Berkman Buzz: August 19, 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.
* Incoming fellow Vivek Kundra reflects on his last days at the White House (PDF)
* Wendy Seltzer talks Google, Motorola, and patents
* Ethan Zuckerman interviews Sasha Costanza-Chock about his plans as a new Assistant Professor of Civic Media at MIT
* Changes at Chinese search engine Baidu unexpectedly affect traffic to Herdict
* Hal Roberts explores the relationship between web traffic locality and Internet control in China
* Weekly Global Voices: "Dominican Republic: Rita Indiana, 'Projects Like Mine Owe a Lot to Social Networks and the Internet'"
Note: We're still accepting applications for our Clinical Instructor opportunity with our Cyberlaw Clinic!
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The full buzz.
"It is has been the experience of a lifetime to have served as the country’s first Chief Information Officer, and I have been deeply honored to serve in the Obama Administation as we worked to deliver results for the American people. I look forward to continuing my work at Harvard, focusing on how we can use information technology to solve our nation’s and the world’s most pressing problems. We live in historic times – facing an unprecedented global economic crisis and new threats to our national security that change daily. Used wisely, technology can help us confront these challenges, but it will require all of us – the public sector, the private sector, and academia – working together to build a brighter future and lead us to a better tomorrow."
From Vivek Kundra's "Reflections on Public Service"
"Wouldn’t we all be better off skipping those patent threats and cross-licensing transaction costs? As Google’s pre-Motorola travails showed, it’s almost* impossible to opt-out of the patent system by choosing to publish and not patent your own inventions. Unlike in copyright, where you can share under Creative Commons, for example, and just have to prove you never accessed another’s work if accused of infringement, you can only save yourself from patent claims by assuring that every bit of technology you use was published more than 17-20 years ago!"
From Wendy Seltzer's blog post, "Google+Motorola = Software Patent Indictment"
"'I'm a scholar and activist as well as a media maker,' explains Costanza-Chock. 'My scholarship has been based on engagement with the world of media activism and civic media more broadly.' In his work at MIT, Costanza-Chock plans to continue straddling the line between action and reflection, building tools and systems to help communities express themselves and reflecting on the role of media in social movements."
From Ethan Zuckerman's post for the MIT Center for Civic Media, "Sasha Costanza-Chock on Move to MIT: 'It's the Most Exciting Possible Place'"
"Beginning in June, Herdict saw its traffic from Baidu, China’s leading search engine, drop to unprecedented lows. Although it does not appear that Herdict itself has been delisted at Baidu, the removal of other sites has impacted Herdict’s visitors from China."
From Laura Miyakawa's blog post for Herdict, "Baidu changes have unexpected impact on Herdict traffic"
"While exploring the structure of national networks through our Mapping Local Internet Control project, we decided to combine our national network data with Google’s AdPlanner data to estimate the overall locality of web site traffic in individual countries. The most interesting result so far is that we estimate that 96% of all page views in China are to web sites hosted within China. This is a very interesting finding because of its implications for how to understand Internet control in China."
From Hal Roberts's blog post, "Local Control: About 95% of Chinese Web Traffic is Local"
"In an interview possible thanks to a collaborative network of bloggers and friends, Dominican songwriter, singer, writer, and performer Rita Indiana talks about her musical identities, artistic multidimensionality, future projects, and her relationship with social media and the Internet, among other topics."
From Firuzeh Shokooh Valle's post for Global Voices, "Dominican Republic: Rita Indiana, 'Projects Like Mine Owe a Lot to Social Networks and the Internet'"
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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.