Talk:Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society

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Duplicate article

This is from Berkman Center, which I am changing to a redirect. I am not convinced any of this information needs merged into the article, but if anyone is working on this article, I thought you'd like to know.

Mission

The Berkman Center's mission is to explore and understand cyberspace, its development, dynamics, norms, standards, and need or lack thereof for laws and sanctions.

We are a research center, premised on the observation that what we seek to learn is not already recorded. Our method is to build out into cyberspace, record data as we go, self-study, and publish. Our mode is entrepreneurial nonprofit.

About Us

The Berkman Center is a research program founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. We represent a network of faculty, students, fellows, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and virtual architects working to identify and engage with the challenges and opportunities of cyberspace.

How long has the Berkman Center been around? Who started it, with what rationale(s), and with what funding/resources? MaynardClark 21:02, 11 October 2007 (UTC)MaynardClark

• "In 1996, Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson and Jonathan Zittrain established what was then called the "Center on Law and Technology" at Harvard Law School. The Center grew out of a seminar with Arthur Miller, David Marglin, and Tom Smuts in 1994 on cutting-edge Internet issues. The Center set out "to explore and understand cyberspace, its development, dynamics, norms, standards, and need or lack thereof for laws and sanctions." A gift of $5.4 million in 1997 from the Berkman family--Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman, and their son Myles--underwrote Nesson's vision. Lawrence Lessig was awarded the Berkman professorship. The Center on Law and Technology then changed its name to the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, and has steadily expanded ever since." Please see [This Link] Ccj1981 (talk) 01:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

References

HomePage
NickelShoe 23:43, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Classification

I updated this article with an infobox, and categorized it as a technology research center. I feel this is close, but there may be a more precise term to describe it -- perhaps policy research center. If anyone has a thought as to which term best classifies the Berkman Center, do share. Cheers, Jeff Bedford (talk) 19:46, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Great job Jeff! The article is much better that way. :) Personally I would not categorize the Berkman Center as a "technology research center", as (in my view) the focus of the center's research is not primarily the internet technology itself, but how the technology is inspired by the social context in which it is created and how the technology then retroacts on society. Another objective is to use the lessons drawn from this research to inform the design of internet related laws and pioneer the development of the internet itself (so in this sense your categorization is right!). From this perspective, the Center also has a "think tank" orientation. I have been thinking how I would myself categorize the Center, and ultimately ended up with the following conclusion: it is too difficult a task to categorize the center in an informative way in a 3 words infobox! So I would say this would be better done in the article itself (I try to do that now, please check it out if you like!). Maybe the most relevant information to put on an infobox is that this is a "interfaculty research center", or alternatively a "pluridisciplinary research center"? Just some thoughts... Cheers! SalimJah (talk) 13:24, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Well said, Salim. It can be challenging to classify an organization of this type in such few words, but it is important to do so in the infobox so that readers (who browse at a rapid pace, as you know) can get an initial snapshot of what the Berkman Center is. Based on your thoughts above, over the next few days I'll try to come up with a few alternatives for the infobox description, and will pose them here to gain adequate consensus.

This article as a whole is off to a fair start, but it should (and can) do a better job at meeting Wikipedia's Good article criteria, and I think that I can be of help in bringing it up to that level of quality. At present, the article defines what the Berkman Center is and explains a few of the key projects, but it is lacking that crucial context of what specific impact the center and its endeavors have had on society. The description of the impact should be based on what reliable, independent sources have written about the Berkman Center. A concise History section would help to provide a cohesive background on the formation, growth and evolution of the Berkman Center (leading up to present day).

