embeddedness.”

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Rasmus Kleis Nielsen - Mundane Tools and Mobilizational Practices in Two U.S. Congressional Campaigns

The mobilizational potential of the Internet has been highlighted both by both social scientists and professional practitioners. A wide range of new tools have become ubiquitous in political campaigns—ranging from state-of-the-art websites to something as prosaic as email. But we still do not know what internet elements are most important for mobilizational practices. Based on participant-observation in two congressional campaigns in the United States, web research, interviews with professionals and activists, and analysis of secondary sources, Nielsen argues that it is not campaign web sites as such, or the Internet in general, but specific “mundane mobilizational tools”, particular things like email and search, that are most intimately involved in mobilizational practices. Contrary to the specialized and emerging tools that have received the most scholarly, professional, and journalistic attention, mundane mobilizational tools are not designed specifically for political use, but instead derive their affordances from the fact that they (1) connect with existing infrastructures and communities, (2) allow distributed communication, and (3) are already familiar to users.

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And how does big media learn from piracy and the culture of transparency on the web? Journalist and new media expert Daisy Whitney speaks to Daniel Dennis Jones about how big media and new media are learning to get along.

Listen:
or download

The Reference Section:
• Follow the work of the iLab
• Follow Daisy Whitney’s work, and her shows TWiM and New Media Minute
• Read up on iLab’s recently released report on piracy and NBC Converting Pirates Without Cannibalizing Purchasers: The Impact of Digital Distribution on Physical Sales and Internet Piracy

CC-licensed music this week:
Morgantj - Café Connection
General Fuzz - Cream
J Lang - Crazy Love

Subscribe to Radio Berkman

See a partial transcript after the jump.

Radio Berkman 122: 2009-05-19_cmu

What is the best way for Hollywood to keep their content from being pirated on the web? The answer to this question and more on this week’s Radio Berkman.

[MUSIC START]

It happens to everyone. You spend millions of dollars producing your feature film or TV show, even more promoting it, and by the time it hits the screen already hundreds of thousands of people have gotten to see it on their computers just by grabbing it off of a peer to peer network for free. No ticket sales, no advertising dollars - you’ve just lost millions in potential revenue.

So how do we keep content from being accessed illegally? Shut down the pirate sites? Not according to Michael Smith and Rah-HOOL Telang. Smith and Telang research business models for media on the web at Carnegie Mellon University’s i-Lab. In 2007 when NBC decided to stop offering top shows like the Office and Heroes on the iTunes store, the i-Lab started tracking how much of the previously available content was being downloaded illegally on filesharing networks. This past April the i-Lab released research showing that NBC’s decision to take their shows off the web resulted in an 11.5 percent increase in demand for the content in pirated form.

David Weinberger spoke with Smith and Telang to find out more about this research and what lessons the entertainment industry should take.

[LEAD IN TO - INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]

Michael Smith and Rah-HOOL Telang are associate professors and researchers at the i-Lab at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College. The work of the i-Lab is definitely worth checking out. You can find more on them and their work including links to their recent research at our website, blogs.law.harvard.edu

[MUSIC UP]

What goes on in the minds of the captains of the entertainment industry as they navigate the dangerous waters of the web? Daisy Whitney is a journalist and content creator who consults frequently with industry as they try to chart a smooth course onto the web. I spoke with her to find out how the industry is figuring it out.

[LEAD IN TO - INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]

Daisy Whitney is the host of TVWeek’s New Media Minute, This Week in Media, a journalist and new media expert. You can find more of her work at her website www.daisywhitney.com.

No need to fire up the peer to peer networks, because you can find links to content from all of our guests, a back catalog of Radios Berkman, and more free content than you can imagine at our website blogs.law.harvard.edu.

