Yesterday I attended the 10th anniversary conference of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for the Internet and Society. The conference is a two day event bringing together the thought leaders in Internet studies and action. The agenda includes workshops, lectures and panels examining “The Future of the Internet” including the political, organizational, commercial and educational aspects.

Here are some rough observations, thoughts and links:

Session 1 was a speech by Jonathan Zittrain about his new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It (previously covered here). JZ, as he is known, is hilarious and insightful. He sees the rise of ’sterile’ devices where users cannot invent new uses, such as the iPhone or TiVo, as dangerous to that which makes the Internet so great. ‘Generative’ devices, like your PC or the Internet, allow much more creativity and value-addition. JZ points out that there are ways of non-binding social norm enforcement to combat the threats to privacy and security; these are the solutions he hopes to see.

Session 2 was a session led by John Palfrey discussing the implications for politics. Palfrey wonderfully tied together multiple topics in a succinct matter. He highlighted the work of Ethan Zuckerman, Beth Kolko and John Kelly.

• I’ve been a fan of Ethan’s work for a long time. In addition to the terrific blog he writes, Ethan co-founded Global Voices which aggregates foreign language blogs to give the world a better view of what is happening around the world. In his words, “blogs are a tool for international understanding.” He lamented the lack of readers of foreign voices; that is, people still only pay attention to mainstream media, not the bountiful media coming from the people in the developing world.
• Beth Kolko spends a lot of her time in the developing world studying how the people there use ICTs. She does not see them as a panacea, but does think that if we study the developing world’s use of technology, we will glimpse the future of our uses. I will have more to say about her work tomorrow when I attend a session led by her.
• John Kelly studies how online communities interact. He spoke about mapping the Iranian blogosphere which is shown below. The different colors represent different areas of coverage while the size is indicative of incoming links. I was reminded of Ethan’s recent musings on homophily, which is the tendency for people to surround themselves with similar folks. If you believe, like I do, that humans can understand each other, given the opportunity, homophily can be a worrying trend. I was drawn to the outlying dots, those bloggers who, for some reason, are active across areas of coverage.
  

Session 3 was a conversation between Yochai Benkler and Jimbo Wales about Cooperation. Wales admitted that Wikipedia was the stupidest idea at the time; most people thought it was senseless to think we could cooperate, online of all places, to create a free Wikipedia rivaling the authoritative source of Britannica. However, something worked and the two spent time discussing what that was - neutrality, openness, transparency, share motivation, human agency, among others. The answer to this motivational question is complicated and unclear, but we know it works, so Yochai wants to study it.

The final session was a panel with Berkman Center co-founder Charlie Nesson, Internet visionary Esther Dyson, former FCC chairman Reed Hundt and head counsel of Viacom Michael Frisklas.

• Nesson began by equating Universities with Viacom because they are both large holders and creators of content. However, Universities are unable, for the most part, to disseminate their content due to the high transaction costs from copyright. When he asked Frisklas if, were they starting with a blank legal slate with today’s technological advancements, would he support the current copyright architecture, the Viacom attorney accepted the many problems with the current regime, but acknowledged the pain of switching (mostly to his business…).

• An interesting debate sprung up around Hundt’s comment that although the price of hardware has fallen due to Moore’s law, software has remained constant in cost for 20 years. The relative affordability of hardware is what makes the Internet (and cloud computing) the viable platform for this field. Hundt claimed that his high software cost kept the developing world offline (and that Linux was a response to this). Dyson disagreed, saying that in her experience poor people can steal software easily; it is the still costly computers which keep them offline.
• Importantly, Dyson pointed out the difference between information access and the process of teaching. Open access is not a panacea (but it is a good start, in my opinion).
• Finally, a very good question from the audience asked us to listen to the third world as opposed to pontificate on it from our point of view.

The day was full of thought-provocation and today, which I will write up shortly, has been much of the same. Be sure to check out the Berkman Center and its amazing work.