Upcoming Events: Data, data everywhere -- but how to manage and govern? (6/9); MSR PhD Interns (6/16)

Data, data everywhere -- but how to manage and govern?

Tuesday, June 9, 12:00pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society. This event will be webcast live.

Universities are drowning in data, not only data produced by their researchers and students, but also data they collect about their communities. Research data are subject to sharing and retention requirements by funding agencies and journals. Data from course management systems, faculty personnel records, security cameras, and social media are being used as indicators for decision making. This talk will identify some of the challenges faced by universities in managing and governing these complex categories of data. Material is drawn from Big Data, Little Data, No Data: Scholarship in the Networked World (Borgman, 2015, MIT Press) and the UCLA Data Governance Task Force (work in progress).

Christine L. Borgman, Professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies at UCLA, is the author of more than 200 publications in information studies, computer science, and communication. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

The Quantified Self; Newsfeed: Created by you?; Holding Crowds Accountable To The Public; EVE Online and World of Darkness

Tuesday, June 16, 12:00pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society. This event will be webcast live.

Microsoft Research Interns, Ifeoma Ajunwa, Stacy Blasiola, and Aleena Chia present their current research at the Berkman Center. Join us!

Ifeoma Ajunwa, a 5th year PhD candidate in Sociology at Columbia University, will share her work on "The Quantified Self". Recurring themes in her research include inequality, data discrimination and emerging bioethics debates arising from the exploitation of Big Data. Her most recent law review article on genetic data has been accepted for publication by the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and her opinion piece on the same topic was published in the NY Times Room for Debate.

Stacy Blasiola will discuss "Newsfeed: Created by you? Examining the Discursive Work of Facebook". Stacy is a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a National Science Foundation IGERT Fellow in Electronic Security and Privacy. Stacy's current research examines the mediating role of algorithms in the distribution of knowledge, the data collection that powers these algorithms, and the privacy considerations of online tracking.

Nathan Matias will talk about "Holding Crowds Accountable To The Public". Nathan Matias is a PhD Candidate at the MIT Center for Civic Media/MIT Media Lab, and a Berkman fellow. Nathan designs and researches civic technologies for cooperation and expression. Nathan researches technology for civic cooperation, activism, and expression through action research with communities, data analysis, software design, and field experiments. Most recently, Nathan has been conducting large-scale studies and interventions on the effects of gender bias, online harassment, gratitude, and peer thanks on social media and creative communities like Wikipedia

Aleena Chia will present "EVE Online and World of Darkness". Aleena Chia is a Ph.D. Candidate in Communication and Culture at Indiana University currently interning at Microsoft Research. Her ethnographic research investigates the affective politics and moral economics of participatory culture, in the context of digital and live-action game worlds. She is a recipient of the Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork grant and has published work in American Behavioral Scientist. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever In An Age of Google

Monday, June 22, 6:00pm ET, Harvard Law School. Reception to follow. Co-sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library.

John Palfrey will discuss his new book, BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever In An Age of Google. He argues that anyone seeking to participate in the 21st century needs to understand how to find and use the vast stores of information available online. Libraries play a crucial role in making these skills and information available — and yet are at risk. In order to survive our rapidly modernizing world and dwindling government funding, libraries must make the transition to a digital future as soon as possible—by digitizing print material and ensuring that born-digital material is publicly available online, while continuing to play the vital role as public spaces in our democracy that they have for hundreds of years.

John Palfrey is the Head of School at Phillips Academy, Andover. He serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Knight Foundation and President of the Board of Directors of the Digital Public Library of America. He also serves as a director of the Data + Society Research Institute. John’s research and teaching focus on new media and learning. He has written extensively on Internet law, intellectual property, and the potential of new technologies to strengthen democracies locally and around the world. He is the author or co-author of several books, including BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google (Basic Books, 2015); Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems (Basic Books, 2012) (with Urs Gasser); Intellectual Property Strategy (MIT Press, 2012); Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives (Basic Books, 2008) (with Urs Gasser); and Access Denied: The Practice and Politics of Global Internet Filtering (MIT Press, 2008). John served previously as the Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School. He is a director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, where he was executive director from 2002-2008. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Economic Inequality and Technology: How Knowledge Sharing Helps

Today we feel the impact of technology everywhere except in our paychecks. In the past, technological advancements dramatically increased wages, but during the last three decades, the median wage has remained stagnant. Machines have taken over much of the work of humans, destroying old jobs while increasing profits for business owners. The threat of ever-widening economic inequality looms, but in his new book, Learning by Doing: The Real Connection Between Innovation, Wages, and Wealth, James Bessen argues that it is not inevitable. Workers can benefit by acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to implement rapidly evolving technologies. Sharing knowledge is an important part of that process, including via open standards and employee job-hopping. At this event, Bessen will have a conversation with Berkman Faculty Associate Karim Lakhani about knowledge sharing, past and present, about government policies that discourage sharing, and about the broader issue of slow wage gr owth. video/audio on our website>