Technology and the Public Interest
Books, essays, and commentary from John Palfrey
Essays
Notes from AI Action Summit in Delhi, India, February 2026
Reflections on AI, governance, and the public interest from the AI Action Summit in Delhi.
Read essayConcord Free Public Library 150th Anniversary Celebration
Remarks on libraries, civic institutions, and the enduring importance of public knowledge.
Read essayInvesting in the Arts—in Chicago and Beyond
Thoughts on philanthropy, culture, and why investing in the arts matters for public life.
Read essayCommentary from John Palfrey
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Spamdog Millionaire: Social Media Spam and Internet Filtering
Our friends at StyleFeeder have offered up some great data about the geographic sources of social media spam on their tech blog. The background: Philip Jacob, the founder of StyleFeeder, is a long-time anti-spam advocate, while also being a careful guy who doesn’t want to ruin the Net in the process of fighting nuisance online. …
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Peter Suber at Harvard University on the Future of Open Access
Peter Suber is addressing a standing-room-only house today at Harvard, in a session jointly hosted by the Berkman Center, the Office for Scholarly Communications, and the Harvard Law School Library. He insisted on a question-mark at the end of the talk’s title, so his topic is “The Future of Open Access?”, not “The Future of…
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Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship
I am delighted to point to a statement by a growing number of law school librarians calling for open access to legal scholarship.
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Help on Cyberlaw Research?
New Berkman Center executive director Urs Gasser and I are working on several ongoing research projects. We’re hoping that one or two students might like to work with us, ideally over the next few years (yes, that’s a big ask!), perhaps as a Student Fellowship. More info here.
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The Future of Open Access
It’s our great pleasure at the Harvard Law School Library and the Berkman Center, along with the university’s Office of Scholarly Communications, to host Peter Suber for a public talk next week on the Future of Open Access. It will take place on Thursday, February 26 at 12:30 p.m. We’ve had a tremendous response from…
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Welcome back, Urs Gasser!
It is our great good fortune at the Berkman Center that Urs Gasser has returned, on a full-time basis, to be our new executive director. I can’t think of anyone better positioned to move us forward in our second decade. Urs has been a longtime fellow of the Center, but most recently has been living…
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Quite a Saturday morning at StopBadware
This morning, it seems that many (all?) Google search results led to a warning page meant to be associated with sites that have malware on them. We at StopBadware are partners with Google, among others, working hard to fight malicious code together. Our role, as researchers, is to help set the criteria for what constitutes…
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Internet Safety Technical Task Force Report Released
Tomorrow, I’ll be at the State of the Net Conference in Washington DC to release formally the Internet Safety Technical Task Force final report. It’s available online. We’ve posted an executive summary (3 pages plus cover pages) as well as the full report (278 pages in total).
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Media Re:Public Final Report Released
Today, we at the Berkman Center have released a new report on the changes in the news media landscape. For several years, we have been puzzling over the relationship between online and legacy media, dating back to the first BloggerCons; Dave Winer’s setting up a blog server on the Harvard campus; the first series of podcasts; our…
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Lessig Coming Back
This is just thrilling.
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Digital Youth Project Report, Book Released
This week was a big one for the study of young people and the Internet: Mimi Ito and her team released the results of their long-anticipated, 3-year study on Digital Youth. The study was funded by the MacArthur Foundation as a centerpiece of its Digital Media and Learning initiative. It is required reading for anyone interested…