Art in the age of the Ubiquitous Image (10/1); After Snowden: Towards Distributed Security in Cyberspace (10/3)

Art in the age of the Ubiquitous Image

Tuesday, October 1, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor. This event will be webcast live.

Two hundred years ago, artists had the monopoly on image making. Now, every parade or disaster is accompanied by ten thousand twitpics. In a world where mobile technology has made images instantaneous and ubiquitous, what does visual art have left to say? Drawing on her experiences doing illustrated journalism around Guantanamo Bay and the Greek economic crisis, Molly Crabapple speak about the role of art in a world captured by a million cameras.

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer living in New York. Her work engages subculture, politics, and rebellion. Crabapple’s 2013 solo exhibition, Shell Game, a series of large-scale paintings about the revolutions of 2011, led to her being called “Occupy’s greatest artist” by Rolling Stone, and “an emblem of the way that art could break out of the gilded gallery” by The New Republic. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

After Snowden: Towards Distributed Security in Cyberspace.

Thursday, October 3, 6:00pm ET, Harvard Law School.

Ron will put the NSA revelations in a broader context, emphasize the political economy of the cyber security industrial complex and its unintended consequences in a world of Big Data, and then spend some time outlining an alternative approach to securing cyberspace, drawing from his book, Black Code.

Ron Deibert is Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. He is a co-founder and a principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative and Information Warfare Monitor (2003-2012) projects. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

A Global Research Agenda for Children’s Rights in the Digital Age

Monday, October 7, 6:00pm ET, Harvard Law School.

Worldwide, children’s digital access and literacy is growing apace. Yet many of the creative, informative, interactive and participatory features of the digital environment remain substantially underused, and this is a particular challenge in lower-income countries and among socially excluded children. On the other hand, the internet is compounding offline risks and negative experiences such as unwanted sexual solicitation, bullying and harassment, and exposure to pornography and other potentially harmful materials. Drawing on the framework of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, this discussion will critically examine the state of play regarding children’s rights in the digital age in order to identify the research and policy priorities. Sonia Livingstone will argue that the time has come to conduct robust, cross-nationally comparative research to guide policy and practice in maximizing the opportunities and minimizing the harms associated with ICT for children around the world.

The discussion will include responses from representatives of Pew Internet, FOSI, UNICEF, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Provocateur

Sonia Livingstone is a professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE, and author or editor of seventeen books.

Respondents

Stephen Balkam: For the past 30 years, Stephen Balkam has had a wide range of leadership roles in the nonprofit sector in the both the US and UK. He is currently the Founder and CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), an international, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, DC. Urs Gasser is the Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and a Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School. Amanda Lenhart is the senior researcher, director of youth and technology research at the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. Paloma Escudero is the Director of Communications of UNICEF. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

The Electronic Silk Road: How the Web Binds the World

Tuesday, October 8, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor. This event will be webcast live.

On the ancient Silk Road, treasure-laden caravans made their arduous way through deserts and mountain passes, establishing trade between Asia and the civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean. Today’s electronic Silk Roads ferry information across continents, enabling individuals and corporations anywhere to provide or receive services without obtaining a visa. But the legal infrastructure for such trade is yet rudimentary and uncertain. If an event in cyberspace occurs at once everywhere and nowhere, what law applies? How can consumers be protected when engaging with companies across the world? From Facebookistan, to online gambling and PRISM, the new trade routes raise urgent questions of law and policy.

Anupam Chander is Director of the California International Law Center and professor of law at the University of California, Davis. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, he has been a visiting professor at Yale, Chicago, Stanford and Cornell law schools. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

DPLAFest

Thursday-Friday, October 24-25, Boston Public Library.

On October 24-25, 2013 the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) will bring together librarians, archivists, and museum professionals, developers and technologists, publishers and authors, teachers and students, and many others to Boston, MA to celebrate the DPLA’s successful April 2013 launch, its recent milestones, and its future at the first annual DPLAfest.

DPLAfest 2013 — a two-day series of events free and open to the public — will include a reception at the Boston Public Library on the evening of Thursday, October 24 (the reception had been originally planned for April 18, 2013, but was postponed in light of the tragic Boston Marathon bombings on April 15). On Friday, October 25, participants will gather at Northeastern University and the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) for a full day of workshops, discussions, and other hands-on activities. Registration is now open. more information on our website>

Javier Bargas-Avila: Is Beautiful Really Usable?

Ever come across a product that looked beautiful but was awful to use? Or stumbled over a something that was ugly as hell but just did exactly what you wanted? Ever wondered how these factors work together, and how they influence the experiences we create? Product usability and aesthetics are coexistent, but they are not identical. In this talk Javier Bargas-Avila -- Senior User Experience Researcher & Manager at Google (Switzerland) -- shows how usability, aesthetics, and affect work together to create great -- or not so great -- experiences. audio on our website>