Q + A with John Palfrey, Executive Director of the Berkman Center
John Palfrey "got naked" this past week at the Compete Analytics blog with an excellent Q + A, where he discussed the Berkman Center's work, the intersection between cyberspace and law, John's favorite Facebook apps, and much more.
With so many smart people focused on the whitespace of the web, how do you make sure regular Joes understand what you’re up to (and not just perpetual navel-gazing)?
Perpetual navel-gazing is a real hazard. It is also among my worst nightmares.
It’s crucial to us at the Berkman Center that we’re not just another ivory-tower think-tank. It’s important that we do some work that is theoretical and even abstract. We trust also that our work is intellectually rigorous and that our methodologies are sound. But at the same time, we try hard to be certain that we are speaking to an audience online that is bigger than our immediate circle of students and colleagues and other friends.
One way we do that is through our various modes of research, teaching, and activism. We believe in building out into cyberspace as we study it, so we have terrific developers on the team who put up the first blog server at a university, supported the first podcast series, built real-time teaching tools for the classroom, and a whole lot of code for specific research projects. Pretty much everything we do we publish to the web – whether on a blog, on our website, on a podcast, or by video. We are never as successful at this as we’d like to be, but it’s a constant area of focus. We think of our work as relevant to a broad audience and strive to avoid navel-gazing wherever possible.
One project where I think we’re close to getting it right is StopBadware.org. That’s a neighborhood watch where people can tell us about computer programs and web sites around the Internet that are causing problems to their computers. We work with Google to present you with a warning if you’re about to hit a site that may be dangerous to your computer. We also promise that we’ll take web sites and applications off the list when they become clean. It’s been very effective in terms of keeping millions of people from going to compromised sites and also leading to sites and applications getting cleaned up. As with every ambitious research project, it’s still a work in progress, and we’re totally open to ideas for how we can do it better.
Read the entire interview at Compete's website.
With so many smart people focused on the whitespace of the web, how do you make sure regular Joes understand what you’re up to (and not just perpetual navel-gazing)?
Perpetual navel-gazing is a real hazard. It is also among my worst nightmares.
It’s crucial to us at the Berkman Center that we’re not just another ivory-tower think-tank. It’s important that we do some work that is theoretical and even abstract. We trust also that our work is intellectually rigorous and that our methodologies are sound. But at the same time, we try hard to be certain that we are speaking to an audience online that is bigger than our immediate circle of students and colleagues and other friends.
One way we do that is through our various modes of research, teaching, and activism. We believe in building out into cyberspace as we study it, so we have terrific developers on the team who put up the first blog server at a university, supported the first podcast series, built real-time teaching tools for the classroom, and a whole lot of code for specific research projects. Pretty much everything we do we publish to the web – whether on a blog, on our website, on a podcast, or by video. We are never as successful at this as we’d like to be, but it’s a constant area of focus. We think of our work as relevant to a broad audience and strive to avoid navel-gazing wherever possible.
One project where I think we’re close to getting it right is StopBadware.org. That’s a neighborhood watch where people can tell us about computer programs and web sites around the Internet that are causing problems to their computers. We work with Google to present you with a warning if you’re about to hit a site that may be dangerous to your computer. We also promise that we’ll take web sites and applications off the list when they become clean. It’s been very effective in terms of keeping millions of people from going to compromised sites and also leading to sites and applications getting cleaned up. As with every ambitious research project, it’s still a work in progress, and we’re totally open to ideas for how we can do it better.
Read the entire interview at Compete's website.