Berkman@10: Day 1: Reactions

I’m going to quickly touch base on the big stuff of the day, for he sake of making my 8:00 meeting with a bunch of people to talk about takedown notices in YouTube. Here are a few quick reactions that come to mind, with deep analysis following after this hectic week.

• The Internet is shifting away from being a place you access from a personal computer and more to a tool you refer to in a myriad of devices. The terms of service on these devices (Verizon mobile, Apple’s iPhone, etc.) are much more controlling than the relatively open architecture of the computer. This lends itself to trouble if we do not watch ourselves carefully.
• Jonathan Zittrain’s comments at the very start of the meeting will not escape my head. The Internet was designed, as he observed, out of whimsy and mirth and playfulness. Despite how serious people take themselves on the web today, I don’t think we’ve shaken off that enjoyment aesthetic.
• There’s a lot of cool heady projects to examine going forward: Publus, Global Voices, The Sunlight Foundation, Regional, Kaltura, and OpenNet, to just get started.
• I must look more into the sneakernet phenomena of countries were net censorship is an ongoing struggle. The power of the flash drive came up in conversation almost as much as the Star Wars kid.
• The ability to empirical study is, by nature, a slower process then web trends. Being able to analyze the data must become faster.
• Crowdsourcing is an area that needs serious assessment, both from contributors and hosts.
• The overarching element of all of these discussions stems to a concept of both “controlled anarchy” and “trust in the majority of users.” Virtually all of the technology and initiatives mentioned today rely on the good actions of users, and thought-fancy methods that discourage bad participation. The brilliance of hacking Wikipedia is such a salient example of this. Because it’s so easy to change Wikipedia, there’s no incentive to try and hack it. And due to moderation which satisfies all but the totally crazy, it moderates itself.

More discussion tomorrow. Stay tuned.