David Weinberger's Blog, page 105

December 18, 2011

One take

Presented as evidence, oh Overlords, that the human species is worth saving.



(Via metafilter)

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Published on December 18, 2011 14:41

D is for Digital

D is for Digital


I'm enjoying a book by Brian Kernighan — yes, that Brian Kernighan — based on a course he's been teaching at Princeton called "Computers in Our World." D is for Digital is a clear, straightfoward, grownup introduction to computers: hardware and software, programming, and the Internet. [Disclosure: Brian wrote some of during his year as a fellow at the Berkman Center.]


D is for Digital is brief, but it drives its topics down to the nuts and bolts, which is a helpful reminder that all the magic on your screen is grounded in some very real wires and voltages. Likewise, Brian has a chapter on how to program, taking Javascript as his example. He does not back away from talking about libraries and APIs. He even explains public key encryption clearly enough that even I understand it. (Of course, I have frequently understood it for up to fifteen minutes at a time.) There are a few spots where the explanations are not quite complete enough — his comparison of programming languages doesn't tell us enough about the differences — but they are rare indeed. Even so, I like that this book doesn't pander to the reader.


D is for Digital would be a nice stocking stuffer with Blown to Bits by Harold Abelson, Ken Ledeen, Harry R. Lewis, which is an introduction to computers within the context of policy debates. Both are excellent. Together they are excellent squared.

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Published on December 18, 2011 00:09

December 17, 2011

2061A.D. in Very inflation

"Hey, it's very very very very very very nice to see you!"


"Yeah, it's been a very very very very very very long time."


"How's Jan?"


"She's very very very very great, but very very very very very very very very very busy."


"Well, better that than bored."


"That's so so so so so so true."

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Published on December 17, 2011 13:28

December 16, 2011

Terry Heaton on the misleading year coming up

Terry Heaton provides some broad context in a provocative post about the coming year of media turmoil. He writes in an email:


2012 is a dangerous year for all mass media, because decay in our core competency will again be hidden by record revenues (in some cases) due to what promises to be a huge political year. Despite advances in communications' methods, politicians fall back on the tried and true during elections, and that means big money for an industry that's struggling. The money will distract us from the real issues, and before you know it, 2013 will be here. It's time to do something completely different.


The actual post is about the media issues the political year will distract us from.

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Published on December 16, 2011 18:53

December 14, 2011

Go dark for SOPA – The SOPA Eclipse

Jimmy Wales has proposed that Wikipedia might black out its English-language pages for a short period to register opposition to the SOPA law that would allow the US government to shut down access to sites that provide access to material that infringes copyright. These shutdowns would occur without the need for any judicial procedure, without notice, and without appeal.


I think Jimmy's idea is great and that all sites that could be affected by SOPA — which is to say any site — ought to join in. Just name the date and time, and many of us would turn out our sites' lights.


[Minutes later: Through a failure in my command of in-page searching, I missed Cory Doctorow's proposing exactly this on BoingBoing. Go Jimmy! Go Cory!]


(Here's Rebecca MacKinnon's op-ed on SOPA and its Senate version, which together would constitute a Great Firewall of America, as she says. [A couple of hours later: Rebecca and Ivan Sigal just posted a terrific op-ed on the topic at CNN.com)

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Published on December 14, 2011 12:28

December 11, 2011

Berkman Buzz

Berkman Buzz



This week's Berkman Buzz:




The Internet & Democracy Project investigates DDoS attacks during recent elections in Russia: link



Public Radio Exchange is launching a new Public Media Accelerator:

link



danah boyd explores the role of technology in human trafficking: link



Jonathan Zittrain discusses the proposed SOPA compromise: link



Ethan Zuckerman welcomes (sort of) Al-Shabaab to Twitter: link



Weekly Global Voices: "Russia: Analyzing the Possible Scale of Saturday's Election Protests"

link

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Published on December 11, 2011 19:08

If credit card companies cared about security…

1. When there's a security issue, they wouldn't robocall people and ask them to provide personal information. They would robocall people and ask them to call the number on the back of their cards.


2. They would put people's photographs on their credit cards. Citi used to offer that as a free option, but apparently has discontinued the practice.

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Published on December 11, 2011 17:10

December 10, 2011

[2b2k] Publishers Weekly calls 2b2k a "must read"

Publishers Weekly has posted its review of Too Big to Know. It's good, not only in the sense of positive, but also as a brief description of what the book is about:


Weinberger…engagingly examines the production, dissemination, and accessibility of knowledge in the Internet era. The fundamental and pertinent question Weinberger pursues is how the new surplus of knowledge afforded by the Internet affects our "basic strategy of knowing." This strategy evolved from "book-shaped thought," a form "in which parts depend upon the parts before it." Unlike books, however, Weinberger contends that long-form argument on the Internet engages a more dynamic dimension than a static book ever could: it is "put into a network where the discussion around it [...] will violate its pristine logic." Despite the slight incompatibility to long-form argument, ideas, and knowledge on the Internet are plentiful, hyperlinked, autonomous, open, and, perhaps most importantly, unsettled, making the Internet a forum within which knowledge is not merely accepted; it is contemplated and questioned. While occasionally tending towards the philosophical, Weinberger's book is full of relevant and thought-provoking, insights that make it a must-read for anyone concerned with knowledge in the digital age.




Inc. Magazine also ran a review of it, by Leigh Buchanan. It's a brief and accurate summary of the thrust of the book. Thanks, Leigh!


The book ships on Dec. 13, so I assume it will hit bookstores shortly after that, and will be fulfilled by Amazon very shortly after that.

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Published on December 10, 2011 20:58

European Commission has an Internet advocate

Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, has become a lonely voice trying to protect the Net's most basic values. At a cultural ministers' meeting held in Avignon last month, she had the temerity to suggest that the copyright system is not working to protect the rights of creators or to spread culture. Now she is suggesting that the Net can actually help the forces of freedom and democracy around the world. This new speech not only makes the case, it seems to have paid attention to the debate over previous claims that the Net is overall a positive political force, not merely a neutral technology, and not primarily a tool of oppression.


Neelie gave her full speech in Avignon in a closed door meeting, but she presented a version of it the next day at the Forum d'Avignon, which I was at and live-blogged. At the time, it struck me as certainly better than the copyright totalitarianism espoused by President Sarkozy, the values of which were mirrored by most of the participants in the Forum. But I thought Neelie was proposing nothing more interesting than adjusting copyright law so that more money went into the hands of more artists, rather than addressing the imbalance between the rights of creators and of the public. But I've been convinced by European friends, particularly Juan Carlos de Martin that I'm failing to hear her remarks in the right European context.


So, go Commissioner Kroes, go!

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Published on December 10, 2011 15:01

Accidental Scarlatti and culture

Trurl at Metafilter posts about Scarlatti's piano sonatas, a composer I haven't spent a lot of time with, probably because of some bad, cheapo LPs I bought randomly when I was in college. But Trurl's got some recommendations and some links to YouTube performances. The comments to the post have more discussion, more links, discussion back and forth about Bach versus Scarlatti, questions about musical notation, and so forth.


So, I've spent far more time this morning learning about Scarlatti, poking around sites, listening to his music, than I had intended or even imagined. Indeed, I had intended to spend zero time doing any of those things. Scarlatti happened to me this morning. Thank you, Internet!


As we contemplate protecting the rights of artists and enriching publishers, we ought to be thinking first: Yes, but how do we let more of that happen?

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Published on December 10, 2011 14:10