Financing the Digital Commons; How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform Us; Law School for Digital Journalists

A self-standing financing model to help sustain the non-market digital commons

Tuesday, September 20, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, Cambridge, MA. This event will be webcast live.

What if we consider that sharing a digitally published work in one's possession with other individuals is a fundamental right? What if we break away from the idea of compensating the entertainment right holders for supposed harms resulting from this sharing and ask ourselves what is a reasonable reward and financing model for sustaining a many-to-all cultural society? How many people do we need to reward, how much money for support to production of new works? What will be the diversity of attention to works and creators? Which reward for a given level of usage? The talk will open a discussion on these topics, based on work conducted for "Sharing: Culture and the Economy in the Internet Age", forthcoming at Amsterdam Univ. Press in November 2011. Philippe Aigrain is presently CEO of Sopinspace, Society for Public Information Space, which develops free software and provides commercial services for democratic processes and collaborative work over the In ternet. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

NOW YOU SEE IT: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn

Tuesday, September 20, 6:00PM, Harvard Law School.

When Duke University gave free iPods to the freshman class in 2003, critics called it a waste of money. Yet when students found academic uses for the brand new music devices in virtually every discipline, the iPod experiment proved to be a classic example of the power of disruption – a way of refocusing attention to illuminate unseen possibilities. Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies at the time of the iPod experiment, Cathy N. Davidson sees this kind of innovation as the heart of a new way of collaborative, interactive learning ideal for students facing a changing, global future. Using cutting-edge research on the brain and learning, she shows how the phenomenon of “attention blindness” shapes our lives, and how it has led to one of the greatest problems of our historical moment: Although we email, blog, tweet, and text as if by instinct, too many of us toil in schools and workplaces designed for the last century, not the one in which we live. W e can change that. This talk helps us to think in historical, theoretical, and practical ways about how, as individuals and institutions, we can learn new ways to thrive in the interactive, digital, global world we already inhabit. Cathy N. Davidson served as Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University from 1998 until 2006, where she helped create the Program in Information Science + Information Studies, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, and many other programs. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Law School for Digital Journalists

Thursday, September 22, All Day, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA.

Join us at Harvard Law School on Thursday, September 22, for a full day of unprecedented immersion in the legal challenges facing digital journalists. The Online News Association, Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy present Law School for Digital Journalists, part of the Pre-Conference day at ONA’s 2011 Conference & Awards Banquet, September 22-24 in Boston. This intensive day of practical legal training will cover what digital journalists need to know about how the law impacts their profession, both on the editorial and business sides. Classes will be taught by leading media lawyers and journalism educators. With so much to cover, we plan to run parallel tracks during the day so that if you miss a key session in the morning, you can catch it in the afternoon. Registration is open to the public. Registration Required. more information on our website>

From Tehran to Tahrir: Social Media and Dynamics of Collective Action under Authoritarian Regimes

Tuesday, September 27, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, Cambridge, MA. This event will be webcast live.

From Zeynep: What role did the new media ecology play in the ouster of long-standing dictators in Egypt and Tunisia as well as the continuing unrest across the region? In this talk, I present data from a large protester survey (n=1050) undertaken in Tahrir during February of 2011 and conceptually examine how the new media ecology, composed of satellite TVs, social media and cell phones, upsets the erstwhile stable dynamics of repression under “durable authoritarianism.” (Data collected by the Tahrir Data Project, run by the Engine Room research collective.) In short, authoritarian regimes often survive by creating a collective action problem for their citizenry through isolation, censorship and repression of dissent (“whack-a-protest”); social media introduces novel dynamics to this old game by changing the shape of connectivity networks, by facilitating information and action cascades, by undermining censorship and by facilita ting the formation of new publics. Zeynep Tufekci is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill at the School of Information and Library Science with an affiliate appointment in the Department of Sociology. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Christopher Hoadley on Indigenous Technology Design and its Challenges

While many well meaning efforts bring technology design to bear on problems in developing economies, such as Google People Finder, One Laptop Per Child, etc., fewer efforts involve local participants or settings in the design process. In this talk, Dr. Chris Hoadley — associate professor and director of the Educational Communications and Technology program at New York University — shares work on collaboration with youth, NGOs, and technologists in India, Nepal, and Bhutan, and highlights some of the challenges in trying to create indigenous design capacity. video/audio on our website>

Cultivating New voices, Approaches, and Audiences for national -- and international -- reporting

The Berkman Center hosted a conversation about the challenges of reporting international stories to US and Global audiences. In an age of shrinking news budgets, American newspapers and broadcasters are producing less original reporting of international stories. And while gripping events like the Arab Spring capture the attention of the public, many important international stories fail to garner widespread attention. The challenges for international reporting are both ones of supply (who reports the news from around the world?) and demand (who pays attention?). Journalists Fatima Tlisova (Voice of America) and Pulitzer Prize winner Dele Olojede joined Ethan Zuckerman (Berkman Center/Global Voices), Colin Maclay (Berkman Center), Ivan Sigal (Global Voices), Jon Sawyer (Pulitzer Center) and the Miel family for a discussion and reflection on these questions, and on Persephone's work and the journalistic values she championed. video/audio on our website>