Thanks to all of our guests this week, as well as Ramayya Krishnan and Bryan Tamburro of the i-Lab. This episode of Radio Berkman was produced by me, Daniel Dennis Jones, at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

[MUSIC END]

Metadata

iLab: http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/i-lab/index.htm…
Michael Smith: http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/%7Emds/
Rahul Telang: http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~rtelang/rahul_…
Piracy Research - Converting Pirates Without Cannibalizing Purchasers: The Impact of Digital Distribution on Physical Sales and Internet Piracy:http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1381827

Daisy Whitney: http://daisywhitney.com/

Download the MP3

If you like the idea of the above equation, well, you are either looking forward to a Robot vs. Lawyer stand-off, or, like today’s guest, you simply believe that law can be made better and more efficient through the use of software and applications to streamline repetitive legal tasks.

Richard Susskind is the IT adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, and author of the recently published (and provocatively titled) The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services. He recently sat down with the Berkman Center’s Brock Rutter to chat about how technology might be able to simultaneously make the work of lawyers more efficient, reduce overhead costs, and improve access to justice.

Listen:
or download

The Reference Section:
• Follow Richard’s work
• Watch Richard’s recent talk at the Berkman Center’s Law Lab
• The recent NYTimes article on the firm that did away with its lawyers

CC-licensed music this week:
Arslkhan: “Love Odyssey”
Coconut Monkeyrocket: “Accidental Beatnik”

Subscribe to Radio Berkman

See a partial transcript after the jump.

Download the MP3

Download the MP3

The new “Computational Knowledge Engine” called Wolfram|Alpha has gone through a full media cycle before it has even been unleashed on the world. It has been hyped as a “Google Killer” and denounced as snake oil, and we’re still at least a few days from release.

The simple goal behind the engine is to connect searchers with precise information. Wolfram|Alpha’s search magic comes through a combination of natural language processing and a giant pool of curated data.

If that doesn’t make sense, all you need to know is that people can’t wait to get their information hungry hands on it. A 10-minute preview posted by the Berkman Center on YouTube late last Wednesday has already garnered over 100,000 views.

Stephen Wolfram, the brains behind Mathematica and author of A New Kind of Science, launches his brand new knowledge engine this month. He spoke to David Weinberger this week about how the tool works, and what it might do to search.

Listen:
or download

The Reference Section:
• Listen to the uncut audio of this interview on Radio Berkman Supreme
• Bookmark the soon-to-be-launched Wolfram|Alpha page
• David Weinberger speculates on the significance of Wolfram|Alpha
• Follow Stephen Wolfram on his blog

CC-licensed music this week:
Neurowaxx: “Pop Circus”
Greg Williams: “Teagarden Blues and Rain”

Subscribe to Radio Berkman

See a partial transcript after the jump.

Radio Berkman 120: 2009-005-05_wolfram - Why We Search

What is the future of search? The answers to this question and more on this week’s Radio Berkman.

[MUSIC START]

What does it mean exactly to “search” the web? It’s not like searching under your bed - though the more digitally addicted of us may be guilty of stifling the instinct to “Google” our keys when they’re missing. But on the web usually what we’re trying to find is meaningful real world information in the form of sensory input - language, images, sounds. If that sounds a little overwhelming bear with us.

The way we have gotten to real world information over time has changed. A search for the GDP of France a couple decades ago might have involved scanning the index of a World Almanac, or before that a trip to the local library’s card catalog. Sounds exhausting. Today, if you typed “GDP of France” into your little search bar you would expect to get a list of websites linking to the data - a wikipedia article on the French economy, an article from the CIA’s World Factbook, and a few million others that might or might not contain exactly what you are looking for.

Well, some entrepreneurs in the field of search want us to see past the list of links, and let us jump straight to the information. A quest to find the GDP of France in the search engine of tomorrow could direct you straight to a page filled with customized charts, tables, and maps displaying the GDP of France over time, in various currencies, per capita, by region, compared with other countries - any way you could want it.

