Latest News from David Weinberger

Werner Vogels, Bradley Horowitz, and Jonathan Zittrain

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 08:45:00 EST

I’m at Supernova. (live stream) I’ve come in a little late on an afternoon session. Werner Vogels talks about cloud computing. He contrasts it with a 1900 Belgian beer brewery that had to have its own electricity generator, which took a lot of maintenance and didn’t help it make better beer. He warns that any offering that taps into the large social networks may find itself with traffic suddenly spiking by orders of magnitude.

Sprint Nextel informs on its customers 8M times

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:16:28 EST

Chris Soghoian reports: print Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure of sensitive customer information was made possible due to the roll-out by Sprint of a new, special web portal for law enforcement officers. The ...

Andrew McAfee “Enterprise 2.0″ book launch

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:31:47 EST

Next Monday, 12/7, the Berkman Center is hosting a book launch of Berkman Fellow Andrew McAfee's new book "Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization's Toughest Challenges" at 6:00PM in Pound Hall 102. Andrew will give a brief-ish talk. I heard him give a talk last week, and ...

350 years of science

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:11:40 EST

The Royal Society has posted pdfs of 60 of the most important papers it's published in its 350 years. Want to read Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's paper on wee beasties? Newton on light and optics? Natural selection of the peppered moth? We gotcha historic scientific papers right here!

(Two podcast interview with, um, me)

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:04:04 EST

Here are two podcast interviews with me. 1. Cluetrain at 10, with Mitch Joel at Six Pixels of Separation. 2. Episode 71 of The Kindle Chronicles with Len Edgerly. I think my portion begins at about 11:45 in. I mainly grouse about the Kindle, even though I like the one ...

NY Times Week in Review no longer reviews the week

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 11:18:12 EST

It's been a while since I've read the NY Times Week in Review. I was shocked at the issue I just read: It's newsotainment, and not at its best. What used to be a round-up of the week's news is now a full page of humor (not even very funny), ...

Awesome, Not awesome, Awesome if it works

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 09:14:20 EST

Awesome: Photo of the sun's path over the course of a year. Not awesome: Video Professor. Nice job calling it like it is, Mike Arrington. ("When you're 80 and look back at what you've done with your life, is this really what you want to have spent your time doing?") ...

Wendy Seltzer on the other problem with DRM

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 11:36:26 EST

Wendy Seltzer has posted an article that will run in Berkeley technology Law Journal (Jan. 25 2010) . In it she argues that the problems with DRM go beyond its failure to accommodate Fair Use: The fair use debate is important, but it is not the only problem with DRM. Equally ...

Andrew Zuckerman starts a blog

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 10:45:13 EST

My deepest wishes for happiness go to Rachel and Ethan and their beautiful son Andrew.

Broadband Strategy week: Interview with Brian David

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:46:22 EST

At the latest edition of Broadband Strategy Week, I interview Brian David, Director of Adoption and Usage at the FCC's Broadband Strategy intiative. We talk about what has to happen beyond providing access in order to enable and drive adoption.

McLuhan tape rescue

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:57:32 EST

I have not had a chance to listen to this — it's Thanksgiving here in the US — but StarLarvae has found, digitized, and posted a talk by Marshall McLuhan at Johns Hopkins from the 1970s. Could be fascinating...

Thanksgiving without a Giver

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:53:58 EST

I very much liked James Carroll's reflections on how the sense of gratitude occurs in those who do not believe there is a Giver of the gifts we have received. When it comes to atheism, I am agnostic: I'm not sure if I believe that there isn't a Giver. But that's ...

When the Crowd is Racist at Google

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:30:00 EST

If you search Google Images for "Michelle Obama" (no quotes), the first image you'll see is a poorly photoshopped picture of her as an ape. You'll also see a Google Ad on that page that links to Google's explanation of why such a blatantly racist photo is the top-ranked one at ...

eBook on eGov

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:40:15 EST

You can download a free PDF of a new anthology about egovernment, called State of the eUnion, edited by John Gotze. I haven't read it, but there are some excellent contributors. (Disclosure: I'm one of the not-so-excellent contributors.)

Visualizing the decline of empires

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:28:53 EST

Visualizing empires decline from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo. Wait for it. Blobs disgorging.

Will books survive? A scorecard…

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:45:50 EST

New media generally don't replace old media, as Marshall McLuhan pointed out. After TV we still have radio. After telephones we had telegrams for a good long while. So what about books? After we have networked digital books, we'll still have and produce physical books. But will physical books be ...

Cory Doctorow in support of copyright

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:51:16 EST

In this edition of Radio Berkman, Cory Doctorow argues in favor of copyright ... the part of copyright that protects the rights of readers to own (and not just license) books. It being Cory, the discussion covers topics such as the way in which books are like dogs and his sentimental ...

