Berkman Buzz: September 26, 2014

The future of libraries won’t be created by libraries. That’s a good thing. That future is too big and too integral to the infrastructure of knowledge for any one group to invent it. Still, that doesn’t mean that libraries can wait passively for this new future. Rather, we must create the conditions by which libraries will be pulled out of themselves and into everything else.

The future used to be simple enough that simple coping strategies sufficed. For example, we might foresee that in the future we would make good use of a stool, so we built one in the present. In the Information Age, we built massive accounting systems and missile controls, but the strategy remained constant: project a need, create a tool, use that tool until it breaks or is no longer needed.
 

You’d think a death sentence for thousands of people would be pronounced with a little more weight and solemn ceremony. Some ritual or a moment marking the occasion, perhaps? A judge wearing robes, or a pen to be broken in regret? There was none of that. He was such ordinary man, not really short or tall, neither thin or stocky, wearing nondescript clothes, sipping a cup of tea.

“I built this one strong,” he said, “as I’m going to live here, too, on the top floor.”

I was a small child, and I would understand decades later the mass death sentence he had just passed, and how all “natural” disasters are simultaneously disasters of justice.
 

Also, check out the awesome vizthink illustration @willowbl00 @berkmancenter made as a teaser to my new paper @CACMmag queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2673311
—Axel Arnbak (@axelarnbak)
 

The day after my hip surgery, I took a total of 48 steps from the couch, to the bathroom, and back.

Compare that to my 5,423,095 total lifetime steps on Fitbit over the last 628 days. That averages out to about 8,600 steps a day, a little shy of the recommended 10,000.

That first week after surgery, Fitbit emailed me what was meant to be a motivating weekly report full of downward-pointing, red-pixel arrows. I wasn't discouraged, but relieved that my weekly total was so low. I had managed to successfully rest and recuperate.
 

The Web turns 25 years old this year. What has changed since Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN in Switzerland, released this gift to the world in 1989? The easier question to answer might be to ask what hasn’t changed. The widespread use of the Web in communities all around the world has touched virtually every aspect of human existence, mostly for good and sometimes for ill. The way that we operate our businesses, the functioning of our democracies, how we relate to other human beings – fundamental aspects of society and welfare are different than they were a quarter-century ago for those people who have access to the Web. To create an exhaustive list of these changes would be nearly impossible – a testament to the extraordinary power of this invention.
 

CS50, Harvard's introductory computer science course, is now the largest undergraduate course at Harvard. That is, it's the largest course in undergraduate enrollments, not even counting its enrollment from the professional schools, nor its Extension School and HarvardX cousins. That news was picked up by Fortune and by Business Insider. When I comment, I try to fight back against the lazy angle that Harvard students are just seeing CS as a way to make a quick buck--because for most students, I don't think that's the rationale at all. It's a very well-taught, fun, and empowering course. And as I said, "[Harvard students] have figured out that in pretty much every area of study, computational methods and computational thinking are going to be important to the future." As I told Business Insider, the "course enrolls students from other disciplines who realize that computational thinking and skills are valuable in their own discipline, whether that’s economics or biochemistry or music or even the Classics." (I went on to plug the release of the Loeb Classical Library in an online edition, but somehow Business Insider didn't print that part.)

Field Guides, Games & Adventure Cards for museums! Our friends @metalabharvard report from their Beautiful Data event metalab.harvard.edu/2014/09/sharing-beautiful-data-with-the-world/
—Berkman Center (@berkmancenter)

Six men accused of “committing debauchery” have been sentenced to two years in prison by an Egyptian court today. The men, who included a Moroccan national, were accused of using their apartment for homosexual activities, promoted through Facebook, reported AhramOnline.

The six were among eight men arrested last month after a video featuring what looked like a gay wedding went viral. While Egypt doesn't have a specific law to prosecute same-sex relationships, the government has been vicious in its crackdown on gays under vague laws such as committing “indecency” and “debauchery.”