Archive for January, 2008
On Tuesday, Jan 29th we are going to discuss a few chapters from Lawrence Lessig’s book, “Code and other Laws of Cyberspace.” Lessig’s views have been an important part of the debates surrounding Internet copyright, IP, and privacy. It is also worth pointing out that Lessig writes in an incredibly accessible and engaging style. For the purposes of our course, we want you to read these chapters and think about the role that “code” plays in the social uses of the Internet and surrounding technologies. If you have any opinions at all about issues like open source software, net neutrality and/or digital surveillance, then you will likely find this reading quite interesting.
As Lessig argues, at opposite ends of the spectrum we can think of code as something that could enable perfect freedom, or at the other end—perfect regulation. Our goal will not be to debate copyright law and IP rights specifically (you will find that in our ischool law/policy course); rather, we want to talk about the relationship between the code and how it relates to users (and vice versa). To take it a step further, we then want to think about how this relationship might connect to the larger institutions that attempt to provide regulation and structure to digital information technologies.
January 26th, 2008
A short follow-up to today’s great discussion. If you’re interested in learning a bit more about the so-called Productivity Paradox, check out this from the Communications of the ACM or this from the American Economic Review. Both, in their ways, point out how complex these issues are and how they are not nearly as unprecedented or surprising as we might think.
Also, one particularly interesting (IMHO) explanation for the paradox. Some of you may have heard of Edward Tufte, who wrote a couple of really great books on information vizualization. Tufte is on a mission against Powerpoint - I mean, the man hates it. Check out this Wired Mag. piece from a few years ago with the unambiguous title Powerpoint is Evil. He makes the point that practices around Powerpoint have evolved in ways that obscure information while giving it a sense of credibility because it adheres to a certain form. So, here we have an example of a piece of technology that might have increased productivity, but does not necessarily do so because its uses have evolved to suit other goals: status, power, authority. (i.e. people suck) But it’s an interesting example of the importance of social processes.
January 24th, 2008
Welcome to i203! Throughout the semester, Judd and I will be giving you a little bit of information about the readings for the coming week. For our first week, we are reading two chapters from Brown and Duguid’s ‘Social Life of Information’. These chapters offer an excellent introduction to the kinds of issues that we will explore in the course. Brown and Duguid offer a lot of excellent examples, so come prepared to discuss this text during our second day of class (thursday).
January 8th, 2008