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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How lawyers should use Gmail
Denise Howell, as usual, has it all figured out: Gmail as knowledge management tool and a means of dealing with all those listservs we more or less have to be on.
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Michael Watkins' transition
One of the few faculty members at Harvard who has been actively blogging, Michael Watkins, is “hanging up [his] gloves” as he transitions out of the university and on to a new part of his career.
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Westlaw leaps forward by offering RSS feeds
This is big news: Westlaw now supports RSS. This is an incremental move: it applies just to the WL “intraclips” service. Strikes me as a no-brainer and a major step ahead of the competition. Among other things, such adoption says to me: “we get it” when it comes to the future of distribution of information…
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Filtering study on Anonymizer, Voice of America, and Iran
Our OpenNet Initiative — a partnership with the University of Cambridge (Rafal Rohozinski), the University of Toronto (Ron Deibert, Nart Villeneuve, and others), and the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School (several of us, led by Jonathan Zittrain) — has released a new report on the imprecision of the Anonymizer-powered US International Broadcasting Bureau web surfing…
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Baseball in the Dominican Republic
Berkman Center fellow and Associate Director of the Watson Institute at Brown, Geoffrey Kirkman, has a not-so-secret talent: talking about baseball in the DR, home to A-Rod, Pedro, and many other current MLB greats.
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Google's IPO docs
You can now learn more than ever before about the inner workings of Google and why their IPO ought to raise $2.7 bn. in their S-1 (via findlaw). Readers be warned: it’s 171 pages. Lawyers be warned: it includes such unlawyerly statements as “Don’t be evil.” Wondering who has how much stock? See p. 84. The BBC…
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Revisiting online information sources for lawyers
When lawyers first discovered the Net, there was all kinds of talk about how it would transform the practice, and perhaps even the profession itself. Surely the Net has wrought major changes in terms of efficiency gains, how transactions take place, how disputes (might be) resolved, the nature and extent of evidence, how trials are…
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An all-IP future?
I’m preparing for teaching a class on Monday on the question of whether we’re headed for an all-IP future. It’s focused primarily on the decision-points that a policy-maker in a developing country might face today and in the medium-term future. A first cut at notes are here.
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Learning from our conferences
A Think Tank has a small handful of obvious tools at its disposal. First and foremost, there’s the Conference. (Other tools include the White Paper; the Case Study; Testimony; Advice; Courses/Seminars/Online Offerings of Various Sorts; and a very few other things.) One of the learnings from BloggerCon II is that an “un-conference” can be very refreshing. …
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Post-BloggerCon II
My new all-time favorite blog post, via Dave (to whom huge thanks and congratulations are much in order). I think that pulling off two major conferences in a single year as a fellow has got to be a Berkman record. WK, CB, thanks for stepping up, and to so many Berkman(iacs) — past, present, and future — for coming out.…
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The funniest law review article in the whole world
By Jack Balkin & Sanford Levinson, How to Win Cites and Influence People. It’s actually just as relevant to the blogosphere as to the legal academy: “Friends are usually more than happy to cite you, especially if you offer to cite them in return.”
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Happy BloggerCon II!
I’m happily blogging along here at BC II, sitting next tomy friend Susan Crawford in Pound 200, HLS, one flight up from where we were yesterday on Digital Media’s speedbumps. Quite a different feel overall, but same positive energy. Very fun. Susan and I have decided that: time is our enemy, life is our friend. …


