.

Internet Sabbatical

Starting tomorrow, I am doing something that I have never definitively done: I am taking an Internet sabbatical for one full week. I’m very fortunate: I travel quite a bit for conferences and speaking engagements, and when I do, I often manage to book an extra day or two for sightseeing.  During those brief periods, [...]

24.12.2010

4 Comments

Filtering Pornography Online: Why You Should Care

The UK is in talks for a national filter that would block pornography. Not child sex abuse (nobody sane is arguing over whether that should be accessible), but legal, adult pornography. The idea is to protect the UK’s children, and since adults have the choice of getting out of the filter, then there’s nothing wrong [...]

21.12.2010

2 Comments

Christmas Around the World, YouTube-style

Speaking of “world music,” I’m always on the lookout for Christmas music from other cultures. This list is part my favorites, part Twitter crowdsourcing: One of my personal favorites; the inimitable Fairuz singing Sawt el Eid (Silent Night); I have and adore the whole album, which is freely downloadable (I can’t speak to the legality, [...]

17.12.2010

5 Comments

Facebook Use: Access, Filtering, and Languages

Facebook has just produced a map visualizing pairs of friends across the globe; the map is visually stunning, and as the Guardian points out, it also shows huge gaps where Facebook isn’t being used. For some countries, the reasons are fairly obvious: Orkut is hugely popular in Brazil, and so it seeks to reason that [...]

15.12.2010

10 Comments

Wayne Marshall and Brave New World Music

The Berkman Center’s lunch talk today centered on what ethnomusicologist Wayne Marshall terms ‘brave new world music’; Marshall calls it the “reimagining of what the world of music is all about” – rather than the old trope of ‘ the West and the rest,’ Marshall’s work focuses on cultural interplay in the digital music world. [...]

14.12.2010

No Comments

Forget WikiLeaks: The Amusement of Public State Department Travel Warnings

I feel a bit guilty writing this post; after all, politics aside, I don’t believe that the State Department wishes the Lebanese tourism industry any ill will, nor do I think that worrying about my safety as a citizen is a bad thing.  I’m sure it goes without saying, also, that I recognize that there [...]

12.12.2010

7 Comments

The Internet, Visualized

A Friday afternoon treat: JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.

10.12.2010

1 Comment

A Discussion of WikiLeaks

On Tuesday, I was fortunate to attend the taping of Radio Berkman’s WikiLeaks-themed podcast, hosted by Professors Jonathan Zittrain and Larry Lessig.  The podcast, which I highly suggest you give a listen, covered the gamut of issues surrounding WikiLeaks, from its implications on Internet freedom to the internal workings of the organization itself, at least [...]

09.12.2010

10 Comments

Berkman Buzz, WikiLeaks Edition

From this week’s Berkman Buzz, Wikileaks Edition, compiled by Rebekah Heacock: “…as a society, we have reached a place where the only way to protect some sorts of speech on the Internet is through one of only a couple dozen core Internet organizations. Totally ceding decisions about control of politically sensitive speech to that handful [...]

03.12.2010

6 Comments

Scribblings on Wikileaks: Some Thoughts on Digital Nativism and Transparency

I’ve been thinking and drafting about this for a few days, asking question of friends in person and on Facebook and Twitter, and I’m thus far no closer to a conclusion of this idea and so…I’ve decided instead to turn this blog post into what I hope might be a productive conversation (hey, it worked [...]

02.12.2010

30 Comments