Berkman Buzz: Week of February 8, 2010
BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations
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What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below.
* Chilling Effects asks, "Who Dat Trademark Belong To?"
* Doc Searls strips new new journalism practices back to basics.
* Miriam Meckel holds us up to the looking-glass, that we might see how sulky we are.
* Judith Donath explores our virtual (dis)honesties with Jeremy Bailenson.
* David Weinberger encounters an old nemesis, and pits Darwin against Hunch.com.
* Harry Lewis considers legislative changes to what matter is in Massachusetts.
* CMLP gnaws on the FBI's call for ISPs to have to log and retain more and more.
* OpenNet Initiative updates us on Germany's abandonment of a Net filtering law.
* Weekly Global Voices: "Pakistan: PTA Blocks President's ‘Shut-Up' Video"
* Publius: "Understanding our Knowledge Gaps: Or, Do we have an ICT4D field? And do we want one?"
* Micro-post of the week: Christian Sandvig gets illocutionary with Fernando Bermejo.
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The full buzz.
"It's sunny and warm in south Florida as the New Orleans Saints head to the Super Bowl for the first time in the team's 42-year history. Back in New Orleans, though, a cold front is blowing through as the National Football League tries to use intellectual property claims to lock down "Who Dat," a seminal New Orleans slogan adapted by Saints fans to cheer on the team."
From Blake Reid's blog post for Chilling Effects, Who Dat Trademark Belong To?
"Interesting how normative practices continue to improve even as variants emerge, and even as supporting technology changes, along with users and uses. For example, reporting is still reporting, whether you’re doing it by blogging or tweeting or texting or phoning or … whatever the next thing is (or things are). The basic principles are the same."
From Doc Searls' blog post What’s Old is Nude Again
"Something irritated me when I looked at the photo of Steve Jobs sitting in his armchair on stage and holding the new iPad in his hands. What was it? I had to think about it. Why was he sitting like that? I have thought about it for quite a while now. And in the course of remembering this photo again and again it suddenly linked to some ideas that came across my mind and some encounters I had these days and all this has shaped an answer."
From Miriam Meckel's blog post Looking Glass
"One of Bailenson’s experiments showed that avatars programmed to mimic the subject’s gestures were more persuasive and well-liked than avatars using naturalistic but non-mimicking gestures. Is mimicry carried out via avatar simply an extension of the same social adaptability, or is it fundamentally different?"
From Judith Donath's post for the Law Lab, A Reflection on Jeremy Bailenson’s talk
"The challenge, of course, is figuring out what that central issue is. I’ve thrashed among several alternatives, each of which would provide a different way of structuring the book. If the book is about the problem that there’s too much to know (which is, after all, the title), then the preface should illustrate that point. If it’s about the growth of networked expertise, then I should present a contrast between the old and new ways of being an expert. If it’s about the restructuring of knowledge, then the preface should give an example of traditional knowledge and new knowledge. If it’s about the socializing of knowledge, then … etc., etc."
From David Weinberger's blog post [2b2k] Not throwing everything out
"In his opinion, the judge noted that the legislature had changed the law a few years ago to lengthen the prison term to five years, but didn’t bother to change the list of media. So, he concluded, computer to computer communications aren’t covered, and the court has to assume the legislature didn’t intend to include them. The omission is easily remedied, but it’s not up to the court to do that."
From Harry Lewis' blog post What Matter Is
"ISPs are resisting the request, not due to privacy concerns but due to infrastructure demands. Logging urls for every user would require an immense amount of storage. Of course, if the ISP has a pay-per-view system, and the FBI can finally start paying its spying fee promptly, I'm sure the spy infrastructure could be paid for with taxpayers' money."
From Andrew Moshirnia's blog post for the CMLP, Does This Look Infected to You? Government Virus as Counter-Proposal to FBI's URL Demands
"Since the former government, made up of a coalition of Germany´s two biggest parties, the social democratic SPD and the conservative CDU, passed the law in June/July 2009, it remained a controversially discussed topic in Germany. Especially civil society groups including the Internet community criticized the then Minister of Family Ursula von der Leyen for using child porn as an excuse to create a structure of online censorship."
From Daniel Oppermann's blog post for ONI, German Government Steps Away from 2009 Filtering Plan
"Instead it was then reported that the Internet governing body Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, which monitors internet access from Pakistan has placed an URL-specific ban on one particular video in which the President of Pakistan Mr. Asif Ali Zardari is seen to deliver a very forceful and curt “Shut-up” to some participant at the rally he was addressing...barely a few weeks back."
From Teeth Maestro's blog post for Global Voices, Pakistan: PTA Blocks President's ‘Shut-Up' Video
"Recent discussions, either at already concluded ICT4D conferences and workshops, or here at the Harvard Forum, or in the planning discussions for future conferences, have reminded us of the sometimes strong and often unhelpful disciplinary walls that can be constructed across ICT4D’s cross-disciplinary areas and the common tendency for this field to intellectually jog-in-place. Here’s that story."
From Michael Best's essay for Publius.cc: Understanding our Knowledge Gaps: Or, Do we have an ICT4D field? And do we want one?
"Bermejo wants to apply Austin's speech act to theorize the difference betw. Inet and old media. = "bit acts"? #berkman #infra" [1:55 PM Feb 10th]
Christian Sandvig reports from a talk on/in infrastructure with Fernando Bermejo.