Jonathan Zittrain on the Future of the Internet
“Open code, open education, open talk, open.” — Charles Nesson on the core values of Berkman.
“I was skeptical of studying the Internet at a law school … it seemed like proposing to study the telephone at a law school.” — William Fisher, during the introduction of Zittrain.
“Jonathan is the Berkman Center.” — Dean Elana Kegan while introducing Zittrain.
Photo Credits: wseltzer
Time to get started … the first real talk is kicking off with Jonathan Zittrain, author of The Future of the Internet. I admit that I have his book resting on my desk in my office, but I have yet to read it. I am very interested in getting to it as it has been recommended by some very smart people, Lessig in particular talked at length about it during our lunch together at the 2008 TLT Symposium. Off to his talk … BTW, while some of this I really tried to capture, much of it is a collection of quotes I found interesting and want to return to for later reflection.
Getting Started at the Berkman@10
My colleague Chris Millet and I are sitting in very tight seats in Ames Courtroom on the campus of Harvard University getting set to listen the opening remarks for the Berkman@10, The Future of the Internet event. This is an event that I have been looking forward to for quite some time. I rarely get to attend events that I choose for my own development — I do a ton of travel, but the majority of it is related to University business. Being able to come and listen to people talk about the Future of the Internet is a real treat. I have been following the work of the Berkman Center and several of their fellows for quite some time now … names like Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain, Jimmy Wales, Doc Searls, David Weinberger, and so many others.
Throughout the day I will be doing my best to post thoughts related to the event as it unfolds. I will attempt to capture some salient thoughts that may provide some new opportunities for the work we do at Penn State and beyond. I’ll be on Twitter all day sharing some things as well and welcome any tweets @colecamplese with ideas, reactions, or questions.
Facebook is Smart
Just a quick post to say that I can honestly say I didn’t see this one coming … my wife is on FB and invited me to one of those “rate the movies you like and compare it with your friends” applications — I think it is Flixster to be exact. Well, so I rated all the movies in the list as honestly as I could and guess what? Flixster actually listed my wife and I as “Soul Mates.” If you don’t believe it, you can check the image below as proof.
The really funny thing is that as I checked every other single female I am friends with on FB that also took this test, my wife and I are the only ones listed as Soul Mates. I have a few “Close Friends” in the list, but no one is categorized as my Soul Mate. Wow, I am sure glad that is settled.
Connections
I have talked about Twitter many times here, but I am continually amazed at its overall staying power. This semester provided me with some new observations as it relates to Twitter … I thought I’d take a minute and share two of them.
The first thing I was amazed with in my Disruptive Technologies for Teaching and Learning class was how powerful the community felt because of the constant connectedness. Twitter was “assigned” as a technology we would investigate — at the outset, we got lots of the typical “Twitter is stupid” comments … that was expected. After a couple of weeks however we saw an interesting thing happening — people connected and used Twitter to build stronger bonds. Again, that was expected and I wrote about it here at the time. What wasn’t expected was how Twitter formed the most powerful back channel I have been a part of in a learning environment. I am not a Twitter junkie — some days I actually don’t even update — but I do check it quite a bit to see what is up. This semester one of the most essential components of the course was Twitter and our students’ use of it during class. I found myself refreshing constantly as we sat and discussed things to see what people were thinking about in the moment. Some of the best pointers to related resources emerged in the Twitter stream — people talking about things and others instantly sharing links to them created a much richer course experience. I didn’t find it distracting and I can only assume by watching the ones participating that it had the same effect on them. The ability to instantly share new insights to those connected was simply astonishing. I am not doing the experience justice with this post on any level.
The second observation has to do with Twitter’s inherent goal of dragging you into a stream of thought from your contacts. What I mean is that the design of Twitter is built around the assumption that I would actually care what someone else is up to. Sure, we use it to spout off and embellish strange details of our own lives, but the real power is that we also sit around and read what our Twitter stream is sharing with us. Again, the simple ability to follow others creates new connections. When I compare it the blog community I spend time in it is very different — not because of the length of the posts per say, but because of the intensity of the connections — my Twitter page is my personal gathering place for my community. Again, I am having trouble articulating this. Let me try to simplify … I can’t read all of my friends’ blogs, look at the their Flickr photos, or check their del.icio.us links the same way — aggregation into a reader just doesn’t provide the same joy that the Twitter stream seems to.
I tried out TweetWheel this morning to see my Twitter connections … I am amazed that when I look at the intense connections that have been created via my Twitter stream I am simultaneously struck with the fact that I cannot easily visualize my RSS feed subscribers the same way. It leaves me feeling like I am writing to no one (or perhaps only myself) here in the blog while when I type in Twitter I instantly know who is getting the post. Just take a look at the image below and tell me that it doesn’t make you feel really good about making and following new connections … I have seen that power first hand — organizationally, professionally, at conferences, and now in a classroom.
Remote Collaboration?
I spend a great deal of time in meetings. On an average week I bet I spend close to 30 hours either sitting in meetings or traveling to meetings. That doesn’t leave a ton of time to actually get stuff done, but I understand the need (and value) to meet … as a matter of fact I find myself setting a lot of this up. I think the thing that is bothering me the most at the moment is the amount of traveling around campus I need to do to get to it all. Sure, we have great shuttle services and walking is always an option, but when the walk or shuttle ride is at least 20 minutes it puts a major crimp in the before and after times of the actual meeting. Additionally, there are days when I start at different buildings and won’t see my office all day — this makes me end up moving my car all day to different parking places across campus.
There are days (and today is one of them) where I really wonder about my own use of technology to support new practice. All this travel is hitting me hard in the wallet — not sure if you’ve noticed gas prices are hovering in and around the $4.00 a gallon range. Even if you don’t care about the brutal effects this has on the local and global environment, you’d be crazy not to get a little frustrated with it all. I had a conversation with my wife last night about finding ways to lessen my impact on the environment (and my wallet) and I was thinking specifically about the fact that I am part of a group that licenses and supports a very powerful collaborative tool — Adobe Connect. I almost never attend meetings in Connect — even though I have a killer setup for it with a MacBook Pro, tons of bandwidth, and a USB headset. Not sure why … I wonder how much carbon and dollars I could save by requesting three meetings a week happen locally over Adobe Connect?
Then this morning, some of the ETS staff were at the weekly brainstorming breakfast down at Irving’s Bagels … I was watching as they were updating the ETS wiki and Twitter and thought about heading down there when I saw an interesting Tweet from Brad about using SubEthaEdit to take notes in prior to shifting them to the wiki. Think of it as pre-collaborative collaboration (if that makes sense).
Brad then invited me into the document and from there we decided to jump into iChat AV to add voice and video. All in all it provided some new evidence that we have to start rethinking what we classify as attendance at meetings and push ourselves to take advantage of the tools we are all trying so hard to “sell” to the others. Any thoughts?
