i want to thank everybody for coming here today and especially the people who were here from the beginning

eric wiseman
tom smuts
dave marglin
jon zittrain
john perry barlow
larry lessig
alex and wendy
myles berkman
fern and eric saltzman

we are here to talk about the future of the net.

my vision of the future of the net is the same as the vision i enunciated ten years ago.

cyberspace is an integrated media realm of stories told and shared by digitally connected and enabled hearts and minds.
WE are the Future of the Internet. We have good stories to live and to tell.
let us make our stories represent our values of
open code
open access
open talk
open education
let’s bridge the digital divide
let’s build the commons of the net

One Constitutional right, the right to bear arms, has been rudely treated by the Supreme Court, judging from Miller v. United States, a 1939 case that is being (indirectly) reviewed in the argument over Washington D.C.’s handgun ban. Now, I think I have a way out of this one, I call it Positively Scalian. I call it Scalia on Steroids. I call it Originalism with a Vengeance.

Here it is: what did “arms” mean in the 1780’s? Smooth-bore muskets, flintlock pistols, swords, and small cannon. PERMITTED!!!!

Machine guns, atomic bombs, nerve gas, rifles, SUBJECT TO REASONABLE REGULATION!!!

I like the seamlessness of this interpretation with the rest of the text: “A well-regulated militia,being necessary to the security of a free state….” Yes! There are Indians threatening our little settlement, and, if not Indians, then teenagers with too much bass blasting rap music all wide and around: Summon the militia and FIRE AT WILL.

And not just Will. Fire at Frankie, Jesus, and Tyrone, too. For wearing their britches too low, and other unspeakable breaches of taste.

Finally, Former First Lady Hillary Clinton ducked sniper fire in Bosnia, or didn’t, as the case may be. This resume-padding has gotten somewhat out of hand. Her confusion is understandable. When she first came to Arkansaw, we played a trick on her we like to play on all dumb Yankees, we took her snipe hunting.

Damn if she didn’t come home with a big one in her bag.

###
hey matt – are u a poker player

im-the-real-charlie-nesson.mp3

my-name-is-charlie-nesson.mp3

slideshow of open university opening up

GPSTSBusiness – 16 Feb 2008
subject Fwd: bracken on obama on the

i want license to use the wire in my online school. is this within the realm of fair use. i want colvin and pryzbylewski in my classrooms. i want to take it with me in a box to kingston prison and run my class for real in our prison lab. omar, as obama says, is a man of character playing by his code. the lessons of the wire are profound

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: wayne marshall
Date: 2008/1/15
Subject: bracken on obama on the wire!
To: Charles Nesson

  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/nesson/2007/06/07/hello-mary-weld-congratulations/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/nesson/2007/06/07/hello-mary-weld-congratulations/#comments Thu, 07 Jun 2007 18:05:49 +0000 nesson http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/nesson/2007/06/07/hello-mary-weld-congratulations/
fern just called to tell me what i missed by being on my back convelescing
missing your graduation with family proud around
i am proud of you as well
part of your family

congratulations to you and to susu and bill
you are my model of elena’s words
xox

the Project Statement
Background:
One of the most respected U.S. Supreme Court Justices, Louis Brandeis, wrote in 1914: “publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants”. It holds particularly true for publicity of government actions. Transparency makes government more accountable and therefore propels its modernization. For the last 20 years more than 50 nations (including the Polish one) have established the right to access public information. Apparently, therefore, government transparency gains importance.

i am reading darek adamski’s fulbright proposalm, hoping he will be able to join us at Berkman Center next year.

i want public access to the government action of prosecuting internet poker.

i care about this because poker is a powerful and entertaining way to learn skills of self-evident value in life.
i am a teacher wanting to express teaching power to address the problems of humanity and the planet. i love poker as form and thinking. i see poker’s reach on the net stiffled by an arbitrary act of government propounded in congressional form in a midnight act, compounded by the reach of prosecutorial discretion directed against the founders of internet gaming. i feel freedom curtailed, my freedom, internet freedom. i feel my citizenship impugned.

