John Palfrey

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What does it mean that Mary Meeker has a 21-page research report hailing RSS as a Very Big Deal? 

She cites three key things: “1) rising usage of RSS (Really Simple
Syndication) by content providers as a standard distribution platform
for online content; 2) 2) ramp in the creation of blogs and other
user-generated content; and 3) Yahoo!’s easy-to-use integration of RSS
feeds (including blogs) that was rolled out in beta to its distribution
channel of 25MM+ My Yahoo! users in late September.”  I think
she’s right about it redounding to Yahoo!’s benefit to some
extent.  But of greater interest seems to be a) the next
generation things that can be done with RSS and b) the social
implications (i.e., how it will affect how we get and interact with
information — text, audio, video, whatever — online).

Our friends at Pew weigh in with a new report on the nature of the impact on the internet in America on our political discourse: “As wired Americans increasingly go online for political news and commentary, we find that the internet is contributing to a wider awareness of political views during this year’s campaign season.

“This is significant because prominent commentators have expressed concern that growing use of the internet would be harmful to democratic deliberation. They worried that citizens would use the internet to seek information that reinforces their political preferences and avoid material that challenges their views. That would hurt citizens’ chances of contributing to informed debates.”

This is a key discussion point for our upcoming Internet & Society conference on politics.  I will be interested to hear what Prof. Cass Sunstein, a Saturday Dec. 11 discussion leader, has to say about these findings.

The Boston Red Sox have just ended
an 86-year drought by beating the St. Louis Cardinals in the World
Series.  We, the Red Sox Nation, will never be the same.  Turned out this was the year.  Totally amazing.  I believed, but wasn’t sure it really could happen in my lifetime.

(Also: Dave, I think you’re brilliant and insightful and a visionary and all, but never, ever, will the Red Sox look anything like the Yankees.  I figure that was actually meant to be a compliment, from a New York kid to us Boston kids.)

I spent yesterday afternoon in good company, both with my NIDA hosts
and before then at the world headquarters of Ohmynews.  What a
story that is. 

On two floors of an office building downtown in
Seoul — a bit hard to find, tucked away in an office building in the heart of the city — Ohmynews looks
like a cross between a start-up, an NGO, and a newsroom.  My
guide, Todd Thacker, gave me the chef’s tour, including a peek at their
home-grown software (they are a good candidate to become huge users of
RSS, by the way).

Mr. Oh, the founder and CEO, was gracious, quick-witted, and outfitted
in a bright-yellow Ohmynews polo shirt.  He was spending the day
interviewing for their first news anchor position for the TV arm of his growing
enterprise. 

Oh started Ohmynews
with the idea that is “Every citizen is a reporter.”  He and his
team have
managed to turn profitable this year, or so they say, on a model that
relies upon the story submissiosn of thousands of Koreans citizen
reporters.  Writers are paid once the stories run, supplementing
the work of editors and a staff of 36 reporters. 

Nearly everyone I’ve asked says that Korean President Roh would never have been elected but
for Ohmynews; and the same people will tell you that Roh avoided
impeachment thanks, once again, to Ohmynews.

Today, Ohmynews is “a full-fledged multimedia news service in action,”
with both Korean and international operations.  They are
aggressively recruiting international citizen reporters, particularly
from among the best of the blogosphere.  Their field operatives
are wi-fi enabled and able to do live web-casting.  Ohmynews is concurrently firing up
an digital TV arm.  It’s incredibly energizing to see it in action. 

Ohmynews faces extensive hurdles (Do enough people trust it? 
Can
a clearly-partisan news organization survive for long?  Will
citizen reporters work for peanuts when the buzz dies down?  Can
they stay profitable on a shoestring budget?), but a bright future if
they can clear them.  One of the most intriguing bits of the story
is their answer to the thorniest of these questions: check out the
Citizen Reporter agreement and code of ethics.  (How many bloggers do you know who would agree to such a code?)

There is no question but that Ohmynews is a
huge force in South Korean news, politics, and internet culture
today.  I’m particularly excited that Mr. Oh will be coming to
Cambridge, MA, as a keynoter at our upcoming Internet & Society
conference in December.  There’s a possibility that Ohmynews
International could
emerge as a global newsforce, too, if Jean and Todd and their team are
successful in porting the model to the international stage.  My
guess is that their success will quickly breed copycats.  And that
it will be a good thing.

We’re into the afternoon sessions of the International Symposium
on Public Participation in Internet Governance.  I was surprised
(pleasantly, of course) to see a full room, overflowing such that
another row of chairs had to be brought in.  Our hosts at NIDA
turned out a crowd including a large number of students, which was
particularly promising.

Right now, Izumi Aizu, principal of Asia Network Research, is filling us
in on the Working Group on Internet Governance and World Summit on
Information Society situation.  He resolves that we ought to
emphasize the role of netizens in making self-governance possible.

Prof. Xue Hong of the University of Hong Kong, in a particularly
heartfelt and occasionally poetic presentation, emphasized the need to
consider the main purpose of the WSIS process to be to bridge the
digital divide.

Prof. Myung Koo Kang, of the Department of Communication at the Seoul
National University,  drew connections among the previous
speakers.  He notes that there is no one proposal on the
table.  We ought to
try to put our efforts into specifics of how we might move ahead. 
How does internet governance link the global and local
perspectives?  Through which structure can global and local issues
best be resolved?  In Prof. Kang’s view, we have no choice to but
to confront the internet governance issue over the next 10 to
20 years.  It is impossible, he says, to manage expanded internet
governance
issues with a single authority.  He proposes a model that he calls
“decentralized
governance in unity”.  Most specifically, Prof. Kang suggests a 1
- 2 % fee from ICANN’s revenues to fund a global outreach fund.

Tommy Matsumoto, the chair of Asia Pacific Networking Group
(APNG), is reporting about the extensive activities of the APNG. 
Most impressive: they have a self-funded fellowship program to bring in
people from developing countries into their at-large program, thanks to
voluntary sponsors.

Prof. Terry Fisher, the Berkman Center’s faculty director and author of the new book Promises to Keep: Technology, Law, and the Future of Entertainment, is guest-blogging at Lessig’s.  Expect a very substantive week on the crisis in the entertainment industry.

The Globe and Mail covers the fairy-tale blogified engagement story of Red and the Accordian Guy (with an assist from AKMA and the whole BloggerCon crew).

Thanks to high-speed broadband and mlb.tv’s streaming video service, I’m about to watch, live, from Korea, the Red Sox take on the Cardinals in Game 2 of the World Series.  All for $2.95. 

(Update:
or so I thought: after paying and logging in and watching a pre-game
show, I got this message: “We’re sorry! Your data indicate that you are
prevented from watching this game LIVE due to national live broadcast
restrictions. During national TV broadcasts, fans in the US, Japan, US
Virgin Islands, Guam and S. Korea are blacked out. These games are
indicated on the schedule with a grey icon.”  Turns out it’s on
TV.  How silly do I feel?  Not to mention $2.95 poorer. 
Who needs this internet thing, anyway.)

I’ve just arrived in Seoul for an International Symposium on the role of the public in internet governance, hosted by NIDA, KRNIC, and APNG. 
The hotel, not surprisingly, has a blazing broadband connection (hooray for such good broadband penetration!). 
The city was bustling, even on a Sunday.  I am hoping, while I’m
here, also to visit OhMyNews International, among other places.