Technology and the Public Interest

Books, essays, and commentary from John Palfrey

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Books

Wired Wisdom

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The Connected Parent

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Born Digital

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Commentary from John Palfrey

  • First Few Reactions to Born Digital

    After about four years of planning, research, and writing, Born Digital officially came out this week. Urs Gasser and I have so many people to thank; we have been blessed with such great teammates and friends and helpful critics along the way. (Much of the work that the team has done is recorded, and will…

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  • Navigate 2008 Day Two Tidbits

    Day 2 tidbits from Navigate ’08 by the IAPP and team: JZ told us that Mrs. Beasley, his fabulous and famous dog, has two tracking devices: a RFID chip and a GPS device. Why? They serve distinct purposes. The RFID chip is for if she gets lost and shows up at a vet’s office, in…

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  • Tidbits from Navigate 2008 Day One

    It’s Day One at Navigate 2008. Trevor Hughes and his crack team at the IAPP have established a space for thinking not about what’s urgeny, but about what’s important when it comes to privacy. The key for the event is to think big about privacy. The goal is to contribute to the global dialogue. (For…

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  • Navigating Privacy

    Jonathan Zittrain and I are headed up to seacoast New Hampshire to be the “curators” of the IAPP’s new executive forum, Navigate, for the first few days of the week. It’s a beautifully organized program and a terrific line-up. It promises to be provocative and a lot of fun. Privacy turned out to be a…

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  • Digital Dossiers

    Kanu Tewari, a Berkman Center intern with us from Egypt for the summer, has produced a fabulous video on the topic of one the chapters — Dossiers — in our forthcoming book, Born Digital.  Kanu’s blog post accompanying the video is here. (We build on the term “digital dossiers” popularized by Prof. Solove.)  I couldn’t…

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  • Prof. Obama's Con Law Exams

    The most promising lawyer in my law school section, Jodi Kantor, dropped out after a semester to join Slate as a reporter. She’s since become a big-shot at the NYT, now covering national politics. She’s returned to her law school roots in writing about Sen. Obama’s teaching of constitutional law. Her article was great. Even…

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  • Two Videos: The Ballad of Zack McCune and Learning to Type with Diana Kimball

    The Digital Natives project intern crew is astonishingly good this summer. They’re showing off their creative skills by making videos about issues related to young people living with technology in wired societies. The first is by Diana Kimball, about how she learned to type. The second is a multi-part series about Zack McCune’s experiences with…

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  • Entrepreneurship, the Patent Law, and Scale of Firms

    I’m at a wonderful summer program hosted by the Kauffman Foundation on Law, Innovation, and Growth. They’ve convened a truly interdisciplinary crowd interested in how law can affect rates of innovation and growth. Many, though by no means all, of the conversations are about innovation in technology-related fields. All the papers presented will be posted…

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  • Join the Berkman Center

    We seem, at the Berkman Center, always to be looking for more great people to join our team.  A new opening: a clinical fellow in cyberlaw.  The posting is here.  The job would be great for an entrepreneurial lawyer who would like to teach law students applied cyberlaw in innovative ways through our clinic.  The…

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  • Katie Salen, ed., "The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning"

    The first book that I read in the series of MacArthur/MIT Press’s Digital Media and Learning series was “The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning,” edited by game designer and educator Katie Salen (open access version here). As with the other books in the series, it’s a very important contribution to the scholarly…

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  • Daniel Solove's The Future of Reputation

    The first book I’ve read in full on my Amazon Kindle is Daniel Solove‘s “The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet.” It’s a book I’ve been meaning to read since it came out; it did not disappoint. I was glad to have the joint experience of reading a first full book…

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  • Leaked Cisco Document: Chinese Censorship among "Opportunities"

    As WIRED is reporting, a leaked Cisco presentation (online here) makes clear that, in 2002, Cisco team members saw censorship in China as an opportunity to sell equipment to the state. The presentation, in slide 57, cites what appears to be a Chinese official saying that one of the goals of Operation Golden Shield (what…

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