Larry Lessig, Stanford intellectual extraordinaire and founder of Creative Commons, is here at Harvard Law School to talk about his new campaign Change Congress as part of the Berkman@10 lecture series.He begins with a quote from Ronald Reagan: "A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can exist only until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most
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Yochai Benkler and his book, The Wealth of Networks Yesterday I met with Yochai Benkler, Co-Director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, where I work as a research assistant. What a spectacular and inspiring meeting! Prof. Benkler is one of the top intellectuals thinking about the effect of the Internet on society. He literally wrote the book on the topic (The Wealth of Networks, pictured above). My fellow RA, Josh Goldstein, set up the meeting to learn more
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The event poster Last Friday I helped bring Joan Blades, co-founder of the progressive online organization MoveOn and the feminist organization MomsRising, to speak at the Kennedy School, where I am a grad student. The event was serendipitous. A few weeks ago Lisa Renstrom, former President of the Sierra Club, asked me if I would set up a Kennedy School event with Ms. Blades while she was in Boston to promote MomsRising. I said sure.I had the privilege of having
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Since I arrived in Cambridge a month ago, I've been talking to lots of smart people to get their opinions on digital activism. Some are eminent scholars of political science (my profs), some work at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, some are professional political organizers. Overwhelmingly, I have received the same reaction when I talk about the politically transformative power of digital tools: skepticism. I won't lie - this has been disheartening. I thought here in Cambridge, here
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Ani - she's not digital but she is a revolutionary. Sorry for the blatantly feminist Quote of the Week (is that something one needs to apologize for?). I just finished a paper for my Women and Leadership class and I used "Make Them Apologize" to get me in the mood.
Since I got to Harvard I've been casting myself in all digital directions: research assistant at the Berkman Center, trying to start a student Digital Action Group (DigAct), maybe building some digital activism technology with Gene Koo, bringing a speaker to campus. I've got a big goal and I'm not sure how to accomplish it so I just keep grabbing hold of things, hoping that something will stick. So what is this big goal? I want digital activism to be
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Today was my first day of class at the Kennedy School and, not surprisingly, one of my readings for tomorrow has inspired me. (Part of the reasons I was looking forward to starting grad school was to have more blogging fodder.)For my class in comparative politics, I was assigned a piece of Robert A. Dahl's 1971 book Polyarchy:Participation and Opposition, specifically, a section on democratization. One throw-away comment that Dahl makes that I really like is that citizens in a
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KSG campus in Boston You may have noticed that I didn't write much this week (actually, I wrote nothing). That is because I was finishing up the OhmyNews case study (more on that in future posts) and moving the Boston (that's Beantown to the locals). Why have I moved to Boston? I'll be starting a 2-year Master in Public Policy degree in a week at the Kennedy School of Government. I'm a little nervous (it is Harvard after all) but
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Read over the presentations by the Summer Doctoral Program at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard and decide which person's PhD research on the internet is most likely to change the world. Or just look for cool new ideas. Lecture and presentation notes are being posted to the ICTlogy blog.
Why am I beginning a new blog? Because I have been a very bad blogger. If you look at my old blog, DemoBlog, you will see that I rarely wrote in it. Sometimes twice a month, sometimes less. Blogging has been a very stressful experience for me. Demoblog was about tracking digital democracy around the world and I have felt the need to turn out a very "professional" post every time (a well-reasoned argument or bit of citizen journalism, complete
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