I've begun to draft an updated version of this article, which I aim to share here for review and feedback from others before implementing it. I've gotten to know the Berkman Center's work over the past few years from attending a handful of conferences where their members/fellows have presented their research. Well, now I'm off to tackle that draft, which I hope to have completed within the next two weeks. Cheers, Jeff Bedford (talk) 16:16, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

This sounds like an exiting program! I will try to help you as best as I can in this process! Do not hesitate to enhance the edits I may make and ask me for a helping hand if you need anything. SalimJah (talk) 16:57, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Fellows

What was the rationale for determining who should appear on this list and who shouldn't? Then, wouldn't including some small piece of information about what those people are actually up to be relevant? Like: "The director of the MIT Center for Civic Media Ethan Zuckerman" rather than simply "Ethan Zuckerman", or "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales" rather than simply "Jimmy Wales"? SalimJah (talk) 17:13, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Projects and initiatives

The Projects and initiatives section seems rather outdated. Would somebody be willing to update this list? SalimJah (talk) 17:13, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Here is a list of projects of the center, as of June 2018. -- Oa01 (talk) 16:26, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Proposed text

Digital Media Law Project [see existing text] Internet and Democracy Project [see existing text] StopBadware [see existing text] Digital Public Library of America [see existing text] Harvard Open Access Project The Harvard Open Access Project promotes open access to scholarly communication. Open Access Tracking Project, a daily news feed about open access publishing around the world (OCLC 1040261573) TagTeam, an open-source, social-tagging platform and feed aggregator developed under the direction of Peter Suber. Development began in 2011, and the first version was released in September 2012. The Harvard instance of TagTeam is limited to academic or research projects. Unlike other tagging platforms, which only allow taggers to modify their own tags, TagTeam allows project managers to modify all tags applied by project participants. Hence, over time TagTeam projects can evolve a standard or controlled tag vocabulary, a feature it calls folksonomy in, ontology out. In addition, TagTeam accepts contributions from multiple tagging platforms (what it calls "interoperable tagging") and supports boolean feed aggregation ("remix feeds"). Every tag and search publishes a feed in RSS, Atom, and JSON. TagTeam can subscribe to feeds from other platforms, and remix them with its own feeds. It stores all its tag records for deduping, export, modification, preservation, and search. The motivation for developing TagTeam was to accommodate the needs of the Open Access Tracking Project, which still runs on TagTeam. But TagTeam is now a general-purpose tagging platform that supports open, crowd-sourced tagging projects on any topic. Other projects As of June 2018, the center maintains several additional projects: AGTech Forum Assembly Berklett Cybersecurity Cooperation Research Workshop CopyrightX Cyberlaw Clinic Digital Finance Initiative Digital Health @ Harvard Digitally Connected Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Global Access in Action H2O Harmful Speech Online Herdict Improving Information for Decision Makers Internet Governance Internet Monitor Internet Robustness Interoperability Lumen (formerly Chilling Effects) Media Cloud metaLAB (at) Harvard Municipal Fiber Initiative Privacy Initiatives; Privacy Tools for Sharing Research Data ProjectVRM Responsive Communities Youth and Media The center has also supported "spinoff" initiatives, such as: Creative Commons Digital Asia Hub Global Voices Network of Interdisciplinary Internet & Society Research Centers Noank Media Public Radio Exchange References

Hi Oa01, agreed the current list is out of date; this goes far in the other direction + feels a bit random - why does only TagTeam get detail? Cheers, – SJ + 18:49, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi SJ, agreed the proposed text feels unfinished at present. Perhaps others will fill in details? -- Oa01 (talk) 07:59, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps the will. But as a first attempt to update the stale list, a briefer option: you could include just the most significant projects -- ones with their own pages or national-news cites, meriting a short description in the bulleted list. – SJ + 05:21, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Influence for making other centers

Article says centers "started or inspired by" Berkman Center. However, there is not referencing about that influence. Also center at Yale University (Information Society Project) came in 1997 and center at Harvard University (Berkman Center) came in 1998.

I think there's an explicit network of centers with related goals; the main centers that clearly draw lineage from it are already noted in the intro. Other centers would need a source for how they see their own inspiration. The network was formed at a 2012 event at the Berkman Center, maybe more fitting to note that instead? – SJ + 18:05, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

Founding history

The first sentence of the history paragraph looks wrong.

