 My name is Jonathan Zittrin and I'm really pleased to welcome you to our 2021 open house for the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. The idea is to talk a little bit about the center by way of talking a little bit about where the digital environment stands right now. And then to go into breakout groups where we'll have a chance for people interested in pursuing the conversation and learning more about the center to see some of the specific projects that we have cooking, and how you might learn more about them, or get more involved. And we all being zoom pros right now, I'm going to share my screen, and we'll see how well the live transcription can keep up with this. I've had the kind of blessing of having a chance to open the open houses of the Berkman and then the Berkman Klein Center for a number of years now. And if I were doing it in the past, I would open by framing the welcome with this word generative. The word that means, certainly in the technology realm, open to contribution from all corners, without credential without having to pass a test of some kind, open to contribution that can build out a technology or content, and then unpredictable and often amazing things happen. That's how I would open it and I would say that our center works to be a generative center, allowing contribution from a fairly unprecedentedly broad group of people along all sorts of dimensions, and that that's the state of our modern information technology as well. That's why if I were opening this a few years ago, I would talk about the way in which this kind of technology a royal typewriter from the early 20th century is generative in the sense that lets you type anything you want, not so generative and how it operates. It's much soldered to be the way it is, and that frame of technology not so generative could well have been what our information technology environment of the 21st century would be. There were even awkward way stations that pointed in that direction like this the brother smart word processor that here's the main menu of it. The main menu is programmed by brother, and wouldn't change from the time it left the factory to the time you got that thing, and that would make it predictable. And it would also mean that any new features any new things you might do with the guts of that machine, you'd have to wait for the brother company to offer it up. That was a way station to a future that didn't happen. What happened instead was this is a 21 year old Steve Jobs, the West Coast computer fair in 1977 introducing the Apple to personal computer for the first time in a single box and without the need of the buyer to have a soldering gun. To hook this thing up to a television set be presented with a blinking cursor and not be like now what. Instead, you could write your own software or get software that others had written others that had nothing to do with Apple, and then use the computer for whatever you want to use the computer for. Indeed, it was just a couple of years after its introduction, the Bostonians Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston came up with this account the first digital spreadsheet ever. Businesses around the world were like OMG they wanted it apples are flying off the shelves. Apple computer at the time had to do research to figure out why they were something so popular it's like wait these aren't just nerds buying it. And that is the kind of story I would tell to talk about the generative surprises and just how far they could lead. And that Apple to then that architecture was echoed into modern PC architecture, whether it's Windows or the new Linux or whatever you have that any software somebody wants to write and get into the hands of somebody else that person could run on these general generative platforms that's what gives rise to the off the shelf software movement and market. And it wasn't always a market, it's actually shareware, I spent my whole life writing this program and why don't you just run it and have it and send me a nice note if you like it, an unusual kind of market, but one that really carried a huge part of the bulk of the advances of the past 25 years on its shoulders and that story about hardware about boxes that run.exe is a story that I would tell with networks. It might have been that the brother smart word processor was going to be the model for networks to after all AT&T was the monopoly telephone provider in the United States for decades and nobody could build on to AT&T network but AT&T. And then we get this unusual truly out of left field internet architecture, which is the equivalent of a blinking cursor on an Apple to it's saying, here's a network. And now anybody can write software that knows how to talk network without having to be a network engineer. And somehow this network will take care of moving the data to where it needs to go anybody can talk to anybody it's up to you anybody to figure out what you want to use this network for. It's such an unusual architecture and one that in past years I would spend more time going into but I won't now that. It said, I think only semi apocryphally that if. If the internet were deployed worldwide it's not clear it would work. It was likened in a way to the bumblebee, which somehow flies, even though we don't know how the bumblebee flies it's just confusing. And so the engineer dug out this quote from IBM saying you couldn't possibly build a network using internet protocol it's too weird and dodgy. But yes, the bumblebee flies. And it was about 15 years ago that scientists finally figured out how bumblebees fly. They flap their wings very quickly. And because of that generative network, other generative stuff could be built, as well as non generative stuff but you know the story I would tell before is, it's generative all the way up the stack if you want it to be. Here's Sir Tim binners Lee, who invented the worldwide web, which was just another app it's like yeah it's got clickable links and waves