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knowledge beyond power


Information Technologies and government transparency—the role of (U.S.) law

the Project Statement
Background:
One of the most respected U.S. Supreme Court Justices, Louis Brandeis, wrote in 1914: “publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants”. It holds particularly true for publicity of government actions. Transparency makes government more accountable and therefore propels its modernization. For the last 20 years more than 50 nations (including the Polish one) have established the right to access public information. Apparently, therefore, government transparency gains importance.

i am reading darek adamski’s fulbright proposalm, hoping he will be able to join us at Berkman Center next year.

i want public access to the government action of prosecuting internet poker.

i care about this because poker is a powerful and entertaining way to learn skills of self-evident value in life.
i am a teacher wanting to express teaching power to address the problems of humanity and the planet. i love poker as form and thinking. i see poker’s reach on the net stiffled by an arbitrary act of government propounded in congressional form in a midnight act, compounded by the reach of prosecutorial discretion directed against the founders of internet gaming. i feel freedom curtailed, my freedom, internet freedom. i feel my citizenship impugned.

imagine

Suppose avatars come to me, eon, d of c, lawyer and teacher, in my Second Life office on Berkman Island – the founders of cyber poker, under threat of prosecution by agents of U.S. Govt.

i can quote for you the bunch of bullshit the prosecutor will give us about how the wire act and the midnight bill they snuck past without a single moment of committee deliberation gives them the right to prosecute poker. cyber poker. poker as a beautiful idea recreated in a game that’s not a game projecting out to a global citizenry through integrated media, multi media reintegrated by net.

prosecutor’ll try to tell you that they can indict you on what they’ve got, give you the choice of going to trial against rico counts in a federal court of the united states of america or you can plead guilty to one felony count under the wire act and we’ll let you go, no jail time. think RICO, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, think prison time, think twenty years.

let’s go down the road of rico prosecution in the court of public opinion, like a version of fred friendly seminars on the cybernet. playing poker in the game of negotiating guilty pleas. help from alan dershowitz waiting in the wings.

eon to the founders of internet poker channelling billion dollar charlie
you are at the point in the legal process of being threatened but not yet indicted, being told you have two choices, plead guilty and take the no-jail time deal we offer, or duke it out in court against RICO with long prison time based on how a federal court jury decides with a federal judge presiding and determining your sentence. they are playing poker with you.

could an american jury be brought to see the importance to democracy of honoring rather than prosecuting the founders of internet poker.
could an american jury be brought to see the value of poker to american society and the value of its expression in cyberspace.
could an american jury be brought to see poker as a quintessential american game beloved and played by presidents and business leaders, generals and soldiers, judges and lawyers, teachers and students.
could an american jury be brought to see internet poker as a training school and means of global outreach for this wonderful american game.

what will be the make-up of the jury asked to pass unanimous judgment condemning the founders of global internet poker as criminals. how will jury selection go. will the prosecution succeed in striking all jurors who love and play the game. in the rhetorical space of a real american courtroom before a real american jury will prosecution be arguments ranting children and terror be backed by convincing evidence.

whom will we call as our witnesses. who speaks for the money losers in the game; have they gained enough in the experience to feel their monetary loss offset. who speaks for the mothers who have seen their sons invest in learning the game. who speaks for children. what data will we show. what questions will we have opportunity to rebut.

let us play it out in Second Life, Law in the Court of Public Opinion, even as we play it out for real.

i’ve been working on another case, dred scott — who is citizen of the united states of america. is a black man citizen of the united states of america. can a black man be citizen of the united states of america. or is the core of WE the PEOPLE of the United States of America white supremacy. yes, i am talking to you.

charles ogletree and i think of creating of creating a new kind of teaching instrument for our cyber environment. credit gene koo and co for bringing our dred scott video statement of the issue together, credit to bernhard drax, a cyber friend, for recording and editing and original music, credit to audiocasefiles.com for voice and framing. we have a production team. we are evolving our format. we hope to carry on to ever more interesting and useful cyber production. this is new casebook, early edition. reed elsivier meet audiocasefiles.com.

this fall i am offering Trials in Second Life as an educational offering with entertainment value. Dred Scott v. White Supremacy will be trial#1, RICO v. Internet Poker will be trial #2. as related activity i will teach poker in the form of one card war, and lead an internet class in tournament poker, with tables set on full tilt to play tournaments of one-card war. howard lederer, professor, will lay out the basics the game, i&i the meta game, chips, ante , button, blind, fold, bet, raise, call, with help from sister annie, like my ivy, annie duke, and annie’s friends, and mine.
RIAA v. the PEOPLE, will be cybertrial #3

i would like our cyber trials in Second Life to speak to and appeal to every constituency out in every language, which, with internet tools and people we can do.

