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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Almost on his way
Dave starts off across the country today. Good news for us.
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Herald story gets it mostly right
The Boston Herald ran a nice piece this morning on Dave Winer’s fellowship to the Berkman Center and on our blogging initiative that he’s heading up. I liked that Tom Walsh, the reporter, focused on the extent to which we’re aiming to help break down barriers at the university between the schools and the research…
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Want to spend a few weeks at Oxford this summer?
For those who are graduate students in something related to ICTs, there’s a cool program starting this summer at Oxford. In the school of full disclosure, the Berkman Center at HLS is a co-sponsor, as we’re convinced that the Oxford Internet Institute is up to something very interesting with this 25-person, two-week course.
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Ben Edelman's take on SCOTUS argument re: filtering
Berkman Student Fellow Ben Edelman offers this (and more) about what he heard during yesterday’s United States S Ct proceedings regarding the challenge to CIPA and related filtering laws: “The government’s most successful argument yesterday seemed to be that, they allege, libraries and librarians have long made decisions as to which books to obtain and which to exclude —…
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Our ISP liability regime is a mess
One of the things that bothers me about US Internet law and policy is the various definitions of “ISP” in law and policy (compare DMCA to CDA, e.g.). Even within the DMCA there is discrepancy. It will be interesting to see how this case impacts the ISP liability regime — interesting because of the facts…
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How to use a blog in a class?
I’m thinking through how we might use a blog interface in a class I’ll be teaching this coming fall (Cyberlaw and the Global Economy, it’s called). Among others, we got an interesting e-mail from the U of T with this example, which is intriguing. I’d be interested in other examples of specific incarnations of blogs…
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Pied Pipers
I’m convinced that the role of the evangelist is essential to the success of our effort to get blogs into use as far and as wide at Harvard as possible. The technology, its effectiveness, and the experience will all speak for themselves, but there’s got to be someone to make the pitch and get people excited about…
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Lunch with Halley
So, I was lucky enough to meet up with Halley Suitt for lunch today to talk about blogging and Harvard and knowledge management and all that. She’s local here in Cambridge. It confirmed for me, yet again, the importance of the face-to-face complement to working with people online. It’s increasingly clear to me that online…


