Bookshelf: Ideas for Secondary School Teachers, with a Bent Toward the Digital

In each of the last two academic years, I’ve made short lists of books I’ve liked, related mostly (but not exclusively) to secondary education and the digital world, to share with the faculty of Phillips Academy.  We buy a stack of each of the books, placed on the shelf outside my office, and share them … Read more

DDoS Report, in the Wake of Wikileaks, Cablegate, and Anonymous

The Wikileaks/Cablegate story has long-term implications for global society on very many levels.  (See JZ’s excellent FAQ on Wikileaks, co-developed with Molly Sauter.)  One is our shared understanding of the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack phenomenon.  The incidence of DDoS has been growing in recent years.  It links up to important threads to emerge … Read more

NYT story on Iran Elections and Technology, with Linkage to Green Dam

The New York Times’ Brian Stelter and Brad Stone have a very thoughtful piece in the paper today about the changing role of censorship in an Internet age, with references to ONI work. The final point, made in the story by Ethan Zuckerman, draws an appropriate connection to the Green Dam story in China from … Read more

How Does a Foundation Program Officer Decide How to Make Grants?

At the Berkman Center’s lunch speaker series, Gary Kebbel of the Knight Foundation is with us today. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen such a public, open discussion by a program officer of a foundation about how they do their work in funding great projects. The Knight Foundation has been running the News Challenge … Read more

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 … Read more