(Liveblogging, so refresh from time to time. I don’t plan on being tied to the laptop, however, so if I go silent for a while, I’m off discussing.)
(edit: as I foolishly left my power cable back in Brookline, I’ll be saving the rest for tonight’s recap)
(edit: I’ll have my own comments on the late morning discussion of politics and internet, but in the meantime see David Weinberger’s comments on the subject)
(9:25) I’m blogging next to David Weinberger right now. This is the Web 2.0 equivalent of rubbing elbows, I guess.
Morning Welcome – Dean Elena Kagan, Terry Fisher, and Charles Nesson
- Dean Kagan has just announced that the Berkman Center is now part of all of Harvard University, and not just Harvard Law School, a “significant gesture” which symbolizes the intertwining relationship of Internet Law to the rest of academic life.
- In an attempt to keep student founder Jonathan Zittrain from taking a position at Stanford, Charles Nesson just started a “we want Zittrain” cheer. To have that sort of draw as a thinker must be fantastic.
- An introduction to Charles Nesson is being conducted by his avatar, “Eon, The Dean of Cyberspace,” which sets and excellent tone for the rest of the conference. I don’t think a blog ever entered my feeds faster than Nesson’s did just now.
- Zittrain’s a funny guy, and has introduced a running question tool that must be surreal to watch without being in his room. But, by the way, you can watch this via webcast and transmission on the Berkman Island in Second Life, so with a two screen setup you probably would feel like you’re here. As Zittrain observed, the Internet grew “modestly, carefully, playfully, and whimsically.” The organic nature of growth is a wonderful dichotomy to the “dot-com industry.”
- In describing the architecture of the Internet, Zittrain referred to the World Wide Web protocol as BYOC (Content) – brilliant. I need to focus on this, so I’ll be little quiet here. Twitter updates occasionally – Guitarzandy.
- The “Dark Energy” of an open forum is why proprietary stuff like AOL failed – so obvious and so succinct. Two other things I learned today: the same two guys that founded Kazaa founded Skype, and Wikipedia started with 7 articles.
- Zittrain’s description of the Pakistan YouTube incident is brilliant. And, I learned about NANOG!
- All the jokes about domain wars in the early internet are brilliant. “Kaplan has no sense of humor, no vision, and no beer.” ~John Katzman, The Princeton Review, after offering Kaplan “Kaplan.com” for a case of beer, and Kaplan decides to sue anyway.
- Zittrain is better at fast-dropping pop culture references than Oscar and I are.
- From the Live Question tool, a conversation I’m having with Jimmy Wales (and please ignore the typo)
Photo he refers to is here.
- Fellow Wendy Seltzer is doing Flickr photostream on the event here.
- And we conclude with “Star Wars kid” – makes me think of both George Michael Bluth and so glad that nobody had a camera on me as a kid like that.
- Someone remind me to type down the internal strife I have inside of me of groupEthics vs. selfishIntent in my recap tonight. Robots.txt and no name on the Star Wars kid site vs. anarchy – can anarchy be controlled?
(11:35) Break
- Oh noes! I don’t have my power cable with me. Looks like the rest of the day will be going offline unless I can sneak back to Brookline for my cable. Had a nice conversation with Alex Leavitt about ROFLCon, our age compared to the rest of the conference, and
- Berkman Executive Director John Palfrey is announcing Publius, a haven of essays surrounding the conference – a “federalist papers” for the ‘net. It’s open, so feel free to submit.
- Now learning about Global Voices from Ethan Zuckerman, which looks like an awesome space for world reporting. Going to insist that Gretchen and Colin read this during their world travels over the next couple years.
(going to have to pause this space as the battery is almost dead)