imagine

Suppose avatars come to me, eon, d of c, lawyer and teacher, in my Second Life office on Berkman Island – the founders of cyber poker, under threat of prosecution by agents of U.S. Govt.

i can quote for you the bunch of bullshit the prosecutor will give us about how the wire act and the midnight bill they snuck past without a single moment of committee deliberation gives them the right to prosecute poker. cyber poker. poker as a beautiful idea recreated in a game that’s not a game projecting out to a global citizenry through integrated media, multi media reintegrated by net.

prosecutor’ll try to tell you that they can indict you on what they’ve got, give you the choice of going to trial against rico counts in a federal court of the united states of america or you can plead guilty to one felony count under the wire act and we’ll let you go, no jail time. think RICO, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, think prison time, think twenty years.

let’s go down the road of rico prosecution in the court of public opinion, like a version of fred friendly seminars on the cybernet. playing poker in the game of negotiating guilty pleas. help from alan dershowitz waiting in the wings.

eon to the founders of internet poker channelling billion dollar charlie
you are at the point in the legal process of being threatened but not yet indicted, being told you have two choices, plead guilty and take the no-jail time deal we offer, or duke it out in court against RICO with long prison time based on how a federal court jury decides with a federal judge presiding and determining your sentence. they are playing poker with you.

could an american jury be brought to see the importance to democracy of honoring rather than prosecuting the founders of internet poker.
could an american jury be brought to see the value of poker to american society and the value of its expression in cyberspace.
could an american jury be brought to see poker as a quintessential american game beloved and played by presidents and business leaders, generals and soldiers, judges and lawyers, teachers and students.
could an american jury be brought to see internet poker as a training school and means of global outreach for this wonderful american game.

what will be the make-up of the jury asked to pass unanimous judgment condemning the founders of global internet poker as criminals. how will jury selection go. will the prosecution succeed in striking all jurors who love and play the game. in the rhetorical space of a real american courtroom before a real american jury will prosecution be arguments ranting children and terror be backed by convincing evidence.

whom will we call as our witnesses. who speaks for the money losers in the game; have they gained enough in the experience to feel their monetary loss offset. who speaks for the mothers who have seen their sons invest in learning the game. who speaks for children. what data will we show. what questions will we have opportunity to rebut.

let us play it out in Second Life, Law in the Court of Public Opinion, even as we play it out for real.

i’ve been working on another case, dred scott — who is citizen of the united states of america. is a black man citizen of the united states of america. can a black man be citizen of the united states of america. or is the core of WE the PEOPLE of the United States of America white supremacy. yes, i am talking to you.

charles ogletree and i think of creating of creating a new kind of teaching instrument for our cyber environment. credit gene koo and co for bringing our dred scott video statement of the issue together, credit to bernhard drax, a cyber friend, for recording and editing and original music, credit to audiocasefiles.com for voice and framing. we have a production team. we are evolving our format. we hope to carry on to ever more interesting and useful cyber production. this is new casebook, early edition. reed elsivier meet audiocasefiles.com.

this fall i am offering Trials in Second Life as an educational offering with entertainment value. Dred Scott v. White Supremacy will be trial#1, RICO v. Internet Poker will be trial #2. as related activity i will teach poker in the form of one card war, and lead an internet class in tournament poker, with tables set on full tilt to play tournaments of one-card war. howard lederer, professor, will lay out the basics the game, i&i the meta game, chips, ante , button, blind, fold, bet, raise, call, with help from sister annie, like my ivy, annie duke, and annie’s friends, and mine.
RIAA v. the PEOPLE, will be cybertrial #3

i would like our cyber trials in Second Life to speak to and appeal to every constituency out in every language, which, with internet tools and people we can do.

university

at this moment i am speaking with you as my complement, all who attended is2k7 thank you as audience and agent, medium and message, all to whom this message comes and goes. we are in rhetorical space mediated by an open net but up to us to keep it open with truth flowing. the net allows goodness in human beings to aggregate. together we create amazing things of inestimable value, we give open access to our art and common knowledge. have faith that in open access to the rhetoric of the past and to our collective intelligence in the present, truth and justice is trump and still the game we play, even as we play games of deception.

