Cultural Significance of Free Software: Two Bits

I’ve mentioned Chris Kelty’s Two Bits as part of my summer reading list. Although I have the PDF sitting in my “to read” folder I think I’m waiting on the hardcover I ordered from Amazon. Seems like the kind of book that requires more reflective reading.

In the meanwhile, here’s Chris presenting at a Berkman Luncheon Series event on June 17th, 2008:

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Summer Reading List

Updated 5/31/08 - Like The Wealth of Networks, Two of these books are also available online: Two Bits and The Future of the Internet - and How to Stop It.

Here’s my summer reading list. Tell me what I’m missing.

• The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It, by Jonathan Zittrain
• Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, by Clay Shirky
• Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World, by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu
• Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software, by Chris Kelty
• Designing For the Social Web: Voices That Matter, by Joshua Porter

It’s a bit heavy, I know, but this is the kind of stuff I find interesting.

What are you reading this summer? What key new text have I left out?

Preparing for the Future(s) of the Internet

Lots of good quality discussion on the question of the Future (or Futures) of the Internet. There’s the upcoming conference to celebrate the 10th year of the founding of the Berkman Center, which is titled “The Future of the Internet.”

There’s Jonathan Zittrain’s new book, The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It. (In addition to buying a print copy, you can download the pdf version under creative commons license). Presenting on that book, there’s video of Zittrain at Princeton on March 26th, at ISOC-NY on April 11th, and at the Berkman Center the following week. You can also read and comment on the book.

Finally, via Biella Coleman I found this fascinating video from an event April 16th (between the above two videos), from a meeting of the NY Chapter of the Internet Society, talking about “The Futures of the Internet.” The discussion was sponsored by the NYU Information Law Institute, Free Culture @ NYU, and ISOC-NY. (Shirky’s presentation is on the same cognitive surplus theme from his web 2.0 expo keynote I recently blogged about).

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Weinberger at ROFLCon: Fame in the age of ubiquity

David Weinberger, whom I’m a clear fan of to anyone who reads this bog, was the keynote speaker this afternoon at ROFLCon, which the organizers pronounce like roffle-con, not spell out like R - O - F - L- con, which is how I pronounce it.

(Photo by kevingc on flickr, creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike license).

See my rambling notes below:

He basically argued (riffing on many themes from Everything is Miscellaneous) that the internet has changed the nature of fame - that in the pre-internet, mass communications era, fame was incredibly scarce, and drew it’s power from scarcity - very few people could make someone famous, and the number of ways to become famous was very small.

This created a certain kind of fame we call celebrity, along with a bunch of notions of what that means.

But thanks to the internet, we are no longer are interested in the inhuman, they’re-not-like-us-they’re-so-different famous - we’re looking for real, homespun, authentic, not separate, one of us kind of famous.
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An Embarrassment of Riches

One of the great things about living and working in the Boston area (other than a few significant sports teams) is the prevalence of some many truly great universities.

This is a benefit not only for the steady stream of students (undergrad and graduate) and recent graduates all those colleges and universities pump into the workforce regularly, but also because of the broader institutions they support.

My two favorite examples this year are the MIT Comparative Media Studies program and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School. (As an alumnus of neither Harvard nor MIT, I can recommend both impartially).

Somewhat less well-known in tech circles than the Media Lab, the Comparative Media Studies program practices “applied humanism”:

The . . . program is committed to the art of thinking across media forms, theoretical domains, cultural contexts, and historical periods. Both our graduate and undergraduate programs encourage the bridging of theory and practice, as much through course work as through participation in faculty and independent research projects.

Among the projects that the MIT CMS program currently sponsors / hosts:

• The Convergence Culture Consortium
• Learning Games to Go
• Metamedia
• Project New Media Literacies
• Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab
• MIT Center for Future Civic Media

In addition, check out their Faculty, Theses, Publications, and subscribe to their Events Calendar and News Feed, which often includes podcasts of various events.

This week (Nov. 16th and 17th, 2007), the Convergence Culture Consortium will be hosting the Futures of Entertainment II conference, which (true to their mission):

brings together key industry players who are shaping these new directions in our culture with academics exploring their implications. This year’s conference will consider developments in advertising, cult media, metrics, measurement, and accounting for audiences, cultural labor and audience relations, and mobile platform development.

Check out the full conference schedule for more detail on speakers and subjects. I will be attending and hopefully blogging about much of the conference - though those posts may not appear until the following week due to some vacation time which will take me offline.

Just up the Charles in Harvard Square, the Berkman center focuses on “Internet & Society” in the broad context of the Harvard Law School.

To get a sense of the breadth and depth of the center, just look at:

• The projects linked from their home page, including the Center for Citizen Media, the Citizen Media Law project, the Digital Natives project, and the Internet and Democracy Project, among others)
• Their faculty and fellows, including Yochai Benkler, John Palfrey, Jonathan Zittrain, danah boyd, Dan Gillmor, Doc Searls, Jimmy Wales, and David Weinberger, and that’s just grabbing the names that immediately jump out to me, not to suggest all the others aren’t equally prominent or doing equally fascinating and worthwhile work.

Also be sure to check out (and subscribe to) MediaBerkman, which podcasts / vodcasts many Berkman sponsored events for those not able to make it to Cambridge in person.