Berkman Buzz: August 10, 2012

Last week I helped organize the Open and User Innovation Conference at Harvard Business School. One of many interesting papers presented there was an essay on Institutional Change and Information Production by Fabio Landini from the University of Siena.

At the core of the paper is an economic model of the relationship between rights protection and technologies that affects the way that cognitive labor can be divided and aggregated. Although that may sound very abstract (and it is in the paper), it is basically a theory that tries to explain the growth of free software.

In connection with our emerging Data Artifacts initiative to understand the impacts of data in networked experience, we’re eager to explore some of the most culturally-determined troves of information our society produces: the bibliographic datasets that comprise library online public catalogues. We realize, of course, that one of the richest troves of such information lives in our institutional backyard, associated with the collections of the Harvard Library. Despite extensive consolidation, there are over seventy library units at Harvard, each with its own extensive collection. HOLLIS, the Harvard Online Library Information System, allows patrons to search for select volumes, build lists, and export them to other media, but it does not afford panoramic views of the entire holdings that reveal macroscopic patterns in the acquisition, distribution, circulation, and citation of the university’s collections over time.

Mobile phones allow Senegalese parents to register births in rural areas, to ensure children go to school: bit.ly/OWGksl
About Ethan Zuckerman | @EthanZ

A pending law review article -- and two of the Supreme Court's recent major decisions -- provide vivid examples that judges (and Supreme Court justices in particular) often use "extrinsic evidence" (materials other than what the lawyers present to them in briefs, trial, or argument) to make judicial rulings. In recent decisions, this material is often found online.

In the Supreme Court's recent ruling mostly striking down Arizona's immigration enforcement law, Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent criticized the Obama administration's recent announcement that it would defer deportations of young people under age 30 who immigrated to the U.S. illegally when they were under the age of 16, are in or have graduated from school or have served in the armed forces, and meet other criteria. This announcement was made ten days before the decision was released, and eight weeks after the case was argued.

On Friday, Becky Hurwitz, Paolo Rogerio, and I had the opportunity to conduct mobile media-making workshops with two community based organizations (CBOs) that form part of Boston's large and vibrant Brazilian community. The first workshop was with staff from the Brazilian Immigrant Center (here's their new Vojo group), and the second was with about 20 members of the Vida Verde Co-Op (here's the Vida Verde Vojo group). It was an exciting moment, since these were the first real workshops to use the VoJo hosted mobile blogging platform in a community setting. This post provides a little bit of background about VoJo, then reflects on the two workshops and the lessons learned.

Professor Anne Balsamo has been collaborating with Professor Alexandra Juhasz and a group of more than one hundred feminist scholars to pilot a new kind of online course devoted to feminist dialogues on technology.

Balsamo recently left the University of Southern California to occupy a new post as dean of the School of Media Studies at the New School for Public Engagement in New York. In this position she will continue to work on one of her other ambitious new projects that involves collaboration with an extended network of researchers and designers to create a digital archive for the AIDS Memorial Quilt. The Quilt is an important document of the history of human rights activism in the US and the DIY creativity that has characterized the global response to the disease.

Facebook takes down page deemed racist after pressure from Australia, others ow.ly/cSPop
—Herdict (@herdict)

Strong rain has caused huge floods in many parts of Metro Manila and nearby provinces in the Luzon Island of the Philippines. Metro Manila, the country’s main urban center, is composed of 17 cities and municipalities. School classes and work in both the public and private sectors have been suspended already by the government..