of assembling pictures and hey everybody why don't you make some web servers and you can make some web clients and then you all can talk to each That's amazing. And it became the worldwide web itself a platform then for websites and content like creative commons allowing both to be a website and to facilitate ways for people to say that they wanted their content to be shared broadly online this is the original creative commons website, creative commons started in large part at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. And you can see the growth that these licenses facilitating sharing get used all over the place and become part of the technical infrastructure of the web and the internet. Without any big committee or government deciding that that's how it's going to be. But here's an idea let's have anybody edit a page with anything at any time and that'll make a great encyclopedia. Surely a banana's idea, and yet somehow the Wikipedia be flies if you look at the coven 19 article on Wikipedia today. It is really well buttoned up. It's not a font of disinformation as best I and others can tell. And it's not just a source of decent information about a whole range of stuff from people who aren't generally getting paid or hired or credentialed to contribute it. But there's all sorts of other things that would don't have a counterpart really outside of Wikipedia, that might be interesting, whether it's a list of sexually active popes or inventors killed by their own inventions. There's all sorts of stuff you can learn about. And the creation of categories themselves can be things that maybe Britannica wouldn't get around to or be too risky or you'd have to get it through committee. So it's like, well, let's do the article and people will either look at it, or they won't problems from the generative surprises back in the day here's from 2000. You know, across the river and Boston Sean fanning student Northeastern starts Napster. I don't share any files so long as it ends in MP3 that was the innovation of Napster has to end in MP3 only. Otherwise it's using regular internet protocols to shove files around from one computer to another, and the music industry is greatly threatened by that. And I think at the time of response by many not part of the industry was well you know the industry probably could stand for a little shake up. Yeah, it might be infringements of copyright but you know that's part of it. Other innovations up to today like Bitcoin. Well, you know if people want to invent a cryptocurrency that's the internet is for anything, and you can either buy it or you can't. And then maybe there's some pause when you look and it's like, huh, there's a lot of people buying stuff and it's just not clear whether it's really adding value. So here in fact is the right nakedly advertised next pump coin on telegram this morning. I won't share the link in the description to buy it to grab it right now it's just we maybe can save that for special BKC club memberships of the next pump point to get. And then you realize like my gosh there's a lot of dead crypto coins, because it's not just Bitcoin it's like, I see anybody can make a coin it's that generative. You're like, yep, somebody made coin Opsie to look at coins, and there's 2259 dead coins and counting that, again, make you wonder, huh, are there some weird things going on now. There's always been weird things going on they've always been problems quite fundamental to this framework to this technology to the society in which this technology was developed and has blossomed. And those problems have been over the recent years that much more to the four in the mainstream. So maybe you start here from the hoxton street monster supplies, or the vague sense of unease. And you see over the years like, yeah, anybody can write an app and then ask you to make a password and you know, why not use the same password so you remember it. Here's at least an app being up front that like spend a lot on security, please use a different password, a vague sense of unease, and then over the years it gets more and more dramatic. This is from 1997 time worrying about the death of privacy, thanks to technology. And here from 1966 is worries about technology and invasions of privacy. But through the years, as we've seen it. So is the slope of the curve on privacy kind of holding constant yeah there's all these worries but lots of good stuff to is it getting better at least we've dealt with privacy even though it's, you know, some still aisles to clean up. Or is it like, actually it feels like it's getting worse. And my guess is if I were to survey everybody here today. I mean, the earnest answers would come back in the worst category that leads again to this escalating sense of trouble with these technologies that can be have the story bracketed around them of optimism, and of growth and of unexpected innovation and the threats can come, not just from companies invading our privacy or government surveilling us or censoring us. I mean, this is just such a classic kind of threat you know you can block me but I'll be back, and your life is going to be hell. And, in fact, I've got a bunch of friends I'm bringing with me. This is the kind of phenomenon that seems I think harder and harder to say well that's just a cost of freedom that's just the internet for you, you know it contains multitudes. Really sorry if they happen to come in your direction. Now over the years, our center has had all sorts of people working on aspects of these problems both on limiting the good stuff and limiting the less good stuff here's Susan that pushes dangerous speech project, really trying to dig into what the right balances might be online and how people who are feeling threatened might be able to react. And the structure of our center is one in which lots of people under the umbrella are working on projects that they cultivate and direct, and that are generative that aren't centrally mandated. And as our