 And I get a chance now to sing the praises of not only Jonathan Dittrin, but also the Berkman Center for having put together effectively the intellectual center for our fields, the water cooler around which all of us can gather. They're extraordinarily generous, constantly holding terrific roundtables and seminars and conferences, galvanizing real activity in a space that needs it desperately. There's a couple of really pressing issues and I think that Berkman's ability to think about legal issues and technical issues and social issues together is what makes it such an incredible resource for thinking through how digital technology is changing everyday life. Well I work on the intersection of the internet and social causes that Berkman has such a variety of programs that are so current and on the cutting edge of how the internet affects civil society, how it affects democracies around the world, and individuals as they connect to communities. There's a wonderful intersection between my work on cultural commons and the way that people at the Berkman Center think about the internet. Mostly the great thing about the Berkman Center is it lets me do my own work and to have my own work fold into the work that's done here. We don't have lots of data from the democratizing world or from Africa or from other places and I think one of the things that Berkman has brought to that for instance in the blogging project is case studies of countries where there's not much information out there and I think that's really valuable. Internet is all about exchanging information and sharing your knowledge with other people. The Berkman Center in a way becoming a hub for people sharing information, I think it's remarkable to have a center dedicated to learn more and teach more about the use of internet for social means and I think it's admirable that something like that is being done right here. The internet evolves as people start using the internet for health information in different ways. One can imagine that that's going to have a profound impact on the healthcare system and there's a lot of cross-linking and opportunities I think for both folks at Berkman as well as people like me who want to understand the internet and information systems better. Computers are being entrusted with so much power and it's all essentially closed code systems and I think that we've got to work on opening up the black box, that we don't entrust too much to computers. I think we've got to walk a really careful line to what we entrust to computers and what we can't lose sight of the human value in our judgment. One of those really pressing issues is the notion of the complexity of user-generated content not just textual but also technological so when people are actually trying to reverse engineer technological artifacts in order to innovate in order to make new things. So I'm really interested in that and I think Berkman has an important role to play in helping innovators think about the legal implications of how they innovate. Patent law becomes very vague and fuzzy and the boundaries of patents are very fuzzy and there's a lot of uncertainty. It creates an opening for opportunists of all sorts. You can look at large companies who may be getting out of a business who act in an opportunist way. You can look at universities who have gotten patents and are using them in an opportunist way. Everybody, I mean it's rational when the system isn't working, you know everybody's a cheat and everybody's an opportunist. I think that digital copying has changed to the roots, the way we share knowledge and culture, the way we share knowledge, culture and information in this world and I think it's, despite the efforts of the content industries, an unstoppable change. The ability to access and search information and find things that are relevant to you in this vast sort of sea of data points is really an amazing thing. People armed with information are going to really have a very transformative effect in the way that they relate to the health care system, the way they relate to their doctors and hospitals. Probably the thing that I found most surprising about the web is the speed with which it has become completely ubiquitous among certain segments of the population and how closely it's become integrated into my own knowledge-seeking behavior. The closure of the digital divide is going to be incredibly important for people who do social change work. Looking back to pre-internet and thinking, yeah, a lot has changed. Some of it is accelerating trends that were already taking place, but not necessarily in that old sort of institutionalized way. So I think it's reshaping politics and it's reshaping political organizations. Holds politicians accountable in a way they were not being held in the past. The earliest copyright act in this country, 1790, was not called a copyright act, it was called an act for the encouragement of learning. And that is what, in terms of education, copyright should serve. And fair use is the path by which it becomes easier and easier to use it. Nobody can tell me that the transactions of the National Association of Cotton Manufacturers from 1879 is really something that needs to be protected by copyright these days. Some of the other issues that I think are really important are the ways that folks use digital technology to do all kinds of works. The work of activists, the work of advocacy groups around the world. And so I think bringing those communities together again is one of the really valuable things that Berkman does. 80% of doctors today still write all their records on pen and paper. So forget about even connectivity, it's all on paper and it's not even done by computer. So I think I have serious worries that the healthcare system, which is this gigantic part of our economy, is way behind and is going to lag behind for a long time. The internet is not a series of tubes. The internet is like trucks, big truck, with really bad construction zones. And much television will die a worthy death. But now I have to say I do Google myself to make sure as my friend and dear of the wonderful Information Privacy Scholar down to love just to make sure that things bad is being said about me. Having looked at politicians using Facebook and Myspace, I find it slightly cringeworthy that middle-aged men have got teenage girls as their friends. There's an enormous potential for our participatory democracy online. We're just not limited to the town square or to relying just on the mainstream press. But I think the more we network with each other, I think it's going to have a profound effect upon people's involvement with their issues and then in turn bothering their elected officials. So I'm hopeful. I'm not a Pollyanna, but I'm hopeful. The person that really, really provoked my interest was Stephen Coleman, who was at the Hansard Society and then went to the Oxford Internet Institute and was a colleague of mine. One of the great strengths of Berkman is that it has become the epicenter of so many internet luminaries. They set the stage for other people like me to want to learn more about what they do and incorporate it into our work. I've sort of taken amazing lessons from, of course, Lessig's code, his law, Joel Reidenberg, who really I think started that conversation, Dan Solow's work on privacy, and then Jonathan for his vision on technology and just his insights on how the internet is taking us in different directions. I would say those are sort of my big, those are my stars of influence. And I would mention the good work, remarkable work of investigative reporters and editors. I read this organization of journalists here in the United States. I'm a fan of Larry Lessig's work and I actually went to the Supreme Court and heard him argue the Eldred versus Ashcroft case. He's inspired. I got into a conversation with, with Lessig about rhetoric and so that was a really transformative moment for me. I have a good friend, Paul Holman, who's a hacker and he gives great talks as well and he'll stand up on stage and he'll hack into someone's phone in the middle of a presentation in order to demonstrate how insecure our devices are. Somebody like David Bolier, who is involved in the movement to think about knowledge as a commons. Jonathan Zatrain is the best speaker I think anyone will ever see. And he's an entertainer. I really think he's got to be on TV. Forget the law. Like it's not as lucrative the law. But Jonathan has to be on television.