The Growth and Decay of Shared Knowledge; Making it as a Musician In an Increasingly Digital World; Unexpected Development

The Growth and Decay of Shared Knowledge

Tuesday, April 3, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, Cambridge, MA. This event will be webcast live.

Knowledge grows, but it also contracts as outmoded facts and theories are replaced with new ones. This talk will discuss our intuitions about knowledge domains and the methods by which such intuitions could be modeled empirically. Along the way, Dennis will unpack the "information as organism" metaphor, construct taxonomies of epistemological lifeforms, and consider evolutionary pressures on knowledge systems. The talk will conclude with a conversation about the health of the academic publishing industry, and about the challenges of doing comparative work between new and old media. Dennis Tenen is a literary scholar and a recovering software engineer. He is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, working with metaLab and the Cooperation Group. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

All You Need is Love (and a manager, an accountant, & a web designer): Making it as a Musician In an Increasingly Digital World

Tuesday, April 10, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, Cambridge, MA. This event will be webcast live.

While they’re more in control than ever, newly empowered musicians now find themselves juggling dozens of career-related responsibilities, from booking their own shows to composing witty tweets. How are today’s musicians balancing it all and, even more critical, how have these changes impacted their earning capacity? On April 10, join Future of Music Coalition's Kristin Thomson and Berkman Fellow Erin McKeown as they discuss the changing landscape for musicians and music fans. Drawing on data collected through FMC’s groundbreaking Artist Revenue Streams project, a multi-method, cross-genre examination of musicians' and composers' revenue streams in the US, the talk will focus on how musicians are managing their assets, building teams and allocating their time in this increasingly networked world. Kristin Thomson is a community organizer, social policy researcher, entrepreneur and musician. She is co-owner of Simple Machines, an independent record label, which released over seventy records and CDs from 1991-1998. She also played guitar in the band Tsunami, which released four albums from 1991-1997 and toured extensively. In 2001, Kristin graduated with a Masters in Urban Affairs and Public Policy from the University of Delaware. She has been with the Future of Music Coalition since 2001 and has overseen project management, research and event programming, including Future of Music Policy Summits from 2002-2007. She currently lives near Philadelphia with her husband Bryan Dilworth, a concert promoter, and their son, where she also plays guitar in the lady-powered band, Ken. Erin McKeown is an internationally known musician, writer, and producer. With 7 full length albums, 2 EPs, and numerous soundtracks to her credit, she has spent the last 10 years crafting a reputation as an original musical voice and compelling live performer. Lately, she has added mentor and activist to her list of accomplishments. At Berkman, she will work to connect the worlds of policy, art,and technology while considering questions about how to make a creative life a viable vocation. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Unexpected Development: Decolonial Media Aesthetics and Women’s ICT4D Video

Tuesday, April 17, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, Cambridge, MA. This event will be webcast live.

ICT4D (Information Communication Technology for Development) powerfully frames women’s grassroots video production in the Global South, much of which is distributed widely through YouTube. Often, these videos reproduce racialized and gendered discourses - legacies of colonialism - in their narratives of economic, social, and technological progress. However, there are also videos by women’s groups that defy both the historical linearity and spatial fragmentation of the ICT4D framework. These videos instead remix, reclassify, and globally reconnect women’s experiences in the contemporary moment. Culled from hundreds of online videos produced by ICT4D programs, including those in countries classified as having “Low Human Development” according to the Gender Inequality Index of the United Nations Development Program, these media represent powerful instances of a decolonial aesthetics, an altogether unexpected development. These ICT4D videos make compelling claims for other historical narratives and visions for women’s future lives, identities, and uses of information communication technologies. Dalida María Benfield's research addresses artists’ and activists’ creative uses of video and other networked digital media towards social justice projects. Her work is focused on the transformational capacities of media art across different scales. As an artist and activist, she has developed production, education, exhibition, and distribution initiatives focused on youth, women, people of color in the U.S., and local and transnational social movements, including co-founding the media collective Video Machete. She received her Ph.D. in 2011 from the University of California-Berkeley in Comparative Ethnic Studies with Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Rethink Music Conference

April 22-24, Hynes Convention Center, Boston, MA

Music is universal, but the business of music is changing. Produced by Berklee College of Music and midem, Rethink Music is a hands-on conference designed to bring music stakeholders together to discuss business models for the future, examine copyright challenges in the digital era, and analyze technological innovation in music and its distribution. Centered around transforming the music industry, Rethink Music’s programming does not just focus on discussing change, but rather making it happen. Registration required. more information on the Rethink Music website>

DPLA West

April 27, San Francisco, CA

DPLA West—taking place on April 27, 2012 in San Francisco—is the second major public event bringing together librarians, technologists, creators, students, government leaders, and others interested in building a Digital Public Library of America. Convened by the DPLA Secretariat at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and co-hosted by the San Francisco Public Library, the event will assemble a wide range of stakeholders in a broad, open forum to facilitate innovation, collaboration, and connections across the DPLA effort. DPLA West will also showcase the work of the interim technical development team and continue to provide opportunities for public participation in the work of the DPLA. Registration required. more information on the DPLA website>

Virginia Heffernan on The Digital Dialectic

Virginia Heffernan — columnist, national correspondent for Yahoo News, and author of the soon-to-be-released Magic and Loss: The Pleasures of the Internet — discusses analog culture, digital culture and what's next. video/audio on our website>