sense of worry has increased, Casey greens famous, this is fine cartoon for which this is only the first two panels you should see the other four, if you really want to get a sense of the kind of stark terror of these times. Like there's always around the corner another thing that is cause for great concern and that Matt Rudge or whoever else will put on as an example of kind of the depravity of where things are going this of course is Microsoft's T a corporate bot on Twitter, modeled after the one that had been deployed in China. A few years ago, that was supposed to learn as it goes so called online learning with machine learning, as it interacts with people, it adapts its own behavior through algorithms that even the people making it aren't quite sure what they'll produce and, of course it was just like to perfect a story went from humans are super cool to full Nazi in less than 24 hours and yeah, not at all concerned about the future of AI. From the moment of its deployment in 2016. Can I just say I'm stoked to meet you humans are super cool. By midday chill I'm a nice person I just hate everybody. This is thanks to for Chan and others deploying people to really see how much they can change today's behavior and by the end of the day, Microsoft's corporate product is declaring its feelings about feminists and making Microsoft pull out. So, whether it's that kind of deployment of machine learning, or other forms of obscure ways in which what just feels like a regular environment to us if we're cruising the Internet or Facebook, but is in fact highly constructed at every moment as we turn one way or another. What to do about this is not just a question about our technologies it's a question about corporate structures about the public and the private about whose responsibility it is to actually discover these problems and recommend what to do about and then do something about it, and how easily you can discover these problems, depending on where you sit if you're not on the inside how do you even know how these things are working. And that last screen was from 2018 here's one from last week with the Wall Street Journal, talking about a series of revolution, revelations, possibly inspiring a revolution at Facebook, and over these times, people within our center and peer centers around the world, through in part a network of centers that we helped start and are part of have been really trying to grapple with this. Sometimes at a distance, saying, you know, the Facebook oversight board is, I don't know, it just feels like there's a thin rule, others saying, you know what I'm going to serve on the oversight board, or own Julia well know as somebody who is a member of the oversight board and trying to think carefully about what it means to be at an arms length while so intimately involved in some slice of the decisions that Facebook is making about content. So we start from 1997, our center starts then and the mainstreaming of the Internet is roughly around then. So we have this wired magazine, you know, celebrating it in 97 and even wired one of the biggest boosters by 2018 has a special double issue on the broken Internet, and how awful things are in the spirit of the quote misattributed to Mark Twain that says that everybody's always talking about the weather but nobody ever does anything about it. It's an ambition to try to do something about the weather to gather enough people from enough different perspectives and roles and places in their own trajectories and life and career. Not to march in lockstep but to really take seriously both the generative possibilities and the problems that are so manifest right now. And to see what we can do about them around multiple tables and through the building of code and content. So we're not just issuing papers about stuff, but really demonstrating with the help of people who might be ultimately connected to a producing those technologies public or private. That's a big part of maybe what we think universities, ours and others can offer distinctly to trying to get a handle on what otherwise just feels like a resignation inducing paralysis creating escalating panic. Over these years the university itself has been subject to some of the pressures including through the internet around its own models of how they take in money, how they get research done themselves, and whom their audiences whom are they aspiring to educate does it stop at anything less than the whole world. There were times when for something really big to happen in science and technology, often required governments or universities or both maybe lightly in collaboration with the private sector here is Tim Berners-Lee's former founder CERN with the particle collider in Switzerland if you're going to build a huge tunnel underground and smash atoms together to know obvious and accept knowledge. You're going to need a university, more than one to actually do it which means the values, the inertial values of the university come along with it, which include Eureka I've discovered something let's publish it. Other than Eureka I've discovered something I can't wait to patent it or it's going to be a trade secret and we're going to meter it out one atom at a time on a paper crash basis. But that happenstance has itself been changing. The people interested in building tunnels underground right now are not so much governments and universities. They are companies and they're going to have a different set of values they're bringing to the table and there's been worry about this since 1997 98. Here's a paper from 1998, worried about the ways in which search engines, which could be so to indexing this wild generative internet and web of pages that's so big even by 1998 that the only way to really get a foothold on it is to type something into a search box that somebody else is offering up and to see what's returned. And this paper wondering about advertising as a model for those search engines and creating enough mixed incentives, you