Technology and the Public Interest

Books, essays, and commentary from John Palfrey

Books

Wired Wisdom

Buy Now

The Connected Parent

Buy Now

Born Digital

Buy Now

Commentary from John Palfrey

  • 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.

    Read more..

  • 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.

    Read more..

  • 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…

    Read more..

  • 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…

    Read more..

  • 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.

    Read more..

  • 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…

    Read more..

  • 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…

    Read more..

  • 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.

    Read more..

  • 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. …

    Read more..

  • 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.…

    Read more..

  • 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.”

    Read more..

  • 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. …

    Read more..