Berkman Buzz: September 16, 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.
* Andrés Monroy-Hernández writes about joining the Berkman Center as a fellow
* Fernando Bermejo explores "anonymous reading"
* Dan Gillmor debates trust and TechCrunch
* Betsy Masiello considers privacy and advanced data analytics
* The Citizen Media Law Project reviews Twitter's role in Gilbert Arenas' lawsuit against VH1
* Weekly Global Voices: "Iran: Female Blogger Receives 50 Lashes"
Note: We're still accepting applications for our Clinical Instructor opportunity with our Cyberlaw Clinic!
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The full buzz.
"The diversity of backgrounds among the Berkmanites is also very telling of the type of people who are attracted to building and understanding the on-line world. Nicholas Negroponte once described the Media Lab as a place for misfits and I think Berkman is another one of those places. We need more places like these, places willing to host people unbounded by specific disciplines."
From Andres Monroy-Hernandez's blog post, "All roads lead to Berkman"
"A few days ago I decided to try again and started reading my first Kindle book on my computer: Eli Pariser’s 'The Filter Bubble'. I was actually enjoying the reading (both the content and the experience). Then, as I turned a page, I saw a passage that was lightly underlined and had a tag next to it that said “16 highlights”. Amazon was telling me how many readers of the book had considered that passage worth highlighting. That made me remember why I had not continued using the app when I first downloaded it: I somehow felt that someone was reading over my shoulder and tracking what I was doing."
From Fernando Bermejo's blog post, "Reading E-books Anonymously"
"Journalism is a conflict of interest. All journalists and news organisations have worldviews, business dealings and biases. Sometimes, the entanglements, financial and otherwise, are so plain that they cause rational members of our audience(s) to wonder if we could possibly be doing a fair job."
From Dan Gillmor's post for The Guardian, "TechCrunch, trust and conflicts of interest"
"I spend so much of my professional life working with people who worry about privacy invasions resulting from advanced data analytics. Never do I hear people saying things like I thought Friday night: oh dear credit card company, you had the data, you should be smart enough to make my life easier by figuring out what it means. Instead, when companies do this sort of analytics well, I hear outrage over how it is that the company knew what it did, and whether what it knew was actually accurate."
From Betsy Masiello's blog post, "You had the data, you should have known!"
"Basketball Wives: Los Angeles lives! And one of the reasons is an athlete's Twitter habit. Orlando Magic point guard Gilbert Arenas sued in California federal court (complaint) to stop the broadcast of the primiere episode of the VH1 reality show, which the channel touts as featuring 'a group of dynamic women with relationships to some of the biggest basketball players in the game.'"
From Eric P. Robinson's blog post for the Citizen Media Law Project, "He Tweets, He Misses! Court Blocks Gilbert Arenas's Preliminary Injunction"
"Somayeh was active during the 2009 presidential election in the campaign for Mir Hussein Mousavi, and she was jailed for 70 days in 2009, after a mass protest movement erupted in Iran. She was released after paying bail, but the flogging sentence was eventually upheld."
From Bijoy's post for Global Voices, "Iran: Female Blogger Receives 50 Lashes"
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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.