MediaBerkman

Is the fate of books a forgone conclusion? Will they just continue to make their way out of print and into digital form? This week’s guest, author Cory Doctorow, suggests that we might want to keep books in print for a little while longer. Not just out of nostalgia – but actually to protect the institution of copyright.

Cory Doctorow — a longtime supporter of remixing and free culture, who releases his books under Creative Commons licenses — now throws his weight behind copyright. Huh?

Find out what happens when books meet bits on this week’s Radio Berkman.

Listen:
or download

This week’s artists
Coconut Monkeyrocket – Accidental Beatnik
MorganTJ -Time Decay

The Reference Section:
Cory Blogs at BoingBoing
Cory in Toronto last week
David Weinberger posted a recent Broadband Strategy Week interview with Cory here
Download (or buy) Cory’s brand new book Makers

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See a partial transcript after the jump.

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Nathan Eagle, Omidyar Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, infers behavioral dynamics on a broad spectrum of scales using technology; from risky behavior in a group of MIT freshman, to cholera outbreaks in Rwanda and wealth in the UK, to disease transmission and slum formations in East Africa. Though the analytical techniques are sophisticated, the tools used are as simple as a mobile phone. Ultimately these insights can be used to actively improve the lives of the billions of people who generate this data and the societies in which they live.

Download the MP3

…or download the OGG audio format!

Nathan Eagle, Omidyar Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, infers behavioral dynamics on a broad spectrum of scales using technology; from risky behavior in a group of MIT freshman, to cholera outbreaks in Rwanda and wealth in the UK, to disease transmission and slum formations in East Africa. Though the analytical techniques are sophisticated, the tools used are as simple as a mobile phone. Ultimately these insights can be used to actively improve the lives of the billions of people who generate this data and the societies in which they live.

Click Above for Video…or download the OGG video format!

This week Radio Berkman gave a hand to our pals at Spark in their interview with legal scholar, Berkman friend, and author of the recent article Against Transparency about the perils of open government. Check out the full interview with Lessig here, or listen to the whole show.

Berkman Fellow David Weinberger investigates the origin of modern “information”, trying to understand what about it led us to embrace it as the dominant–paradigmatic–way of understanding ourselves and our world. David Weinberger will present an informal sketch of a direction, suggesting that we leaped into information because it reflected a long-held but squirrely metaphysics.

Download the MP3

…or download the OGG audio format!

Berkman Fellow David Weinberger investigates the origin of modern “information”, trying to understand what about it led us to embrace it as the dominant–paradigmatic–way of understanding ourselves and our world. David Weinberger will present an informal sketch of a direction, suggesting that we leaped into information because it reflected a long-held but squirrely metaphysics.

Click Above for Video…or download the OGG video format!

The “Walled Garden” is an oft-used metaphor to describe an area of the web that is somehow closed off – think AOL in the 90s, or any site that lives behind a paywall. To some, these areas of the net are exclusive avenues to brilliantly curated content. To others “Walled Gardens” are threats to the open nature of the net.

Elizabeth Goodman, a PhD student at the UC Berkeley School of Information and a design researcher with Intel, has taken the metaphor of the Garden back to its roots (so-to-speak), to see if we can’t reimagine web communities through the lens of these physical spaces.

Listen:
or download
…also in Ogg!

CC-licensed music this week:
Duckett – Another Girl (instrumental)
_ghost – Ice and Chilli

The Reference Section:
Elizabeth Goodman on the web
Audio and Video from Elizabeth’s recent talk on the Walled Garden metaphor

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See a partial transcript after the jump.

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Ellen Goodman of Rutgers University School of Law and Jake Shapiro, Executive Director of the Public Radio Exchange (PRX), discuss public media’s role in providing public discourses, advancing democratic capabilities, and empowering publics to communicate and organize. The two investigate whether the United States has a system of public media that is able to support the kinds of widespread, high value, noncommercial, and productive communications essential for democratic functions.

Click Above for Video…or download the OGG video format!

Take a peek at the slides:

Ellen Goodman of Rutgers University School of Law and Jake Shapiro, Executive Director of the Public Radio Exchange (PRX), discuss public media’s role in providing public discourses, advancing democratic capabilities, and empowering publics to communicate and organize. The two investigate whether the United States has a system of public media that is able to support the kinds of widespread, high value, noncommercial, and productive communications essential for democratic functions.

Download the MP3

…or download the OGG audio format!

There are few subjects more potentially divisive as the Free Culture Movement. Free Culture activists believe in a future in which people will be free to remix and distribute creative works like literature, movies, music, software, and images. These are the folks who can toss around phrases like ‘Free as in Speech versus Free as in Beer’ to illustrate distinctions in legal code.

A world where anyone can feel free to edit a photo, remix a song or video, or modify a piece of software without the constraint of excessive laws or artificial limits – sounds great, right? But it raises more questions than you might think.

Gabriella Coleman is an Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University who has given a lot of thought to the role of genre and piracy in how we might build a Free Culture that works.

She sat down with our guest host Elizabeth Stark for a word or two on some of the toughest questions facing Free Culture.

Listen:
or download
…also in Ogg!

CC-licensed music this week:
Scott Altham – Hear Us Now (poptastic mix)
_ghost – Ice and Chilli

The Reference Section:
Free Culture 2009 Research Workshop
Some key sentences from the Free Culture 2009 Research Workshop
Gabriella Coleman’s blog and twitter
Free Culture Movement
Students for Free Culture
Elizabeth Stark on Twitter

Subscribe to Radio Berkman

See a partial transcript after the jump.

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)