iLaw: Internet Technology, Law, and Policy, an intensive, four-day, presemester course run in September by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, drew an unusual mix of students and professionals. About three-quarters of the students were from HLS, but there were also engineering students, policy students from the Kennedy School, and a few from Stanford and MIT. The professionals included academics, lawyers, company and foundation representatives, technologists, activists and policymakers. Participants hailed from Kenya, Egypt, Italy, Japan, Switzerland and Brazil. All told, there were about 200 attendees.

via Interdisciplinary collaboration focuses on freedom, power, control, security, openness and democracy.

On its own terms, how worried should we be about civilian use of drones? Moderately. It’s too easy to imagine the use as simply sporadic and harmless, such as hobbyists flying drones around the way that they might tinker with model rockets or balcony telescopes. But for better or worse, it’s a space for disruptive innovation: prices to fly and record will be trivial, and what might be done with the results will expand with imagination and additional leaps in technology. People can become recognizable by their unique gaits; anyone walking could be located at a particular place and time. Car license plates can be read, as perhaps could cracked toll booth fast pass IDs.

via Civilian Drones Aren’t Just Toy Planes – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com.

Now that the Internet has pulled fame inside out, you don’t need to be blessed by the mass media to become famous. To paraphrase Andy Warhol, on the Internet, everyone will be famous to 15 people. In fact, everything important about fame has changed.

via How the web changed fame – CNN.com.

We benefited from forward-thinking communications approaches from leadership like Christine Heenan that supported experimentation, and research from leaders at places like the Berkman Center.

via Perry Hewitt, One of the Few Female Chief Digital Officers? One of the Few, Period. – Forbes.

“Last fall Google switched to encrypted search by default, and the situation in Iran might represent a focus on restricting encrypted traffic — information that’s more difficult for the government to eavesdrop upon,” said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School and co-founder of the Berkman Center.

via Access to Google Sites Returns in Iran, as Mysteriously as It Disappeared – NYTimes.com.

Lady Gaga is taking the next step in her ongoing efforts to put an end to youth bullying: On Feb. 29, the chart-topping singer, alongside her mother Cynthia Germanotta, is launching the Born This Way Foundation at The Berkman Center at Harvard.

via Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation: Oprah to show support | The Music Mix | EW.com.

In Too Big To Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now that the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room, the simultaneously fascinating and frustrating book by Berkman Center senior researcher David Weinberger, there is a wonderful moment where the mechanisms of “fact-building” are laid bare.

via Knowledge Has Always Been Networked: On Weinberger’s ‘Too Big to Know’ – C.W. Anderson – Technology – The Atlantic.

Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain votes for Instapaper, which lets you save copies of Web pages.

via Boston’s brightest pick their top apps – Business – The Boston Globe.