yesterday at northeastern after merley evars spoke i bought a book by bob moses urging algebra as answer to race transcendence. in the night i woke fern with a vision of classrooms of kids deciding on the move its avatar would make in a game of online poker and felt bob moses idea up a dimension.

we are here to teach

through the net we can teach kids to transcend

i teach law students. many law students come to harvard law school risk averse. they have thrived in sheltered institutions. they are not yet ready for the world. learn to play poker i tell them, starting with one-card war.

i am proposing a collaboration among all of us who gathered and all who would have liked to be there at our poker meeting to create poker university with its classrooms linked on line.

think of a massive multiplayer game of games in which the software of the game is architecture for gatherings of people who learn the game together and play for fun and moderate money within an environment of understanding for addiction.

imagine an online poker table with each avatar a classroom in a different school, let’s try law schools out to start, maybe each in a different state, maybe each in a different country. may we do this? from whom do we seek a declaratory judgment?

we say poker is a more genuine expression of the AMERICA we want to be than slavery and white supremacy. together we can mobilize to make our future.

first fern
read up from the bottom
which way does mind flow go
i & i
want to know

pteridologist

A fern is any one of a group of about 20,000 species of plants classified in the phylum or division Pteridophyta, also known as Filicophyta. The group is also referred to as polypodiophyta, or polypodiopsida when treated as a subdivision of tracheophyta (vascular plants). The study of ferns is called pteridology; one who studies ferns is called a pteridologist.

a fern sleeps upstairs dreaming of a man: is it me?
is she complement to me with all my waking energy
going somewhere else.

i rise now to fly down the mountain having told myself the story i am changing
charge out to meet and play with men
how many times have i left her this way only to get high and come rushing back to her
no good
she does not love me when i’m high
she loves that other guy

she wants straight love
i am crooked
she wants attention
i place it else where
she has a grievance
i can see
she wants me
needs me
where am i
here with you ready to rush to her again
while she is with another guy

how high is high
where does it go
how do i get down

don’t rush back
signal welcome
let her come to you
here i am
talking to myself

clippinger
thank you for a lovely party
thank you for a crowd of one
thank you to a lovely group
please invite them to my party
is2k7

i want everyone to come
i want the world to see
university
a smoother cooler version of reality
in real virtuality

john starts his lovely book
way in north new hampshire
follows his thought
all the way to war
feel this man
he is a man of peace

listen to this man
feel peace in him
feel peace in where he comes from
trust you can approach

pteridologist
what does it mean? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern

i have just requested a wikia in the name of eon
http://requests.wikia.com/wiki/Eon
in the cause of university
wikia university
we come in peace
we are firm and friendly
well, some times maybe knot

admire the process by which the process is made
click here

two stents later i am back like i never left, except for a life-changning psychic experience.

dave stelfox, pitchfork

that’s wayne, the dubble doubleyou, wayne&wax

Date: Sat, 08 Apr 2006 10:51:59 -0400
To: ivy
From: Charles Nesson
Subject: views of the necker cube

april 7 2006, sitting in my office, waiting to meet the author of an essay i admire, Motivations behind the Killing of Matthew Sheppard . Please read it as context for a thought poem:

i have a rock, i have an island, i have a firm place within me on which my outer self stands
i find it in moments of calm amidst life’s pressures, i walk upon its path moving in the wind of time
is it i that move in time or is it time blowing past
einstein’s elevator

if the universe is a quantum computer as seth lloyd says, and i can see he’s right, then wouldn’t the machine create life as clone of itself, tinkering by its evolutionary method, linking cell to synapse, to create a consciousness the computer understands. are we knot at the point of understanding ourselves as nature’s creatures and yet comprehending our universe as a whole

lloyd speaks of information as bits distinct from meaning yet the power of bits of information lies in telling stories of our present past and future. multiple realities, alternative histories, views of the necker cube.

email with me may show up on my blog
unless privacy requested