<font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif">I just wanted to welcome Jonathan to the list, and note a couple of interesting points for IDCers: </font><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif"><br>
</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif">1) Many of the solutions that JZ proposes in his book rely on distributed efforts to keep the net open, secure, and free of bugs. Would we call those efforts "labor," civic minded virtual community building, or is some new characterization necessary? (If you want a concrete example, check out his discussion here: </font></div>
<div><a href="http://www.bostonreview.net/BR33.2/zittrain.php"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif">http://www.bostonreview.net/BR33.2/zittrain.php</font></a></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif"><br>
</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif"><a href="http://www.bostonreview.net/BR33.2/zittrain.php"></a>"</font><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times, Arial, serif; font-size: 14px; ">Full adoption of the lessons of Wikipedia would give PC users the opportunity to have some ownership, some shared stake, in the process of evaluating code, especially because they have a stake in getting it right for their own machines. Sharing useful data from their PCs is one step, but this may work best when the data goes to an entity committed to the public interest of solving PC security problems and willing to share that data with others. The notion of a civic institution here does not necessarily mean cumbersome governance structures and formal lines of authority so much as it means a sense of shared responsibility and participation. Think of the volunteer fire department or neighborhood watch: while not everyone is able to fight fires or is interested in watching, a critical mass of people are prepared to contribute, and such contributions are known to the community more broadly</span>."</font></span><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif"><br>
<br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif">2) I think that one of JZ's best ideas in </font><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif">Future of the Internet </font></span><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif">is getting lawyers and activists involved in free culture, net neutrality, device neutrality, and consumer protection movements to talk to each other more. The next step is likely broader engagement with the academy. He discusses several values (like generativity) that are hard to quantify, and they will be difficult for economists to adequately convey and measure for policy makers. I think other social scientists and cultural theorists should be playing a larger role in exploring and elaborating these values. But I also worry that they will face the same temptations for desiccated "relevance" and "objectivity" that earlier generations faced as they sought to influence the state. These forces are described quite well in Joel Isaac's article "Tangled Loops" (at <a href="http://bit.ly/1WkNlD">http://bit.ly/1WkNlD</a>): </font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif">"Postwar leaders of the social and administrative sciences such as Talcott Parsons and Herbert Simon were skilled scientific brokers of just this sort: good 'committee men,' grant-getters, proponents of interdisciplinary inquiry, and institution-builders. This hard-nosed, suit-wearing, business-like persona was connected to new, technologically refined forms of social science. No longer sage-like social philosophers or hardscrabble, number-crunching empiricists, academic human scientists portrayed themselves as possessors of tools and programs designed for precision social engineering. Antediluvian 'social science' was eschewed in favour of mathematical, behavioural, and systems-based approaches to 'human relations' such as operations research, behavioral science, game theory, systems theory, and cognitive science."</font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif">Is there a way to preserve open-ended and humanistic research on technical topics while still remaining relevant to decisionmakers? Or is the tension between power and virtue inevitable?</font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif">all best,</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif">--Frank</font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; "><a href="http://law.shu.edu/faculty/fulltime_faculty/pasquafa/pasquale.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(42, 93, 176); "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif">Frank Pasquale</font></a></span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, sans-serif"><a href="http://law.shu.edu/faculty/fulltime_faculty/pasquafa/pasquale.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(42, 93, 176); "></a>Visiting Professor of Law, Cardozo Law School<br>
Loftus Professor of Law, Seton Hall Law School<br>One Newark Center<br>Newark, NJ 07102<br>(973)-642-8485</font></span></div><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 1:35 AM, Jonathan Zittrain <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:zittrain@law.harvard.edu">zittrain@law.harvard.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">Hi there,<br>
<br>
I'll be participating in November's digital labor conference. I've<br>
written a book called the Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop<br>
It, <<a href="http://www.futureoftheinternet.org/download" target="_blank">http://www.futureoftheinternet.org/download</a>>, in which I worry<br>
about shift in control of our tech environment away from individuals<br>
and towards consolidated private gatekeepers, in turn controllable by<br>
state regulators. I think this shift is happening by our own choice,<br>
as we migrate away from flaky user-empowering systems that can too<br>
easily fall prey to malware, and towards more stable (and boring)<br>
environments, whether Internet appliances like Amazon's Kindle or<br>
cloud-computing environments like Yahoo! mail or Gmail.<br>
<br>
I think what I'll talk about in November are the ways in which human<br>
computing is also entering a cloud configuration: now someone can put<br>
a number of human minds onto a project or problem in proportion to<br>
the number of zeroes written on a check. I worry about a new era of<br>
astroturfing in many areas of public life, both social and<br>
political. (That's one reason why I'm interested in the recently<br>
announced FTC guidelines about disclosure when bloggers are paid to<br>
endorse products.)<br>
<br>
But for the most part I'll be at the conference to listen and<br>
learn. I think I'm methodologically an outlier from the average<br>
workshop participant, so there will be lots that's new to me. ...JZ<br>
<br>
Jonathan Zittrain<br>
Professor of Law<br>
Harvard Law School | Harvard Kennedy School of Government<br>
Co-Founder, Berkman Center for Internet & Society<br>
<<a href="http://cyber.law.harvard.edu" target="_blank">http://cyber.law.harvard.edu</a>><br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div><br></div>