Thursday, April 10, 2008
5-7 p.m.
Bartos Theater

Abstract

Much discussion of our impending digital future is insular and without nuance.  Skeptics talk mainly among themselves, while utopians and optimists also keep company mainly within their own tribal cultures.  Today’s forum challenges this unhelpful division, staging a conversation between two of our country’s most thoughtful and influential writers on the promise and the perils of the Internet Age.

Speakers

Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He is the author of The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (2006).

Cass Sunstein is the Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence, Law School and Department of Political Science, University of Chicago.  He is the author of many articles and books including, most recently, Republic.com 2.0 (2007) and Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge (2006). After graduating from Harvard Law School, he clerked for Justice Benjamin Kaplan of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. Sunstein will join the faculty of Harvard Law School in the fall.

Moderator: Henry Jenkins is co-director of Comparative Media Studies and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities at MIT. His most recent book is Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. He is a principal investigator for the MIT Center for Future Civic Media.

Co-sponsor: MIT Center for Future Civic Media

Blogs

diapsalmata by Whitney Trettien

Keith Hopper's blog by Keith Hopper

Open Parenthesis by John Eckman

Summary

To be posted following the event.

Audiocast

An audio recording of Our World Digitized: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly is now available.

In order to listen to the archived audiocast, you can install RealOne Player. A free download is available at http://www.real.com/realone/index.html .

Podcast

A downloadable podcast of Our World Digitized: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly is now available.

Video

Video of Our World Digitized: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly is now available.