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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NH primary polls: How can this be?
As a former campaign operative, I’ve suffered the fickleness of polling data. It can feel like being on a roller-coaster without a reliable seat-belt. But the current crop of polls of New Hampshire voters strike me as particularly strange. Leave aside other polls showing even larger differences, but not with a tracking nature to them. How is…
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Great call by Minnesota Public Radio
The first sustained national blogradio conversation, on weblogs and the Presidential campaign, a Lydon-McGrath-Stoller-et al. production.
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A movement in the making?
It’s everywhere: Robert Boynton’s New York Times magazine piece (“The Tyranny of Copyright?”), running this weekend, is online already. The increasingly prevalent analogy comparing the free culture/copy left movement and the environmental movement resonates.
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Lauren Gelman on Internet and campaigning
Stanford CIS’s Lauren Gelman says much of what I’ve been thinking about the Net and political campaigns in her excellent piece at FindLaw. And better than I could, at that.
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Internet contributions
Regardless of the outcome of the presidential campaign this year, it would be a terrible mistake — a deep misreading of the situation — to assert that the internet did not come of age in political campaigns during this cycle. Witness non-Howard Dean candidate John Kerry’s statement on fundraising today: “We’re doing spectacularly, we raised an extraordinary…
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Campaigns, weblogs and more
On this frosty-yet-exciting post-Iowa, pre-NH morning, I’ll be interested to see how the campaigns fire up their internet teams to capitalize on/mitigate the harm of the big surprise in Iowa last night. (I’ve gotten an in-box full of celebratory Kerry campaign messages (“Iowa’s ‘comeback kid’”) already). Meanwhile, Foster’s Daily Democrat had a piece on weblogs last Sunday,…
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Andrew McLaughlin gets down, and other good things
An unforgettable photo — as well as commentary — from Ethan Zuckerman in Ghana. There’s also a picture of Bernard Woma, about whom Ethan told us in Digital Democracy class. Andrew responds with a picture of Ethan raising the roof. Funny guys. Among other things, they’re in Accra to promote BlogAfrica.
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Susan Crawford: What is Cyberlaw?
An “authentic plea for commentary” from one of the coolest thinkers (and, presumably, teachers) in this space. Prof. Crawford’s planning out a syllabus for an Internet Law course and exploring new teaching tools for making it interesting. Update: Ernest Miller replies in depth to Prof. Crawford. And her final syllabus is here.
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Barlow: the weblog
At last. (One for the aggregator, to be certain.)
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Lydon with Lessig on Politcs, Free Culture and the Net
I’m just now getting around to hear Chris Lydon’s excellent interview of Prof. Lessig from last month — on free culture, the law and the internet. political campaigns, the “extraordinary corruption of our political system,” engaged citizenship, and “a new kind of journalism.” If you’re a skeptic about audio-blogs, let this one convert you. And if you don’t get…
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Berkman Briefings: The Diebold Controversy
We’re trying out a new mode of publication: “Berkman Briefings.” The idea is to write substantive but pretty quick pieces on key issues and stories in the Internet law world. We hope they might be used as the core of case studies for teaching or as a running record of important topics that arise in the general area that…
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Harvard Magazine reports on Weblogs initiative
An insightful take on the HLS weblogs experiment in this month’s Harvard Magazine. Lots of good quotes from Berkman Center regulars — including thoughts from Dave and Wendy — and other friends. What I like most about the article is that it brings us back to why we started this initiative in the first place:…


