Berkman Buzz: July 22, 2011
A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations
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What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below.
* Herdict explores new circumvention system Telex
* David Weinberger gives an update on the Library Innovation Lab's Beta Sprint project
* Harry Lewis discusses Massachusetts's plan to install license plate reading cameras
* Dan Gillmor explores the US response to the News Corp phone hacking scandal
* Andrew McAfee reviews Google+
* Weekly Global Voices: "Join Us for a Discussion on Mobile Phones for Citizen Media"
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The full buzz.
"This week, the Internet was abuzz with news of a new censorship circumvention measure. That would be Telex- the system proposed by researchers at the University of Michigan to get around traditional censorship measures. It’s currently only a proof of concept, however, we’re excited about its future."
From Kendra Albert's blog post for Herdict, "Telex: Deep Packet Inspection for Good"
"As for the Library Innovation Lab, we are doing this amazing project for DPLA that is coming together. There are some gigantic, chewy issues we’ve had to work through, which we have been working with some fantastic people on. If we get this even close to right — and I’m confident we will — it will make some very hard problems look so easy that they’re invisible. It’s going to be cool. I am learning so much watching my colleagues work through these issues at a level I can barely hang on to. And then there are all the fascinating problems of building an app that makes people think it’s easy to navigate through tens of millions of works."
From David Weinberger's blog post, "Why I’ve been quiet"
"The issues are pretty straightforward: Are you more worried about the government tracking the innocent or about the possibility that a crime will unnecessarily go unsolved? As with all such tradeoffs, the analysis, to be done properly, needs some numbers. How big are the risks of abuse? How big are the chances of solving a crime by use of this data that would not have been solved without it? How big are the damages due to potential abuse? How big are the damages due to those unsolved crimes?"
From Harry Lewis's blog post, "The Great License Plate Kerfluffle"
"The scandal at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp crossed the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday, not because any new evidence appeared linking the company to illegal acts in America but rather because several cable news channels broadcast the British parliament hearing live to US audiences."
From Dan Gillmor's post for the Guardian, "If News Corp was a liberal outfit, it would have been shredded by now"
"After a bit of experience with the technology (which I still like a lot) I noticed that I was almost always selecting ‘public‘ for my updates. I was, in other words, broadcasting them to the world, not to any more constrained circle. And I listen to my ‘tech folk’ circle once in a while, but am more likely to use the built-in sparks feature on G+ to get updates from the mainstream media (MSM) on topics like ‘big data,’ ‘business technology,’ ‘robotics,’ and ‘recession.’"
From Andrew McAfee's blog post, "Google Plus and The Social Media Moonshot"
"Rising Voices is pleased to be participating in an online dialogue hosted by the organization New Tactics in Human Rights and co-facilitated by Mobile Active. The week-long forum 'Using Mobile Phones for Citizen Media' beginning on July 27 to August 2, 2011 will bring together experienced resource practitioners from around the world to share their experiences, tactics, and ideas for using these tools for a variety of purposes related to citizen media."
From Eddie Avila's post for Rising Voices, "Join Us for a Discussion on Mobile Phones for Citizen Media"
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Compiled by Rebekah Heacock.
The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects and sometimes from the Center's wider network.
Suggestions and feedback about the Buzz are always welcome and can be emailed to buzz@cyber.harvard.edu.