"The Genre of Podcasting and releasing Top 10 Sources

In a non-Berkman project, I’ve been working with an exceptional team of people to create something I think is cool: Top 10 Sources, which we are releasing today.

One of the unexpected parts of developing this site was Dan Bricklin’s work in writing up a piece on “The Genre of Podcasting” — an unexpected bonus, and timely, as the history of podcasting is a raging debate at the moment.

One of the things I’m proudest of related to the Berkman Center is that one of the first, if not the first, series of podcasts grew out of the work here of then-fellows Dave Winer and Christopher Lydon.  This is a story that needs to be told right, wherever it might be described.  We should work on it.

Here is what Dave Winer wrote about this topic today:

“This morning I sent an email to John Palfrey, executive director at Berkman Center, asking if he was interested in looking at the history of podcasting in a formal way. I thought of Berkman first for a few reasons. 1. I was a research fellow there during two important years in the evolution of podcasting. A lot of the events happened there, and at the first two BloggerCons, that were hosted there. 2. Wikipedia’s leading spokesperson, Jimmy Wales, is currently a fellow at Berkman, so their interest in the future of Wikipedia is also clear. 3. Harvard likes to partner with other universities, so if there is an interest in this among others elsewhere, it seems Berkman might be able to coordinate. I think this investigation, if it’s going to be done right, must be done slowly and deliberatively, with all the participants included, without favoring any particular set of facts. And the work must be done with a larger goal of helping set a precedent for future work in Wikipedia.”