Berkman Buzz: March 9, 2012

This Monday, March 5th, the advocacy organization Invisible Children released a 30 minute video titled “Kony 2012“. The goal of the video is to raise awareness of Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group, a wanted war criminal, in the hopes of bringing him to justice.

By this Thursday, March 8th, the video had been viewed more than 26 million times, and almost 12 million more times on Vimeo. It has opened up a fascinating and complicated discussion not just about the Lord’s Resistance Army and instability in northern Uganda and bordering states, but on the nature of advocacy in a digital age.

"Can Geeks Defeat Lies?" - great writeup by @ChrisMooney_ on yesterday's #truthicon symposium http://t.co/JEqUcFAr
—Gilad Lotan (@gilgul)

Meet Biblio, your library friend. The design-fiction clip above was made by Ben Brady, student (and teaching assistant) the Library Test Kitchen, a course about building the library of the near future taught by metaLAB’s Jeffrey Schnapp and Jeff Goldenson of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab. Inspired by simple, charismatic digital pets like Tamagotchi, Ben imagines Biblio as a digital creature who serves as a digital guide and assistant, mediating the world of printed books and the realm of networked, open, personal information. Biblio lives in the library—it travels with you from book to book, keeping track of the titles you browse, noting the relationships those books have with others, and urging you to feed its blinking curiosity with further research.

When I hear Rush Limbaugh's voice, I want to vomit. I despise just about everything that pill-addled, hate-spewing, disgusting piece of human tripe has ever said. The thought of him being thrown off the air and silenced forever makes me swoon with joy. A man can dream, after all.

But, as a First Amendment lawyer, nay First Amendment fetishist, I realize that when I feel this way about a speaker, it is time for me to make sure that I am acutely protective of that speaker's right to peddle his wares in the marketplace of ideas. Whether it is the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party, Gail Dines, the Westboro Baptist Church, Ann Bartow, or anyone else whose stall in the marketplace of ideas smells as if a hungover bull who had eaten too many spoiled Jamaican beef patties took a crap in it, I take a deep breath and for a small and twisted moment, I savor the aroma. The speech that tests our commitment to free speech – that's the really good stuff. That's the stuff that we need to affix shields, sharpen swords, and stand next to our brothers and sisters in arms to protect.

The free culture movement has failed to communicate the reality of DRM and, as a result, millions of people are buying books that they won't be able to read when they switch to a different model of ebook reader in the future. They are buying books that will become inaccessible when the DRM system that supports them is shut down -- as we've already seen with music from companies including Wal*Mart, Yahoo, and Microsoft. They are buying books that require that readers use proprietary tools that lock them out from doing basic things that have always been the right of a book owner.

Help, please, with a research request regarding a "no lobbying pledge" by candidates? http://t.co/3EzxY3uY
—Larry Lessig (@lessig)

Matt Salganik and Karen Levy (both of the Princeton Sociology Department) recently released a working paper about what they call “Wiki Surveys” that raises several important points regarding the limitations of traditional survey research and the potential of participatory online information aggregation systems to transform the way we think about public opinion research more broadly.

This week in Austin, Texas geeks, musicians, film-makers, creative types and ordinary party-goers will be mingling over cutting-edge ideas and free drinks. South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival and conference, now in its 25th year, begins on Friday, March 9, 2012 and runs through March 18. The conference consists of three main events that focus on music, film and interactive technology. SXSW Music is one of the largest music festivals in the United States attended by nearly 20,000 people.

Panels addressing citizen media, independent media and the intersections between technology and social change will be featured at the Interactive Conference from March 9-13. Several Global Voices friends and contributors will be participating at the interactive panels at SXSW..