And that could quite literally happen tomorrow. The first big attempt at combining a Farmer’s Almanac, a scientific calculator, a research library, and a smart search engine, called “Wolfram Alpha” is set to be unleashed on the web later this May. In public and private previews, the engine has wowed many not just with its wealth of knowledge, but with its ability to take the words you type in the search bar, understand what it is you are probably looking for, and display it in a way you can understand.

Stephen Wolfram, the brains behind the engine, isn’t new to blowing people’s minds with revolutionary projects. In 1988 he released a software called Mathematica that made manipulating and visualizing equations and data a simple desktop activity. And in 2002 he released A New Kind of Science, a one thousand two hundred and eighty page tome that employed computational systems in describing the universe.

By combining the technology behind Mathematica with the concepts behind A New Kind of Science, Wolfram Alpha may catch lightning in a bottle a the third time for Stephen, Shortly after a public preview at Harvard University last week, Stephen sat down with David Weinberger to discuss what Wolfram Alpha does, and how it may change the way we search.

[LEAD IN TO - INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]

Stephen Wolfram is the brains behind Mathematica, A New Kind of Science, and the soon to be launched Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine. You may want to bookmark the site at www.wolframalpha.com

You can find more information than you can imagine at our own humble knowledge engine - blogs.law.harvard.edu There you’ll find links to David and Stephen’s uncut full hour conversation, and to a video demo of Wolfram Alpha.

This episode of Radio Berkman was produced by me, Daniel Dennis Jones, at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Until next week.

[MUSIC END]

Metadata

MUSIC:
Neurowaxx - Pop Circus
Greg Williams - Teagarden Blues and Rain

A first look at Wolfram|Alpha: Computational Knowledge Engine, with Stephen Wolfram. This is uncut audio from David Weinberger’s 55 minute interview with Stephen for Radio Berkman. Look for the more concise version in next week’s episode. Enjoy!

Listen:
or download

Subscribe to Radio Berkman

Download the MP3

Download the MP3

Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, is one of those multi-hyphenate creator/critic/consumers. In a recent submission for the Media Re:Public series, Dan suggested a vision for a participatory media, including five principles that could guide journalism in the 21st Century.

For media consumers:

• Be Skeptical
• Exercise Judgement
• Open Your Mind
• Keep Asking Questions
• Learn Media Techniques

For media creators (after incorporating the above):

• Be Thorough
• Get it Right
• Insist on Fairness
• Think Independently
• Be Transparent, Demand Transparency

In this week’s episode, Dan expands on these five principles with David Weinberger.

Listen:
or download

The Reference Section:

Follow Dan’s Blog

More on the “5 Principles”
Dan’s recent presentation at the Berkman Center
EVEN more on the “5 Principles”

CC-licensed music this week:
Neurowaxx: “Pop Circus”
Podington Bear: “The Squeaky Song”

Subscribe to Radio Berkman

See a partial transcript after the jump.

Radio Berkman 119: 2009-04-28_gillmor

What will journalism have to do to survive the 21st Century? And what role will media consumers play in the new information equation? We’ll take yet another stab at these questions, and more, on this week’s Radio Berkman.

[MUSIC START]

If you have a job in the media you might be a little depressed about about the state of the news business. Papers are shutting down left and right, local news outlets are consolidating with regional and national outlets to save money, and until-recently-employed journalists are taking up new hobbies like trying to justify their existence, and Rubik’s cube.

But let’s see the glass half full perspective, shall we? The dismantling of an entire industry and valued civic institution gives us the opportunity to take a look at its component parts, understand what it does, and reassess what specifically we value about it in the first place.

In putting journalism back together again, we may just be able to make it work better.

Our guest today thinks he has some ideas of how journalism can serve its purpose better. It involves some work on both the part of those who create media AND those who consume it. And he suggests those two roles should not be mutually exclusive.

Dan Gillmor is director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and a prolific media creator and consumer in his own right. David Weinberger sat down with him on Skype to figure out how journalism could rise from the ashes.

