MediaBerkman

We’ll be back soon with more full episodes of Radio Berkman. In the meantime, we’d like to share a clip from a short interview we did not long ago with Lawrence Liang of the Alternative Law Forum on piracy, media, and culture.

Excerpt:

“When culture reaches the point of ephemerality which allows it to flow in the way it does now, the only way to enforce (current intellectual property rules) is an army. Hopefully we are not there yet.”
- Lawrence Liang

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…also in Ogg!

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When under threat from an approaching feline, gazelles will repeatedly leap up and down in the air – even when logically it seems they should run. It’s an example of a signal – used to communicate a concept to trigger a reaction. In this case, “I am strong and fast – if you chase me you’ll be wasting your time.”

What does this phenomenon of nature have to do with human communication online? We give off signals all the time – to deceive, to attract, to manipulate, to provoke reactions and establish impressions of who we are. We have gotten used to practices of signaling in person. But the web has completely changed how we signal.

Judith Donath, founder of MIT’s Sociable Media research group, is completing a book on signaling theory and online communications called Signals, Truth, and Design. Today she stops by Radio Berkman to chat about signaling and human behavior on the web.

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…also in Ogg!

Creative Commons music used this week from Jeremiah Jacobs. Photo credit to moocat.

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The closing of another year brings with it an excuse for celebration. And what could be more fun than looking back at the year that was and trying to distill some of the top trends in the web, technology, and society?

David Weinberger attended Supernova 2009 in San Francisco, where some of the biggest names in tech, business, government, and academia came together to talk past, present, and future of networks. He chatted with a number of those thought-leaders, and came away with three major threads for 2009 which might help guide our thinking as we go into 2010:

The Broadband Initiative
The Growth of Real Time Web
The Web and the Obama Administration

So curl up by the fire with your generative digital listening device, pop in those earbuds, and listen in as we reflect on three of the major trends of 2009 with David Weinberger.

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…also in Ogg!

Creative Commons music used this week:
Brad Sucks – Gasoline
Morgantj – Raindrops

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Links to David Weinberger’s full Interviews from Supernova 2009 after the jump

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Is it hard to imagine a world in which people are treated fairly? Paid a fair wage for the work they contribute? Rewarded monetarily for the successful intellectual products that they help to produce?

Did you just scoff? If so you might be a knowledge worker who toils day in and day out on information goods – products like software, vaccines, or media – just to see the company you work for take the copyright or patent and reap all the rewards from your innovation.

A new working paper from researchers at MIT, Boston University, and the University of Michigan shows that people, companies, and the economy as a whole can all benefit and grow when we forget what we think we know about property rights and compensate people fairly for the work they do.

Take off your rose-colored glasses, put on your headphones, and listen to this interview with one of those researchers, Marshall Van Alstyne, as he explains how innovation and fair compensation can go hand in hand.

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or download
…also in Ogg!

Reference Section:
Find the full text of Marshall Van Alstyne’s working paper The Social Efficiency of Fairness

Reach Marshall with comments here or here

CC-licensed music this week:
Scott Altham: Hear Us Now (poptastic mix)
Neurowaxx: Haram Beat
Photo by Kevin Eddy

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See a partial transcript after the jump.

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What if a robot could be your closest friend? Know everything about you? Be able to peruse old family photos with you, read your journal entries, know what you are allergic to, and all your deepest darkest secrets?

Put all those romantic notions of science fiction out of your mind. “Digital Companions” are seen by some as a natural extension of computers and the web – and possible within 30 years.

Yorick Wilks is a leading researcher on the Companions Project. We sat down with him to find out more about Digital Companions in our every day life.

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or download
…also in Ogg!

This week’s artist:
Robert Rich: Cowell Piano

The Reference Section:
Yorick’s homepage
The Companions Project
The Center for Research on Computation and Society at Harvard
Yorick also spoke recently at Harvard on the future of Digital Companions

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See a partial transcript after the jump.

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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.

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or download
…also in Ogg!

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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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.

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.

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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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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

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See a partial transcript after the jump.

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It’s been a busy week at the Berkman Center, so we had to forgo a new podcast this week. But have no fear, we did not forget you! We dusted off a recent classic from our archive by popular demand: “Episode 124, What the Heck is a Commons?”

David Bollier, author of Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own, explains where the notion of the Commons came from, and how it is evolving in the digital age.

Enjoy, and we’ll see you next week!

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See more info after the jump.

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