Home » Posts tagged 'lunchtime' (Page 12)
Tag Archives: lunchtime
Lunchtime Listen: Open Access to Government Documents
This is a presentation by Stephen Schultze, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard on the topic "Open Access to Government Documents." He focuses on CRS reports, Oregon State Codes, and PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records). The presentation is available as streaming video, downloadable video, and as a downloadable audio-only MP3 file.
- Open Access to Government Documents, Berkman Center. October 13, 2008.
In the past twenty years, a remarkable number of government documents have been put online. In some cases, these documents are made easily and freely accessible. In others, technology has failed to overcome barriers or even created new barriers to access. One particular subset of documents -- opinions, dockets, and the full public record in federal court cases -- remain behind a pay wall. Although the U.S. Government cannot hold copyright in documents it creates, it has for a long time long charged for the cost of creating and maintaining these documents. While the courts understandably seek to pay for the services they provide, this talk will argue that there is an alternative path in which the public benefits far outweigh the costs. Stephen Schultze makes a dynamic case for free access to government documents, in honor of Open Access Day 2008. Produced 13 Oct 2008Continue reading
Lunchtime Listen: All Your Tommorows Today: history of RAND
This is one of the reasons why I love the Web. Last year, BBC's Radio 3 Sunday feature broadcast a radio story by UK journalist and fringe explorer Ken Hollings about the RAND corporation (can also be accessed here). RAND (standing for Research ANd Development), the first think tank, was once dubbed the ‘malevolent university’ and influencer of presidents. I wouldn't have even heard this fascinating history if not for the Web as it was recently posted to BoingBoing. Wikipedia's article on [w:RAND] has an amazing list of notable RAND participants including more than 30 Nobel Prize winners. RAND has been highly influential on US foreign and public policy since WWII. I highly recommend listening to this one! [Thanks BoingBoing!] Continue reading
Lunchtime Listen: Government Data and The Invisible Hand
In this interview, Jon Udell talks with Director and Associate Director of the Center for Information Technology Policy about the future of government information distribution and the paper Government Data and the Invisible Hand (Robinson, David, Harlan Yu, William P. Zeller, and Edward W. Felten. SSRN, May 28, 2008). The paper proposes that the government should reduce its role in presenting important government information to citizens and should provide reusable data, rather than providing websites, as the core of its online publishing responsibility.
- Ed Felten & David Robinson of the Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University, Jon Udell's Interviews with Innovators, 46 minutes, 21.1mb, recorded 2008-09-02
Lunchtime Listen: Lessig on Change-Congress
Here is a super way to spend your next free lunch hour: watch and listen to Lawrence Lessig give one of his fantastic presentations:
- Changing Congress: Lessons Learned by a Copyright Activist, Lawrence Lessig. 4/2/2008, UCSB. [streaming video, about 1 hour].
He talks about history, politics, technology, copyright, and much more.
When Lessig found that he could not get reasonable changes to copyright law (even the late, eminent economist Milton Friedman said that the importance of stopping excessive copyright extensions was a "no brainer"), he realized there were bigger problems to confront. If Congress can't make the right decision when the problems are easy, how will it make the right decisions when the problems are difficult?
Lessig's new organization is Change-Congress. It is attempting to build tools that will help citizens ("in our pajamas," as Lessig says) create basic reforms in how our government functions. The Change-Congress home page features an interactive map created with data from the Federal Elections Commission and GovTrack.us and Google maps. The goal of the organization is to create tools that both candidates and citizens can use to pledge their support for basic changes to reduce the distorting influence of money in Washington.
Lessig is a professor at Stanford Law School, the founder of Creative Commons and the author of three very important books: Code, The Future of Ideas, and Free culture : how big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity.
There are more videos from Change-Congress at: change-congress.blip.tv
If this is the first time you've seen one of Lessig's presentations, you are in for a treat. A colleague of mine called it "mesmerizing." There is a bit more about Lessig's presentation style in an analysis of it by Chris Tunnell on Lessig's blog: A physicist on the "Lessig style", by Chris Tunnell, April 28, 2008.
Continue readingLunchtime listen: Kahle interviewed re Microsoft scanning and FBI national security letters
Here's a special weekend edition of lunchtime listens! A couple of weeks ago, Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive made news by challenging the FBI's illegal national security letter against the archive. The archive was also in the news because of Microsoft's decision to discontinue their live book search and the funding of the archive's Open Content Alliance book scanning project. Now you can hear exactly what happened direct from Brewster himself. Listen to his interview a few days ago on This Week in Tech (TWIT). Happy listening! Continue reading
Latest Comments