[LEAD IN TO - INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]

You can follow Dan Gillmor at his website, dangillmor.com [SPELL]. Check out the Radio Berkman blog where you can find some additional links, including to a full length talk Dan gave last week about this very topic, along with longer posts by Dan on the five principles for media consumers and creators.

This episode of Radio Berkman was produced by me, Daniel Dennis Jones, at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

[MUSIC END]

Metadata
 http://www.dangillmor.com/

 http://dangillmor.com/blog/2009/02/07/jo…

 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediaberkma…

 http://citmedia.org/blog/2008/12/27/prin…

MUSIC:
Neurowaxx: “Pop Circus”
Podington Bear: “The Squeaky Song”

Read notes on the event from Gene Koo.

Download the MP3

Download the MP3

If you’ve been following the Facebook Terms of Service flap you probably have some idea of how big a deal a company’s terms of service can be. If Facebook were a country they would be the sixth largest in the world, just by the sheer number of citizens they can claim.

But how a citizen of Facebook participates in society - at least in the microcosm of society that is Facebook - is subject to a confusing and overlapping set of legal infrastructures - not just the Terms of Service Facebook sets out.

Gillian Hadfield a law and economics professor at the University of Southern California argues that Facebook and other companies in the new economy are inhibited by current mechanisms for producing law, and need more leeway in developing their own legal infrastructures. Is Professor Hadfield looking to put the government out of a job? Not exactly. Listen to today’s episode to find out what private lawmaking really means, and how it could power innovation.

Listen:
or download

The Reference Section:
Southern California Innovation Project
If you liked this episode you may like this recent extended talk with Gillian
Gillian recently participated in a “Future of the Firm” competition, a “Dungeons & Dragons” for lawyers experimenting with the shape of a firm in the digital age. Read more at the American Lawyer blog

CC-licensed music this week:
Podington Bear- Jackie and Floyd
Arslkhan - Love Odyssey

Subscribe to Radio Berkman

See a partial transcript after the jump.

Radio Berkman 118: 2009-04-21_hadfield

Should the production of laws be the domain of…lawmakers? The answer might not be so obvious, but we’ll find out nonetheless on this week’s Radio Berkman.

[MUSIC START]

When it comes to intersection between business and the law, there are those who believe the best government is that which governs least. And there are those who believe rules and regulations are crucial to making sure businesses behave properly.

Somewhere in between, or perhaps above, are those who believe the responsibility for building the legal infrastructure for businesses in the new economy could work well in the hands of those who are…well…building the businesses of the new economy.

Gillian Hadfield is the Richard L. And Antoinette S. Kirtland Professor Of Law And Professor Of Economics at the University of Southern California, and Director of the Southern California Innovation Project. We spoke to her about how legal infrastructures could be built to help promote more innovation in the new economy while also protecting the public interest.

[LEAD IN TO - INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]

Gillian Hadfield is the Richard L. And Antoinette S. Kirtland Professor Of Law And Professor Of Economics at the University of Southern California, and Director of the Southern California Innovation Project. You can find links to some of her work on our website.

This episode of Radio Berkman was produced by me, Daniel Dennis Jones, at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

[MUSIC END]

Metadata
 http://scip.usc.edu/about.cfm

 http://works.bepress.com/ghadfield/

JZ’s article on Facebook terms of service
 http://futureoftheinternet.org/e-pluribu…

 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediaberkma…

MUSIC:
arslkhan_-_love_odyssey
Podington Bear- Jackie and Floyd

Download the MP3

The CIA’s Intellipedia project has brought the Wikipedia concept into the the highly secretive intelligence sector. How does it work? Will using a technology that encourages openness and collaboration affect the culture of the agency? Do you think they have an entry for Area 51?

Two principals from the Intellipedia project, Don Burke and Sean Dennehy, chatted with David Weinberger this week about some of the challenges and advantages that the technology could have on our nation’s most secretive agency.

