David Weinberger

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... (more)

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 ... (more)

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 ... (more)

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!... (more)

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 I own. It w... (more)

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), a feature article or two, some trivia (m... (more)

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?”) And it’s been ... (more)

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 imp... (more)

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

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. ... (more)

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… ... (more)

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 about as close a... (more)

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 G... (more)

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.) ... (more)

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

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 p... (more)

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 sentimen... (more)

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 ha... (more)

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 com... (more)

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 ... (more)