Berkman Buzz: November 17, 2014

I keep saying that telecom policy is blood and guts stuff - giant principles of equity, speech, and the importance of free markets run headlong into the extraordinary political powers wielded by Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and AT&T. All too often the drama is buried in an avalanche of acronyms and incremental influence. Then came yesterday's message from President Obama. Here was our best Obama, telling the FCC in plain language that it should consider acting like a regulator. The message actually brought a tear to my eye. It's the equivalent of the moving part of the war movie when the gruff but effective leader calls his troops to their better selves, reminding them why they're there in the first place.

As I watch these debates unfold, one thing keeps nagging at me... Many of the corporate actors who are gung ho about fighting for net neutrality also provide differential service. Much to my horror, I'm watching the free (as in speech) and open internet crumble in many different forms. Net neutrality is such an obvious pillar that I still can't believe that we're debating it. But what about the broader decline in interoperability? What about the international conversations about creating separate internets? The issue of net neutrality has much more depth than simply talking about whether or not telcos can be trusted to provide a fair service (although that should be obvious by now).

Civil society organizations (CSOs) that work to protect human rights and civil liberties around the world are being bombarded with persistent and disruptive targeted digital attacks-the same sort of attacks reportedly hitting industry and government. Unlike industry and government, however, civil society organizations have far fewer resources to deal with the problem.

Communities @ Risk: Targeted Digital Threats Against Civil Society, a report by the Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary research laboratory based at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs, sheds light on an often overlooked digital risk environment.

To be in Boston on Thursday, October 30th was to be in mourning for the Mayor who led the City on the Hill for two decades, Thomas Menino. As Boston's citizens paid tribute to the man nicknamed the "urban mechanic" for his attention to the minutiae of city life, many cited ways in which the late Mr. Menino had used technology to make large-scale changes aimed at improving government efficiency, even when he himself was often the least tech-savvy person in the room.

With @harvartmuseums in the midst of a grand reopening, I'm excited about our project there, looking at art & data http://metalab.harvard.edu/2014/11/object-museum-and-machine/
—Matthew Battles (@MatthewBattles)

Death is different now. In a time of networks and social media, it's not just having a song remind you of your deceased loved one anymore, it's Spotify suggesting you listen to their playlists. It's scrolling just a bit too far too soon and seeing their last shares on Twitter or Facebook. It's not just figuring out funerals and atom-based belongings granted through wills (or figuring things out there wasn't any pre-planning), it's a faceless mass of internet informing you that your friend has died. It's not just compiling half-finished scrawled songs and old love notes, it's debating cracking the password for a laptop full of memories. Because the internet and technology haven't just changed how we live - it's changed what happens in death. And we can simply be awash in tragedy in these new ways, or we can use those new connections to show our care and values, even through death.

"...data hogs like Netflix might need to bear some of the cost of handling heavy traffic." - ABCnews

That's like saying your water utility is a water hog because you take long showers and over-water your lawn.

Streaming a high-def movie does take a whole bunch of bits. But if you hadn't gone ahead and clicked on Taken 2 [SPOILER: she's taken again], Netflix would not have sent those bits over the Internet.

So Netflix isn't a data hog. You are.

Love it or hate it, the online buzz surrounding the Ice Bucket Challenge earlier this year brought more awareness to the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Participants filmed themselves dumping cold water on their heads and challenging another person to do the same or donate money toward research for a cure.

Now a similar concept aimed at awareness for indigenous languages is making its way around the internet. In the Indigenous Language Challenge, the one who accepts the challenge must record a video speaking an indigenous language and tap someone else to do the same. The outcome has been a wide range of people around the world who are producing videos, some for the first time, as a way to proudly share their language online and encouraging more to do the same.