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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Provocation from Peter Beinart, via the Shorenstein Center
I just received in the mail the hard-copy edition of the Sixteenth Annual Theodore H. White Lecture, hosted by the Joan Shorenstein Center at the Kennedy School at Harvard. Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of the New Republic gave the lecture on October 27, 2005. The full text is worth reading. (It is available online as a…
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HLS students weigh in on US tech companies operating in China
Harvard Law School students in “Internet, Law and Politics” have developed this site to build out their arguments about the ethics and legality of United States technology companies operating in China and participating in its filtering and surveillance regime. There are five people testifying in class today, each have posted their testimony online.
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Luis Villa et al. on Open Standards and Why They Matter
Berkman senior geek-in-residence Luis Villa spoke over the weekend at LinuxWorld Boston; Tina Gasperson and Slashdot covered his talk.
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David Beisel on viral marketing online
David Beisel at Genuine VC takes on what “viral marketing” in Web 2.0 really means. He even advances a formula for it: Viral adoption = (how inherently sharable x how easily sharable) x (integration of sharing into content/service).
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I hope the Google team hasn't lost its sense of humor
I hope that the unfortunate story of GoogleCircles.com, told here, is itself a prank. But fear it’s all too true, that Google has invoked the DMCA against an April Fool’s joke. Oof. It is amusing that the original prank is still in Google’s cache, at least for the time being. (Via David W.)
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ODF discussion heads West
Minnesota is considering taking up ODF (via Andy Updegrove). In this case, unlike the process in Massachusetts, it’s a proposed law, accessible online here. So what do they think “open standards” means? Here’s the definition: (f) “Open standards” means specifications for the encoding and transfer of computer 2.4 data that: 2.5 (1) is free for…
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How Blogs are Transforming Legal Scholarship
On behalf of the directors of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, I am delighted to invite you to our spring conference, “Bloggership: How Blogs are Transforming Legal Scholarship,” to be held Friday, April 28, 2006. Please join us for a series of four panel discussions featuring some of the…
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Digital Natives, take 2
In Ithaca, I am the guest of the Cornell LLM Association for its event on “Emerging Legal Challenges for International Law in the Cyber Age,” the 3rd annual LLM Inter-University Conference — quite a cool thing, and I’m grateful to be here. It’s lovely on campus. People seem in a great mood. But what do…
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Daniel Rubin at the Philly Inquirer
I had the pleasure of meeting Daniel Rubin, a reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer, at an event at the National Constitution Center earlier this week. Dan’s got a terrific blog that I’ve just started reading and subscribing too, called Blinq. I note also that Jay Rosen and his students at NYU are already signing his…
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CC Mexico!
Right this very minute, Creative Commons Mexico is launching in Mexico City. Congratulations, Larry Lessig, LeonFelipe Sanchez, and all the CC International team on yet another landmark on your road to worldwide reach. For atmospherics, Larry has “My Life” playing in the background… (This launch is coinciding with the end of Day 1 of iLaw-Mexico…
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Citizenship in a world of new media
Dan Gillmor is visiting Internet, Law and Politics at HLS today. The topic is the changing nature of the citizen in a “we the media” world. – I asked him what he thinks about Global Voices, which we covered a few weeks ago in this class. Of course he loves it, but he said he…
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Idea: Creative Source Licenses
Since the firestorm over RSS and copyright in January, I’ve been talking to a lot of people — those who publish blogs and mainstream media, those who aggregate online sources, those who worry over these things in the legal profession — about the strange place we find ourselves as an online community. There’s still a…