Two long posts well worth reading

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:36:11 EST

Ethan Zuckerman ponders what good is knowing if it doesn't lead to effective action...and he isn't asking this rhetorically. You want to read this because Ethan himself is an extreme knower, an extreme care-er, and a full time agent of change. I found that this post caused me to have ...

Legal advice for online journalists, bloggers, and other webby creators

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:54:45 EST

The Berkman Center has announced the Online Media Legal Network that networks lawyers willing to provide free services with online journalists and other creators of online works who need legal advice for free or for cheap. It could be anything from helping to legally create a company to representing you ...

[berkman] Samuel Bowles on property rights in the information age

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:25:11 EST

Samuel Bowles is giving a Berkman lunchtime talk called: "Kudunomics: Property rights for the information based economy." He wants to look at how institutions are likely to evolve in the "weightless economy." NOTE: Live-blogging. Getting things wrong. Missing points. Omitting key information. Introducing artificial choppiness. Over-emphasizing small matters. Paraphrasing badly. ...

Cory: No, three strikes and you’re out

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:04:23 EST

I've posted a video interview with Cory Doctorow at Broadband Strategy Week. Cory talks about the disproportionality of "three strikes" laws that take away Internet access from those who have been thrice accused of copyright infringement. Perhaps, he suggests, we should also take away Internet access from rightsholders who ...

UN’s Internet Governance Forum Censors a Mild Mention of Censorship

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:55:00 EST

Holy cow! The Open Net Initiative, a group that monitors government filtering (= censorship) of the Internet held a book launch at the United Nations-sponsored Internet Governance Forum in Sharm El Sheik. A poster for the book — Access Controlled — contained the sentence: "The first generation of Internet ...

Google Books Settlement 2.0?

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:30:00 EST

Google has announced a revised settlement [redlined pdf faq pdf] that it hopes will address the concerns raised by the Department of Justice and many other groups. Here's a summary of the summary Google provides [pdf], although IANAL and I encourage you to read the summary, which is written ...

OMG. I disagree with Umberto Eco!

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:56:47 EST

It makes me very nervous to disagree with Umberto Eco because he is so fathomlessly smart. But I think in this case I do. Sort of. There's a fabulous interview with Eco in Spiegel (in English) about why he loves lists. He is characteristically pithy, provocative and wise. A crucial ...

How to connect your Droid to a Mac

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 12:26:05 EST

It took only a little googling, but it isn't dead obvious — until you know how to do it — so here's how you connect your Droid to your Mac. Connect the two via USB. Pull down the Notifications sheet on the Droid. You do that by pulling with your giner on ...

Markets Are Networks

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:30:00 EST

I gave a keynote at theCanadian Marketing Association's Marketing Week conference in Toronto a couple of days ago. It was a new talk, and I tried to structure it carefully. I've gone through my slides, and here's an extended summary of what I said (or meant) in this 35-minute ...

Rest In Laughter, David Lloyd

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:23:34 EST

David Lloyd, who not only wrote some of the greatest single episodes in TV sitcom history [Chuckles the Clown youtube], but consistently wrote hilariously, has died at 75. I especially loved a lot of his work on Frasier. With the death of Larry Gelbart (best known for M*A*S*H, but also ...

Five Days with a Droid

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:15:00 EST

I got my Droid about five days ago, and immediately took it on the road with me, which meant I didn't have the quality time I wanted to settle into a nook and read Persian love poetry to it. But, I did get a sense of how it looks to ...

Lego blocks unmiscellanized

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:34:05 EST

Giles Turnbull at the Morning News reports on his research interrogating (gently) children from different families about what they call various Lego pieces. Quite interesting in its own taxonomic way, and a topic that's amusing even just to contemplate.

Jay Rosen’s 10 Press Commandments/Tweets

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:07:10 EST

Derek Barry blogs Jay Rosen's keynote at the Media140 in Sydney. Jay gave his ten commandments (in the form of tweets) for press in the age of the Internet. (Jay apparently noted my post on transparency and objectivity, which Derek looked at and thought was "ironically anonymous." I never considered ...

ethanz blogs, well, me

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:55:09 EST

I've been honored with one of Ethan Zuckerman's incredible liveblog postings. I gave a 45 min talk at the Berkman Center yesterday. I spoke quickly, waved my hands a lot, and spewed. [Rough draft here.] Even so, Ethan was able to commit an amazing act of streaming journalism, with very ...

Dr. Mo on building broadband with healthcare in mind

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:40:45 EST

Dr. Mohit Kaushal, director of healthcare for the FCC's Broadband Strategy Initiative talks about the effect of healthcare considerations have on the thinking of those planning our broadband strategy. The

Seattle’s new mayor wants muni fiber

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:18:25 EST

Mike McGinn's campaign platform is high on the city providing an optical fiber infrastructure to the city of Seattle. Mike McGinn's campaign is grass-rootsy. Mike McGinn won. Is Seattle going to go muni-fiber?