Listen:
or download

The Reference Section:
Don and Sean gave a presentation on Intellipedia at last year’s Enterprise 2.0
David Weinberger’s blog post on Intellipedia
A recent TIME article on Intellipedia
Wikipedia’s article on Intellipedia (how meta!)
If you liked this episode you may like these recent episodes:
On the documentary “Secrecy”
An interview with Andrew Lih

CC-licensed music this week:

General Fuzz: “Starry”
Neurowax: “Pop Circus”

Subscribe to Radio Berkman

See a partial transcript after the jump.

Radio Berkman 117: 2009-04-14_cia

What do you get when cross the CIA and Wikipedia? The answers to this question and more on this week’s Radio Berkman.

[MUSIC START]

If you made a list of the words mentioned on this show in order of frequency of use over time, it would probably go: The, And, Berkman, followed by Transparency. Yes, we love talking about zero percent opacity on this show. Add a little bit of crowdsourcing, and hey we’re ready to party! The idea that knowledge can be shared and managed publicly just really gets us excited.

Of course transparency and crowdsourcing work great for projects like wikipedia, and they made Obama’s town hall a couple weeks ago, interesting to say the least.

But what if it came to entrusting national secrets? Secrets that our national security depends on? If you wanted to build a fluid, user-friendly database of classified information the idea of crowdsourcing the task would seem almost ludicrous.

But that’s just what the Central Intelligence Agency is trying to to do with Intellipedia, a three year old wiki project to improve information-sharing across the agency. Don Burke and Sean Dennehy of the CIA stopped by the Berkman Center to talk with David Weinberger about what goes on behind the scenes at Intellipedia.

[LEAD IN TO - INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]

Don Burke and Sean Dennehy are with the Central Intelligence Agency. You can find a link in the show notes to a presentation they gave on Intellipedia at last year’s Enterprise 2.0 conference. Unfortunately we can’t give you a link to the actual Intellipedia. But if you feel you can make an interesting case for how your access to Intellipedia would aid national security visit www.dni.gov and contact the Director of National Intelligence. Let us know how that goes.

This episode of Radio Berkman was produced by me, Daniel Dennis Jones, at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

[MUSIC END]

Metadata
Intellipedia presentation http://www.e2conf.com/archive/videos/pla…
Reference back to “secrecy” episode
David’s Blog post on intellipedia: http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchiv…
Back to Andrew Lih
 http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/…
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellipedi…

Music:
“Starry” - General Fuzz  http://www.generalfuzz.net/tunes.php)
“Pop Circus” - Neurowax  http://ccmixter.org/files/Neurowaxx/1423…)

Download the MP3

Download the MP3

Either way, US President Barack Obama has been up to some interesting tricks in building .gov’s web presence. A memo (linked here) that came out of the Oval Office in late January ordered all federal agencies not only to err on the side of transparency in their dealings, but to embark on ambitious new web-enabled methods for bringing in citizen participation.

President Obama himself led one of the first online townhalls in which Americans submitted and voted on over 100,000 questions, which Obama then responded to in more traditional setting. Gene Koo, a Berkman Fellow, posted some advice on his blog for the Obama administration on how they could improve this process in the future, and potentially build a more web-savvy democracy. We caught up with him last week to get his thoughts on this fascinating topic.

Listen:
or download

The Reference Section:
Gene’s blog
a post on this topic from our regular host David Weinberger

CC-licensed music this week:

My Morning Jacket: “One Big Holiday”
Podington Bear - “Jackie and Floyd”

Subscribe to Radio Berkman

See a partial transcript after the jump.

Radio Berkman 116: 2009-04-07_koo

[CLIP FROM GENE]

The answers to this question and more on this week’s Radio Berkman.

[MUSIC START]

Here’s a number: one hundred three thousand nine hundred eighty one. That’s how many questions were asked at a town hall President Obama held a couple of weeks ago in cyberspace. This town hall was radically unlike your stereotypical, politician-in-his-shirt-sleeves-while-local-farmers-discuss-pork-subsidies town hall. No, Obama’s town hall invited any American to submit and vote on short questions on 11 topics ranging from education to budget in an online forum hosted by Google.

