Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society: Audio Fishbowl

In this talk, Professor Woodrow Hartzog argues that the law should require software and hardware makers to respect privacy in the design of their products. Against the often self-serving optimism of Silicon Valley and the inertia of tech evangelism, privacy gains will come from better rules for products, not users. The current model of regulating use fosters exploitation. Hartzog speaks on the need to develop the theoretical underpinnings of a new kind of privacy law that is responsive to the way people actually perceive and use digital technologies. The law can demand encryption. It can prohibit malicious interfaces that deceive users and leave them vulnerable. It can require safeguards against abuses of biometric surveillance. It can, in short, make the technology itself worthy of our trust. For more info about this event visit: https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2019-03-05/privacys-blueprin

Why has the Internet had such a powerful impact? What are the challenges that may cause the Internet of tomorrow to be significantly less revolutionary than the Internet to date? This talk provides a history of the reasons for and the technology of the Internet. Scott Bradner has worked in the areas of computer programming, system management, networking, IT security, and identity management at Harvard for 50 years. He was involved in the design, operation and use of data networks at Harvard University since the early days of the ARPANET. He was involved in the design of the original Harvard data networks, the Longwood Medical Area network (LMAnet) and New England Academic and Research Network (NEARnet). He was founding chair of the technical committees of LMAnet, NEARnet and the Corporation for Research and Enterprise Network (CoREN). Mr. Bradner served in a number of roles in the IETF. He was the co-director of the Operational Requirements Area (1993-1997), IPng Area (1993-1996), Transport Area (1997-2003) and Sub-IP Area (2001-2003). He was a member of the IESG (1993-2003) and was an elected trustee of the Internet Society (1993-1999), where he was the VP for Standards from 1995 to 2003 and Secretary to the Board of Trustees from 2003 to 2016. Scott was also a member of the IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA) as well as a trustee of the IETF Trust from 2012 to 2016. Mr. Bradner retired from Harvard University in 2016 after 50 years working in the areas of in computer programming, system management, networking, IT security and identity management. He continues to do some patent related consulting. More about this event here: https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2019-02-05/history-internet

Professor Jonathan Zittrain discusses the social media giant’s ‘long year’ with Facebook's head of global policy management Monika Bickert. Citing his sense of the “pessimism and near-despair that permeate our feelings about social media,” Zittrain opens the conversation by recalling a September 2017 discussion in which he and Bickert looked at the rise of white nationalism and the first indications of how social media manipulation had been at play in the 2016 elections. Since then, of course, more information about fake accounts and online attacks has come to light. Learn more about this event here: https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018-12-03/state-online-speech-and-governance

Technology is the American mythos (Dinerstein 2006); a belief system powering the relations between—and politics of—culture and technology. In the Western context, technoculture incorporates Whiteness, White racial ideology, and modernist technological beliefs. This presentation is a critical intervention for internet research and science and technology studies (STS), reorienting “race-as-technology” (Chun 2009) to incorporate Blackness as technological subjects rather than as “things." Utilizing critical technocultural discourse analysis (Brock 2018), Afro-optimism, and libidinal economic theory, this presentation employs Black Twitter as an exemplar of Black cyberculture: digital practice and artifacts informed by a Black aesthetic. Learn more about this event here: https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018-12-04/my-constellation-space-towards-theory-black-cyberculture

Is social media destroying democracy? Are Russian propaganda or "Fake news" entrepreneurs on Facebook undermining our sense of a shared reality? A conventional wisdom has emerged since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 that new technologies and their manipulation by foreign actors played a decisive role in his victory and are responsible for the sense of a "post-truth" moment in which disinformation and propaganda thrives. Network Propaganda challenges that received wisdom through the most comprehensive study yet published on media coverage of American presidential politics from the start of the election cycle in April 2015 to the one year anniversary of the Trump presidency. Analyzing millions of news stories together with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage of immigration, Clinton scandals, and the Trump Russia investigation, the book finds that the right-wing media ecosystem operates fundamentally differently than the rest of the media environment. Authors Yochai Benkler, Rob Faris, and Hal Roberts present their years-in-the-making research on the media ecosystem, and discuss their findings with Martha Minow and Claire Wardle. More info on this event here: https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018-10-04/network-propaganda