Just watched the Feb2010 update to Jonathan Zittrain’s “Minds for Sale” Harvard law school presentation. (Thanks to David Gurteen for Tweeting the link to LinkedIn).
Excellent presentation – for me – on the downsides of inter-mediated trust and motives in internet organizational models – whether business, general governance or simply epistemic. The lack of any gap between “too soon to know” and “too late to do anything about it”. I’m not specifically interested in the pyramid of internet service outsourcing business here, though I do have an area of interest there too, but the general subject fitting my agenda. Particularly telling is his reversal on whether in fact web intermediaries should be responsible, and unable to disclaim content (and motives of content providers).
(See my comment of the morality of technological detachment on the Assange / Wikileaks story – also relevant.)
[PS – Also note in the lecture the discussion of human spam, something I’ve noticed in blog comment spam too. Akismet Spam Filter usually catches it, but I often read them, just to be amazed at (a) their ingenuity, and (b) their misguided morality in thinking it is of any value.]
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