And of the approximately 100,000 questions submitted, some 2,130 questions across all categories referenced one issue in particular, giving some in the mainstream media, and even Obama himself, the giggles.

[CLIP FROM OBAMA]

But this episode of Radio Berkman isn’t about Marijuana Legalization. It’s not even about the forum that brought that question to the fore in the first place. It’s about the values of transparency and engagement that have swept Washington since Barack Obama moved into the White House.

Can both American citizens AND the government use technology, not just to find out what the other is up to, but to actually engage each other productively? What could a more productive citizen/government relationship mean for the fabric of democracy?

Gene Koo is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society who has his finger on the pulse of the Obama administration’s IT endeavors. I spoke with him to get more details on this fascinating issue.

[LEAD IN TO - INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]

You can follow Gene’s blog at blogs.law.harvard.edu

This episode of Radio Berkman was produced by me, Daniel Dennis Jones, at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

[MUSIC END]

Metadata
Koo’s blog post: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/anderkoo/20…
DW’s blog post: http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2009/03/…

Music:
My Morning Jacket

Download the MP3

This week, in a special extended episode of Radio Berkman, one of the innovators of Vendor Rights Management (VRM) gives us an inside look at how the relationship between customer and retailer could become more efficient, practical, and personal.

For those worried about how the future of commerce, media, and the internet could play out this episode is a must listen.

Listen:
or download

The Reference Section:
Check out Doc’s Blog
Check out Project VRM
Check out Doc’s extended talk in audio or video

CC-licensed music this week:
Brad Sucks: “Dropping Out of School” and “I Think I Started a Trend”

Subscribe to Radio Berkman

See a partial transcript after the jump.

Radio Berkman 115: 2009-03-31_searls

Could technology actually empower you the consumer to get what you want from a company? And maybe make companies turn a better profit at the same time? Get ready to have your consumer mind blown on this week’s Radio Berkman.

[MUSIC START]

Most of us take our one-way relationship with a company for granted. Even in these days of amazon and itunes, zappos and peapod, our relationship with a product provider involves a lot of searching to find what we want, and a lot of guessing on the part of the retailer. When we finally find our product, we have to exchange a great deal of personal and financial information before we can check out. And for every online retailer we interact with, the process has to be repeated all over again!

And take the case of the independent musician or radio station. If you want to throw them a few bucks to support their work, you can spend three minutes or more just entering in profile information! For institutions that depend on charitable support for their product, those minutes wasted can mean hundreds if not thousands of potential supporters lost.

We may not view the minutes spent engaging in transactions as a great inconvenience right now. But a group of innovators are hoping to empower consumers to have a more direct relationship with the companies they purchase from – and cut the red tape between what we want and how we get it.

Doc Searls is a co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto, a senior editor at Linux Journal, and one of the innovators behind what is called Vendor Relationship Management. David Weinberger sat down with Doc to get a clearer picture of the market’s potential future.

[LEAD IN TO - INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]

You can follow Doc’s VRM project at http://projectvrm.org/
A more detailed talk from Doc, along with links to references made on this episode, can also be found on our website at blogs.law.harvard.edu

This episode of Radio Berkman was produced by me, Daniel Dennis Jones, at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

[MUSIC END]

Metadata
 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc
 http://projectvrm.org/

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Moderator: * Jonathan Zittrain, of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and author of The Future of the Internet — and How to Stop It.

Panelists: * James Boyle, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind * Lawrence Lessig, Remix * Joi Ito, Free Souls * Molly S. Van Houweling, Creative Commons first Executive Director

with Special Guests: * Elena Kagan, Dean of the Harvard Law School * Charles Nesson, William F. Weld Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, Founder and Faculty Co-Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society

This event was sponsored by Creative Commons and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

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