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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Julie Cohen: Configuring the Networked Self
At the Berkman Center, we are hearing a preview of key elements of Prof. Julie Cohen‘s forthcoming book, Configuring the Networked Self. Some hasty live-blog notes follow: Prof. Cohen tells us that there are two disconnects that she starts with: 1) there are lots of invocations of “freedom” being floated around, but many of the…
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Reader Privacy Event at UNC-Chapel Hill
Anne Klinefelter, the beloved law library director at UNC-Chapel Hill (you should hear her dean introduce her; really!), is hosting a Data Privacy Day event on reader privacy. She makes the case in her opening panel remarks that, if we wish to translate library practices with respect to privacy into a digital world, we need…
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Sahara Byrne: Parents, Kids and Online Safety
Prof. Sahara Byrne, of the communications department at Cornell, is the Berkman Center‘s lunch series speaker today. Prof. Byrne studies responses to Internet safety techniques. She’s interested in the “recipes for disaster,” such as when parents love a given safety technique and kids hate it. She’s a believer in psychological reactance theory: that when kids…
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Research Confidential and Surveying Bloggers
In our research methods seminar this evening at the Berkman Center, we got into a spirited conversation about the challenges of surveying bloggers. In this seminar, we’ve been working primarily from a text called Research Confidential, edited by Eszter Hargittai (who happens to be my co-teacher in this experimental class, taught concurrently, and by video-conference,…
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Harvard Library Report
Over the past nine months or so, a group of us have worked on a Harvard-wide Task Force to consider our library systems. The report is being issued today by Harvard’s Provost, Steven E. Hyman, who chaired our Task Force. Over the next year-plus, we will be working to implement changes in five key areas…
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Dawn Nunziato's Virtual Freedom: Net Neutrality and Free Speech in the Internet Age
Dawn Nunziato, a law prof at George Washington University Law School, has written a helpful and interesting new book, entitled Virtual Freedom: Net Neutrality and Free Speech in the Internet Age. Her focus in “Virtual Freedom” is — as the subtitle suggests — free speech on the net, framed primarily for the current net neutrality…
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Love Your Library Fest Today, 2 – 5 p.m. at HLSL
The Harvard Law School Library invites students to come visit today during this year’s “Love Your Library Fest.” In addition to everything you’ll learn about the HLS Library, come over for free movie tickets and a raffle to win an iPod Touch.
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Managing Partners Weigh in on Impact of the Global Financial Crisis (Live-Blog)
At a workshop at Oxford University, HLS Prof. David Wilkins has convened the managing partners of some of the world’s leading law firms. Ted Burke of Freshfields, Simon Davies of Linklaters, Wim Dejonghe of Allen & Overy, Neville Eisenberg og Berwin Leighton Paisner, and Cyril Shroff of India’s Amarchand & Mangaldas are being interviewed by…
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Graduate Seminar on Research Methods on Internet & Society
Amid all the noise of the start of fall semester, Eszter Hargittai and I are launching a new experiment: a course taught jointly (and separately) at Northwestern University and at Harvard University on research methods in Internet & Society. We’ll post as much of the material as makes sense to a publicly-accessible wiki. Students can…
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New Harvard Law School Library Organizational Design
Over the past year, I’ve worked with my colleagues at the Harvard Law School Library, our Library Committee of faculty members, and many others to develop a new organizational design for the HLSL. It goes into effect today. The description of our new organizational form is posted to the Library’s blog, Et Seq. The future…
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Google Books Search Settlement Workshop
Join us in-person or online for the GBS Settlement Workshop at the Berkman Center today. There’s a webcast: webcast, Twitter stream (#gbsworkshop09), and IRC chat, with vibrant conversations going on. Lessig talking now, with an unadvertised-wow-we-are-lucky mini-keynote.
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Skype-ing into Summercore
This summer I’ve been occasionally doing video/audio Skype sessions with Steve Bergen’s Summercore program for teachers. It’s the first time with “distance ed” that I’ve felt the process is natural. The sessions are about a half-hour, focused mostly on issues related to youth media usage, with teachers on the other end asking questions. They’ve done…