Berkman Buzz: September 27, 2013

This summer, with NSA scandal after NSA scandal, the public has (thankfully) started to wake up to issues of privacy, surveillance, and monitoring. We are living in a data world and there are serious questions to ask and contend with. But part of what makes this data world messy is that it’s not so easy as to say that all monitoring is always bad. Over the last week, I’ve been asked by a bunch of folks to comment on the report that a California school district hired an online monitoring firm to watch its students. This is a great example of a situation that is complicated.

GV's Netizen Report now also on Slate! http://t.co/PEHJ8hxlnv @globalvoices
—Ivan Sigal (@ivonotes)

Because I have a long commute, I listen to a lot of audio: public radio, podcasts and audiobooks. Because I work in academe, I have a massive pile of books and papers I need to read: books by friends, books for research projects, classics in the field that I should have read at this point in my life. Unfortunately, there is near zero overlap between the listening I do and the reading I need to do.

sometimes it starts like a poem, a phrase in my head or a wordplay that feels like a tip-of-the-iceberg clue to a deeper train of thought. the other night i was emailing somebody and i wrote a combination of words that sounded perfect in my mouth and bounced around real nice. sometimes that happens and my brain just thinks “nice words!” but sometimes a melody hops on and attaches to the words, like a parasite. that’s usually when i feel irritated about having to be disciplined and grab the voice recorder on my iphone or email the starting lyrics to myself so I don’t forget them. if i’m being good, i’ll go straight to an instrument (piano or ukulele, whatever’s on hand) and see what happens with the the little word/music creature hopping around in my head. and if i’m being REALLY REALLY good i’ll hack away at it using nonsense filler lyrics until there’s a shape, a loose draft of a song with sections, but more important, a feeling. if i get a song 60% done or so in one sitting i know it’s got a decent chance of surviving. even then, I’d say 9 out of 10 songs that I start don’t get finished. unused to really stress about that and finally let myself off the hook.

Hearing about Chinese laws that arrest people if a rumour post is seen by 5000 people http://bit.ly/1bLJThe
—J. Nathan Matias (@natematias)

Project Information Literacy (PIL) will begin a large-scale two-year quantitative study next month investigating how recent college graduates find, evaluate, and use information for lifelong learning once they leave campus. The study will focus on learning for staying competitive in the workforce, engaging in civic affairs, and personal development.

From the data collected and analyzed, researchers will study graduates’ information needs and the information systems they employ as lifelong learners. In a related analysis, they will study the role libraries currently play in lifelong learning as well as opportunities to enhance lifelong learning that are feasible, practical, and affordable.

Project Information Literacy (PIL), the ongoing national research study led my Berkman Faculty Associate Alison Head, was awarded a $471,054 National Leadership Grant (NLG) from the federal agency, the Institute for Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) earlier this week. The study will be conducted in partnership with the University of Washington's iSchool, where Head is an Affiliate Associate Professor.

At @berkmancenter, Primavera De Filippi just blew our collective minds with her sculptural works addressing © issues: http://www.okhaos.com/
—Andy Sellars (@andy_sellars)

Sudan's answer against fuel subsidy protests, raging for the fourth day in a row, was cutting off the Internet and killing dozens of protestors. Activists say Sudan pulled the Internet plug to stop activists from sharing its crackdown on protestors on the one hand, and screening the rest of the world from seeing the carnage unfolding on the ground.