From the cited timeline[1], the center was founded in '96 as the 'Center on Law and Technology', and renamed in '98, after a seminar in '94. The seminar included the center founders and Miller/Marglin/Smuts, of whom only Miller seems to have been involved after its founding, running a seminar series.

Proposed rewrite: from

The Berkman Klein Center was founded in 1998 by professors Jonathan Zittrain and Charles Nesson, along with recent Harvard Law School graduates David Marglin and Tom Smuts.

to

The center was founded in 1996 as the "Center on Law and Technology" by professors Jonathan Zittrain and Charles Nesson. This built on previous work including a 1994 seminar they held on legal issues involving the early Internet. Professor Arthur Miller and students David Marglin and Tom Smuts also worked on those early seminars and discussions. In 1997, the Berkman family underwrote the center, and Lawrence Lessig joined as the first Berkman professor. In 1998 the center changed its name to the "Berkman Center for Internet & Society", and in 2016 added "Klein" to its name following a gift from Michael R. Klein.

– SJ + 18:05, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

"TagTeam (software)" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect TagTeam (software). The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 December 6#TagTeam (software) until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Toddst1 (talk) 15:23, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Advert and Cleanup-PR tags

There are a lot of "big if true" things mentioned in this article, but for some reason, we do not seem very interested in determining whether they're true. I like Lawrence Lessig as much as anyone, but some of this stuff is just bizarre:

The Berkman Klein Center seeks to understand how the development of Internet-related technologies is inspired by the social context in which they are embedded and how the use of those technologies affects society in turn.

What does this actually mean? "Seeks to understand"? Are these actual subjects of research, or do they just kind of think about it really hard?

In general, a lot of the initiatives aren't covered very well. On one hand, I believe they had some involvement with the RSS 2.0 specification, which is a real thing that had an impact on the online world. On the other hand, I am unsure what the "Internet and Democracy Project" is:

an initiative that will examine how the Internet influences democratic norms and modes, including its impact on civil society, citizen media, government transparency, and the rule of law, with a focus on the Middle East. Through a grant of $1.5 million from the US Department of State's Middle East Partnership Initiative, the Berkman Center will undertake the study over the next two years in collaboration with its extended community and institutional partners. As with all its projects, the Berkman Center retains complete independence in its research and other efforts under this grant. The goal of this work is to support the rights of citizens to access, develop and share independent sources of information, to advocate responsibly, to strengthen online networks, and to debate ideas freely with both civil society and government. These subjects will be examined through a series of case studies in which new technologies and online resources have influenced democracy and civic engagement. The project will include original research and the identification and development of innovative web-based tools that support the goals of the project. The team, led by Project Director Bruce Etling, will draw on communities from around the world, with a focus on the Middle East.

First of all, it's unclear what it means to "examine" the Internet (I do that every time I turn on my computer, so where's my $1.5 million). Second of all, when we get past the weasel words, there is some stuff about "original research and the identification and development of innovative web-based tools". What's the deal on that? Can someone track down the original research and these innovative web-based tools? It seems like, if this project is notable, and if it's "now-completed", it should be easy to come up with some tangible results of it having been existed.

The same is true of this:

In 2017, the BKC received a $27M grant with the MIT Media Lab to "advance artificial intelligence research for the public good" and "to ensure automation and machine learning are researched, developed, and deployed in a way which vindicate social values of fairness, human autonomy, and justice."

Big if true, but 2017 was five years ago -- what's the deal? Did they advance the artificial intelligence research and vindicate the social values? Did they spend all the money and accomplish nothing? This seems like a relevant detail, if we're going to devote a whole subsection to that fact that they got the grant.

There are several other projects and initiatives mentioned here, which seem like they'd be very important and impactful if they actually happened, but for whatever reason our article does not seem to spend any time figuring out if they amounted to anything. If it's not possible to find out what became of them, then they probably aren't notable for us to mention in an article. jp×g 05:54, 4 August 2022 (UTC)