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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Reuters, NewAssignment.Net team up
Chris Ahearn at Reuters has made another sage investment in a non-profit, this time to Jay Rosen’s NewAssignment.Net. Chris is the visionary president of Reuters Media. He is the key driver, along with his colleague Dean Wright, behind Reuters’ partnership with Global Voices. Chris writes, at Huffington Post: “While the Internet is rapidly transforming the…
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Happy Election Day
… to everyone in Massachusetts. What a terrific day it is to have a primary with several contested races: governor, lieutenant governor, and secretary of state at a minimum, plus some interesting down-ballot races (not for me). It’s a bit cloudy and cool today, but no rain yet. I voted at the Dilboy VFW post…
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Why I'm voting for Chris Gabrieli today for Governor
The great news for Democrats in Massachusetts, and Independents too for that matter, is that there are three different, strong choices for a nominee for governor in this year’s race. Despite the strength of the Democratic field, the choice, to me, is not hard. I consider it my great good fortune to have gotten to…
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Congratulations, Global Voices Community
As Rebecca MacKinnon reports, Global Voices today won the Knight-Batten Award for innovation in journalism. It’s quite an accomplishment, for which literally hundreds of people can take credit. GV has been a runaway success since RMacK and Ethan Zuckerman kicked it off not so very long ago. I’m so happy for everyone whose hard work…
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H20 Playlist for "Law of the Internet"
Here’s the syllabus for my fall freshman seminar, called the “Law of the Internet,” taught at Harvard College, in H20 Playlist form. Comes with an OPML output, too. (Wondering what H20 is? Check out Go With the Flow.)
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Mimi Ito, Howard Rheingold on "Digital Kids"
The cultural anthropologist Mimi Ito has a lot to say about kids and learning in a digital era. It’s a great topic, and her work is very important (the MacArthur Foundation agrees; she’s got a multi-year grant from them to study it). She is working with Howard Rheingold, of SmartMobs fame. He blogged it on…
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Gabrieli campaign e-mail: Remember John Silber
Memo: Great new Gabrieli poll numbers A Gabrieli campaign internal poll shows that our campaign is gaining momentum with just days to go before the primary. Our poll indicates that Chris (30%) is within the margin of error — in a statistical tie — with Deval Patrick (34%), while it has become clear that Tom…
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Gardner Museum's Podcast Series, The Concert
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, one of Boston’s cultural gems, has released the first-of-its-kind museum concert series podcast, called The Concert. The good people there — including Catherine and Charlotte, who did a TV spot this morning — have decided to use a Creative Commons Share Music license. They’ve had the pro bono assistance of…
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The Citizen Editor
In the past several weeks, I’ve been playing with a new format that my friends at TopTenSources developed. We’ve seen the Citizen Journalist; this idea is the Citizen Editor. Several of us have been using a new bookmarklet-style tool that makes it very easy to tag a story when you’re reading it, provide a bit…
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Microsoft's Open Specification Promise
Microsoft has just unveiled a new commitment not to assert certain rights against people who develop code based on specifications that Microsoft has developed. It’s called the Open Specification Promise. Warning: the announcement itself, at the top of the page, is written in legalese, though probably pretty readable legalese. The FAQs make things a lot…
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Australian spam
Australia is often heralded as having one of the world’s best anti-spam laws and enforcement programs. Sounds like they may also be home to one of the world’s biggest spammers, accused of sending over 2 billion spam messages. Alone. In a single year. All about Viagra (or, V#%GR@). I’m sure I got about 50,000 of…