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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Youth Turnout in Iowa
It seems as though there was another promising uptick in voter turnout last night in Iowa. This fact, if true, is the best news out of the caucuses, in my mind. (I am supporting Sen. Obama for president, so I’m excited about that, too.) Early analysis by many of those working on getting youth out…
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Five Years of Keeping Culture Free
Hip-hip-hooray for Creative Commons on its fifth birthday today! Thanks to Larry, Joichi, and all the heroes of a free culture who have worked so hard on CC, around the world, for the past half-decade. If you want to help, there’s still time to pitch in: CC is $470,000 of the way toward $500,000 in…
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Francois Leveque on Standards, Patents, and Antitrust
As part of our Berkman@10 celebration this year, we at the Berkman Center tonight welcome Francois Leveque, professor at the Ecole des Mines, Paris, and visiting prof at the faculty of law at UC Berkeley. He’s presenting the findings of two new papers, each co-authored with Yann Meniere: “Technology standards, patents and antitrust” and “Licensing…
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MacArthur Award, Kicking Off Berkman@10
This year, the Berkman Center is celebrating its tenth anniversary. We’re spending the year, in part, reflecting on what we’ve learned in our first decade, where things stand now in our field, and where we ought to focus for our second decade. We’ll have a series of special events throughout the year, as well as…
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VoteGopher
At a focus group today for the digital natives project (and our book, Born Digital), an interviewee mentioned VoteGopher. It’s very clever: a site by students that helps you decide who to vote for. The founder is a Harvard College sophomore, Will Ruben. It’s a much more fun and interesting site that some of the…
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Scoop08
The ambition of young Americans to have an impact on our political scene may be our saving grace. Bravo to Scoop08 co-founders Alexander Heffner and Andrew Mangino for kicking off “A New Kind of Newspaper,” where 400+ students will cover the 2008 presidential campaign. If you grow up with a sense that you can speak…
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Digital Natives Conversation Goes International
One of the themes of Born Digital, the book Urs Gasser and I are working on, is excitement around the possibility of an emerging global culture of young people who use technology in particular ways. (We’re equally interested in the problems of those who may be left out of that emerging culture, too, as Ethan…
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OpenLibrary.org
There’s enormous promise in the Open Library project, which we’re hearing about today at Berkman’s lunch event from Aaron Swartz. The idea is wonderfully simple: to create a single web page per book. That web page can aggregate lots of data and metadata about each book. In turn, the database can be structured to indicate…
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OpenNet Initiative on What Really Happened in Burma
Over the last few weeks, we’ve all witnessed the extraordinary bravery of protesters in Burma (or Myanmar, depending on whom you ask) and the great lengths to which the military junta has been willing to go to keep the world from knowing much about what was going on there. Many reported the story of how…