Berkman Infrastructure Group

About the Group

What can be learned by comparing the Internet to other infrastructures? This group aims to create a high-level forum where our disciplinary knowledge of other, related networked infrastructures across history and place can advance "infrastructural thinking" about the Internet. The Internet now serves as a platform for expression, innovation, commerce, politics, cooperation, conflict, art, science, engineering, and more. Each of these domains already has some notion of essential infrastructure. To connect these in a useful way, the Berkman infrastructure group hosts discussions that invite reflection and comparison across disciplines that address infrastructure. We invite academics, researchers, and graduate students to join the discussion.

Schedule for the previous term (Spring 2010): The group convenes on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays from 4-6pm starting on January 27, 2010 and ending May 1, 2010. Talks will be held in the Berkman Conference room at 23 Everett Street. They will feature a presentation by the speaker, followed by questions and discussion. Snacks will be served.

Convenors

This group is convened by Christian Sandvig (csandvig@cyber.law.harvard.edu) and Doc Searls (doc@searls.com).

Our Mailing List

We maintain an announcement and light discussion mailing list called infra.

To receive reminders about meetings, please join our mailing list. Send an e-mail to sympa@eon.law.harvard.edu containing the phrase "subscribe infra" OR visit: https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/lists/subscribe/infra

Mailing list archives are here: https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/lists/arc/infra.

Speakers (2009-10)

11/17: Alien Infrastructure
Christian Sandvig, Communication, Media, and Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
11/30: Vernacular Infrastructure
Doc Searls, Berkman Center, Harvard University
12/8: An Infrastructure for Interoperable Scientific Knowledge
Carolina Rossini, Industrial Cooperation Research Project, Berkman Center, Harvard University
John Wilbanks, Vice President, Science Commons
1/27: The Internet as Infrastructure and Vice Versa
Doc Searls, Berkman Center
Christian Sandvig, Communication, Media, and Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
2/10: Internet infrastructure as condition, possibility, and waste
Fernando Bermejo, Communication, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
2/24: From the Internet to Ambient Connectivity
Bob Frankston, co-inventor of VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet
3/10: No meeting this week!
3/23: A Mutual Aid Treaty for Cyberspace
(Note special day [Tuesday] and time [3pm] for this week only!)
Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard Law School and Berkman Center, Harvard University
Audio recording of the talk
3/23: Infrastructure Theme Field Trip at Yale University
(Note special day [Tuesday] and time [5pm] and location [New Haven, CT] for this field trip only!)
A special infrastructure-themed meeting of the Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group
Featuring Christian Sandvig (Harvard) on "Alien Infrastructures," Susanne Seitinger (MIT) on "Infrastructures of Imageability," and Ramesh Subramanian (Yale) on "Rural Development through Village Knowledge Centers in India."
4/14: How Infrastructures Learn
Doc Searls, Berkman Center, Harvard University
4/28: The Information Channel as a Social Signal
Karrie Karahalios, Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Our Work

Our Infrastructure bibliography on Zotero
(Originally by ShinJoung Yeo, Christian Sandvig, Lisa Parks, Jonathan Sterne, and Fred Turner.) To make use of this bibliography, you'll need to install Zotero. If that doesn't interest you, here is an HTML snapshot.
Our infrastructure flickr photostream (Originally by Doc Searls.)

Related Groups

InfoStructure Group at the University of Illinois
The Consortium for the Science of Sociotechnical Systems

The Facebook Group: Researchers of the Socio-Technical