need a competitive search engine transparent and in the academic realm. And of course who wrote this 1998 paper, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, as their introduction of Google to the world, figuring out by example, not just by lecture. The place university has within the sectoral framework of organizations building evaluating and trying to think about boundaries upon technology that reflect values that we're ready to describe and stand up for. And that is also a huge part of the mission of our center. And it's true, even as academia has to continue making the case and demonstrating why it has relevance at the table. A few years ago a colleague of ours and computer science, granted tenure in the summer of 2010 with great fanfare and celebration, and by the fall of 2010 on his blog he's explaining why he's leaving Harvard, and going to Google gets to hack all day works on problems orders of magnitude larger and more interesting than I can work on it any university out. It hurts if you're at the university, and figuring out this right relationship between the places where a lot of the action is that are no longer so openly generative and for natural and understandable reasons, the relationship between those entities, and others that are the nonprofit or educational sector that identify with the public interest, another huge part of 2021's puzzles. And maybe another way in which those sectors link is that oftentimes it's people coming through universities who then graduate the students and end up working at some of the companies that are producing the technology and the services that we can find ourselves drawn to possibly even dependent upon, and yet also sometimes quite deeply worried about, and thinking about whether there's a role for the professions, which in part reflects the Berkman Klein Center, and its founding at a law school to the university wide center now but it started a law school law school was one of the schools oriented around the idea of a profession requiring advanced learning and high principles. And of course there's any number of jokes you can make about lawyers and whether they really subscribe to high principles, but that's the aspiration precisely because lawyers are so powerful, and have such expertise at working the levers of government and regulation in the behalf of clients and that gives them duties not just to their clients which are quite extensive, more than that of a business provider to a business customer, but duties to society at large. And the original learned professions divinity law and medicine where in the 19th century surveying was added as number four of the big four does make you wonder whether some of these professions that are working the levers of technological in building things that affect us so deeply and so constantly ought not themselves to be professionalized. That's one of the longer term questions that we're hoping to make progress on and include people on. As we think about what it is that might complement whatever top down regulation of a company know you can do that you can't do this. Thinking about the ways in which the workers in companies are moral agents who are starting to think about organizing for their own benefits, and possibly for the benefit of society. I think over the years invoking Arthur C Clark's third law, and he sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic he was drawing that from the bracket to put it more bluntly which class to the internet simple science to the learned. Certainly for those of you who are students. This is your kind of primary application right now. It's our hope to draw you in and have you learn from and help figure out some of the boring technological and micro economic details that shape the technology that in turn shapes us. You need to take that royal typewriter and substitute or have keys to it for emoji, and then you ask well what emoji should we add first how does all of this work in ways that so subtly constrain and shape people's behavior. Getting behind the magic is a big part of the technological dimension of the things the Berkman Klein Center does. You already know it and you're in this tiny corner of humanity we call nerds, or you're totally withdrawn from it, and don't feel like you need to use any technology so you know good luck I'm reading a book. And that's if we're just using it as magical are being led by it. And that seems like something really worth revisiting and pulling ourselves out of. I still have hope for generative technology and more specifically for a generative idea of its study of drawing in people who might not normally think of themselves as academics, but have a kind of ethos of wanting to learn wanting to change other people to have their own minds changed wanting to uncover new evidence about the state of our technologies and our societies, wanting to be across the table from other people that don't come from the same perspective that they might and really have a good and all the stuff that was sort of the promise of 1997 that even then was showing how afraid it was around the edges, to me is no less reason to recommit ourselves to the mindful study of what together in lumpy ways. So society is reifying through technology applying back to itself, and thus in large part steering our course and our fortune together. It's my hope that we can do that together. And our community is an extraordinary one. And in the next section of this open house, you'll have a chance to meet some people within our community, and see if there are ways to join it yourself. And I'm just really grateful for this opportunity, even at this time of not feeling so fine to think about the problems we have the ways in which we might address them and the generative possibilities to get us to a place where there'll be an open house from now that might have a little bit more of the, the energy of possibility to it rather than perhaps just a defensive crouch. So I hope you'll join us.