MediaBerkman

Mapping Main Street is a collaborative documentary media project that creates a new map of the country through a dynamic visualization of stories, data, photos and videos recorded on actual Main Streets. The goal is to document all of the more than 10,000 streets named Main in the United States. Two of the project’s founders, Jesse Shapins and James Burns, explain the origins of the project and invite feedback.

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Few dispute that the web will be the dominant medium of the 21st Century – swallowing whole newspapers, books, radio, television, and the cinema. And even as the web grows virtually – over a trillion unique urls and growing – it shrinks physically – from laptop, to netbook, from cell phone, to even tinier and ubiquitous communication devices.

The growth of the web seems radically different from that of television, radio, and newspapers. It seems like it was so grassroots, so rapid. But Professor W. Russell Neuman of the University of Michigan argues that to predict the growth of the web in the future we need to take a good hard look at just how those 20th Century technologies and infrastructures came to be so dominant.

So, what does history have to say about how this tiny little medium will grow?

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CC-licensed music this week:
Neurowaxx: Pop Circus
General Fuzz: Warm Steel

The Reference Section:
Russell Neuman’s bio
Russell Neuman’s research
Russell Neuman’s recent talk Theories of Media Evolution at the Berkman Center

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See a partial transcript after the jump.

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John Clippinger and Oliver Goodenough of the Berkman Center’s Law Lab discuss the progress made this year by the Law Lab – especially three specific projects that develop new digital institutions and research tools to foster innovation and deepen our understanding of trust, transparency and human cooperation.

Liveblogging from the talk by David Weinberger

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Television recorders are going online. Device manufacturers are starting to produce consumer devices and software that can be connected to Internet at consumers’ homes. New models of innovation are starting to emerge. This talk proposes the social enrichment of TV offerings may prove to create disruptive innovation to an industry accustomed to control the consumption of content.

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Ownership structures for creative works – such as Copyright, Creative Commons, Fair Use, Public Domain – abound. This week, Kenneth Crews, the director of the Copyright Office at Columbia University, speaks with us about some of the distinctions, and the ways to make sure your work is protected as much or as little as possible.

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CC-licensed music this week:
Jaspertine: Pling
Greg Williams: Teagarden Blues and Rain

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See a partial transcript after the jump.

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Lee Dirks, Director of Education & Scholarly Communications in Microsoft’s External Research division proposes a vision for the future of research and the need for semantic-oriented computing by exploring eResearch projects that have successfully applied relevant technologies. He suggests that a software + service model with scientific services delivered from the cloud will become an increasingly accepted model for research.

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Liveblogged by David Weinberger

This event was co-sponsored by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the Harvard Business School Knowledge and Library Services, Harvard Law School Library, and the Office for Scholarly Communication.

Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development and Director of the Science, Technology, and Globalization Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School, explores the implications of high speed internet for Africa’s capacity to expand the global market for access devices, creation of content, and development of markets.

Click here for notes on the event from Ethan Zuckerman.

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Steve Schultze is a busy fellow. He is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He recently joined the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy as Associate Director. He also is one of the developers behind RECAP – an ambitious and provocative project that seeks to bring publicly available digital court records out from behind a costly paywall.

What is RECAP? Find out on this week’s episode!

And why are there fees for court records? Steve also just dropped a great working paper that goes into more detail on the topic.

If you’re in Washington, DC next week catch Steve’s talk on RECAP at the O’Reilly Gov 2.0 conference on Tuesday, September 8.

Naturally we think Steve will make a terrific addition to the Princeton team — congrats, Steve! — and, while we’re sad to lose him, we’re looking forward to stronger ties to CITP and opportunities to collaborate and partner in the future.

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or download
…also in Ogg!

Reference Section:
Find out about PACER and the RECAP project
Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy
Steve’s blog

CC-licensed music this week:
Neurowaxx – Pop Circus
General Fuzz – Acclimate

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See a partial transcript after the jump.

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The hype shows no signs of abating. Now that people have moved from just talking-about-Twitter, to the more meta talking-about-talking-about-Twitter, we here at Radio Berkman decided to take on the topic from our own perspective and see if there is possibly anything new left to be said about the popular microblogging service.

Turns out there is.

On today’s episode:

• An interview with @birdchick about Twitter’s corollaries in the natural world;

• An interview with @zephoria about ReTweeting, and stepping outside of the conversation on Twitter;

• A much anticipated debate on Twitter’s “revolutionariness” between the Berkman Center’s amazing summer interns. (To hear the full debate, click here.)

Listen: or download
…also in Ogg!

CC-licensed music this week:

Coconut Monkeyrocket: “Accidental Beatnik”
Morgantj: Café Connection
Neurowaxx: “Pop Circus”
Podington Bear: “The Squeaky Song”
RAC Remix: Zero (orig. Yeah Yeah Yeahs)

The Reference Section:
Twitter Grew Up in July
Bird Chick
Connect to danah boyd’s research and blog
Our debaters: Rebekah, Sawyer, Catherine, and Chris. Andrew Moshirnia has not yet joined Twitter publicly.

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The Berkman Center for Internet Society was blessed with the presence of dozens of interns this summer – some of the best, the brightest, and most energetic folks in the field of cyber study. Four of them came together earlier this summer for a semi-Oxford style debate on a topic of importance. The question: Is Twitter a Revolutionary Force for Social Communication?

We excerpted from this debate for this week’s Radio Berkman (listen here), but the full debate is chock full of some great perspectives on whether Twitter is a force for good, evil, or just not such a big deal. Give it a listen!

Berkterns debating a topic of importance.

Above from left to right: Chris Peterson, Andrew Moshirnia, Rebekah Heacock, Sawyer Jacobs, and Catherine White.

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…also in Ogg!