Line from a conf

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:37:02 EST

"There is a way to herd cats: Move their food." -- speaker at a closed conf

$11 for Veterans Day

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:25:14 EST

An unusual coalition is backing the http://eleven-eleven.org, trying to get 11 million Americans to each contribute $11 for veterans programs. It's sponsored by BeyondTribute.org, and has been endorsed by Joe Trippi (the strategist behind the Howard Dean campaign) and John Hinderaker of the Republican Powerline blog. The groups to whom ...

Order of Magnitude Quiz: How many travelers

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:59:40 EST

According to the Boston Globe, how many travelers fly in or out of Boston's Logan Airport every year? You win this quiz (and get exactly nothing as a prize) if your answer is within an order of magnitude of the right answer. (And I should periodically acknowledge that my friend ...

Google Plays the Openness Card

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 07:00:00 EST

While Apple has blocked the Someecards app because some of the cards have made fun of public figures, Google has asked the app to port on over to Android phones. (BTW, I got a Droid today.)

Rough, rough draft: What info was

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:21:45 EST

Draft of my talk on the end of information at the Berkman Center I have been working for weeks on a talk I'm giving at a Tuesday lunch at the Berkman Center, where "work on" means erasing more than I've written. I've done more complete rewrites than I can count, mainly ...

Yochai Benkler responds to critics of the broadband survey

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:50:49 EST

Yochai Benkler, the project lead on the Berkman Center's analytic survey of how broadband works around the world [pdf] responds to critics and questioners.

Ariziona rules metadata is part of public documents

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:43:02 EST

The Supreme Court of Arizona has ruled that the metadata included in electronic doucments is covered by the public records law. If the state has to make the document available, it also has to make the metadata available. The court reasoned analogically: "It would be illogical, and contrary to the policy ...

Pew Internet: Staring at screens makes us more social

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:34:35 EST

I'm in an airport, beginning a day of transit that seems to bend time in a Time Zonish way, so I haven't had time to actually read this Pew Internet report, but my understanding is that it challenges the assumption that mobiles, texting, the Internet, and all the rest make ...

[iab] Alain Heureux on regulating marketing

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:27:07 EST

I'm at IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) in Milan. The Europe-wide president of IAB, Alain Heureux, is giving a talk that includes a section on the self-regulatory mechanisms IAB is proposing as it watches Brussels begin to formulate policy. NOTE: Live-blogging. Getting things wrong. Missing points. Omitting key information. Introducing artificial ...

Open Declaration on E-government

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:25:27 EST

Some folks, including Nadia El-Imam, have put together an Open Declaration on Public Services 2.0 that is going to be presented alongside the declaration of the European ministers at the Malmö ministerial conference in about 3 weeks. They're looking for signatures.

Why sending large attachments sucks, but we’ll keep doing it anyway

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:30:40 EST

The Google Operating System blog (independent of Google) has a useful post explaining why it's a bad idea to send large attachments, even though Google now lets you attach files up to 25MB in size. The reasons the post gives have to do with how inefficient attachments are for the ...

Bill in Maine wants us to vote No on One

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:40:58 EST

I have to say I enjoyed this message from Bill, urging his fellow Mainers to vote against Question 1, which would undo the state's gay marriage law. I'm in agreement with Bill's opinions, but I also admired the writing and rhetoric.

Whitehouse goes Drupal

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:06:20 EST

From Personal Democracy Forum: WhiteHouse.gov has gone Drupal. After months of planning, says an Obama Administration source, the White House has ditched the proprietary content management system that had been in place since the days of the Bush Administration in favor of the latest version of the open-source Drupal software, as ...

Trippi: The New Them

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:08:42 EDT

Joe Trippi has an important post about to understand the upcoming election results: The electorate's Us vs. Them has changed from Our Party vs. Their Party to The Electorate vs. Anyone in Power: Voters are increasingly seeing themselves as "us" and both parties in Washington as "them." They are not going ...

Argument by analogy

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:06:08 EDT

A judge has ruled that email is not protected under the Fourth Amendment. This sounds wrong to me (although I am very much not a lawyer), but what I really enjoy are the many many arguments by analogy as slashdotters try to figure out what email is like, so we ...

Taking sides with Droid: Hippies vs. Geeks

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:00:39 EDT

I'm finding the cultural politics of Droid's marketing to be fascinating. Droid is Motorola's competitor to the iPhone, based on Google's open source Android operating system. Of course it's marketing itself head-to-head against the iPhone. Verizon's "iDon't" ad was totally in iPhone's face: iPhone doesn't do x, y, and z, ...

Sharing DNA

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:07:01 EDT

BoingBoing runs a terrific photo of chimps watching a dead chimp being transported, and asks anyone to deny that the chimps are grieving. On the one hand, I don't doubt for a moment that animals feel emotions. (Neither did Darwin, by the way. He seems to have been quite connected to ...