university

at this moment i am speaking with you as my complement, all who attended is2k7 thank you as audience and agent, medium and message, all to whom this message comes and goes. we are in rhetorical space mediated by an open net but up to us to keep it open with truth flowing. the net allows goodness in human beings to aggregate. together we create amazing things of inestimable value, we give open access to our art and common knowledge. have faith that in open access to the rhetoric of the past and to our collective intelligence in the present, truth and justice is trump and still the game we play, even as we play games of deception.

win or lose you pay your dues

we are all playing poker
are you scared

in tawfiq’s paper which i now cringe at having graded B+ in which he taught me that writing a blog is like praying, speaking to god, your audience your complement in rhetorical space

for clarity like that straight A

we feel divinity in the net, feel it in the unity of complement, the elegance of something whole made from the threads of rhetoric

epiei the moniker with which today we bought a low power fm transmitter perfect as they advertize for pirate radio bound for kingston where we are perfectly legit

88.9 fm radio bound for jamaica coming out of kingston
let’s see what you got
dred scott asking if he is a citizen
dred scott telling you he is

so sorry that i have not seen jeremy or y.s or juan carlos and all of is2k
a conference is a format
this was fred friendly framed by keynote to conversation
let us think of it as just that
a menu of attraction that could be replicated and improved upon and served by every university
charles ogletree tomorrow at Brown University on what we do with our understanding of our human genome
every school an issue with passion at its core played out in civil discouse as the framework for the form

university lies in the civility of the discourse coupled with a spirit of mischief probing for the deeper truth

suppose tawfiq that instead of coming from an environment of openness in which poker is played as a national game and democracy is our government’s core
you are of a fundamental society from the perspective of which open democracy each man each woman judging truth seems chaos

channeling charlie


the dot is not knowledge, the dot is us, we are knowledge
we are dots in small world networks of a large world network
we are the dot at the center of lessig’s matrix of what governs us

flat on my back with laptop propped before me
two excellent lines of staples lacing up my groin
in the aftermath of is2k7 wondering what happened in the afternoon
after i adjourned to the operating room
the archive of what was recorded not up yet

i wanted to write something to express my thought but wanted first to listen again to ethan’s lead off response to jp. i felt identity forming, not yet coalesced, but becoming self aware

university is a concept we express. we testify to it. we reify it with our thought and action.

nicolas negroponte
hero all around

we express it in our conference
stucture substance trajectory
we express it in our selves

now listening to my own mp3 recorded through the telephone
derek bok
mission of university
discover knowledge for its own sake
renew culture
advance civilization
achieve greater understanding of our heritage
explore the deepest problems of human existence

which reminds me, here are my notes from friday morning

TECHNOLOGY IS OUT TO FUCK YOU!

arghh!!

/anger

/shrug

just listening to derek and steve respond to terry’s questions at the outset value enough in the day. I heard in their words a charter for the future. so wonderful to here derek’s deep friendly voice speak as champion. so great to hear steve back him up with truth and science.

excellent start

what an amazing feeling to be lying on my back listening to the unfolding audio of our conference, imagined as a future event, virtual in the mind, real yet still i am imagining its reality

jp calls on terry. i’ve been there. i called on fred friendly once, him sitting in the audience yet present in my mind as dominating authority, had to wrestle to get it back

anne speaks. clear voice, moving forward, just the facts, 99.9% figure hits like a brick
way to go jp filling out .01 percent
it’s a seed

how are they registered, how are they identified, the citizen’s of the net
how will we be sure that they will stick to the use
how tight will be our information bubble in rhetorical space

just a hypothetical, humphrey bogart 20 seconds, will you do it, jeremy rises, can’t conceive of company denying, wrong of harvard counsel to ask, /clap

movie industry users of content, fighters for free speech

sid expounds harvard square principle, tells his course pak story, will he tell them that he just went ahead and copied
serious note, lack of clarity, hear fear, feel timidity

alex sounds a balance note, don’t destroy until you have new model

deighton doright’s after fame, as mercenary as anyone, hbs all the way, mammon plays his part.

okay time to turn to empathy, where is the heart of the struggling corporation, enough talking to ourselves. we need to hear from elsivier
jeremy, ys chi, the other lords of copyright came here to speak to us with us to listen. speak to us. deighton, be sure they get it out

imagine this as a kind of negotiating table, meta table
a lot of pain of university put on the table
there is pain on the other side
speak your pain
what do you want from us
what do you feel we have to offer
constitute negotiation at a meta table in second life even if just in imagination?
each affinity group controls its avatar
make an agenda, sit down and talk

will it violate chatham rules to put this on my blog? how might appropriate permission be given?

eon


when appropriate (in my judgment) to an open project and not sensitive (in my judgment) in terms of privacy, i may post email to my blog. all privacy requests respected.

wsj yay hay!

“>thank you neil
tall like cary grant
voice deep and resonant

poker:

The Online Etymology Dictionary
[snip]
poker (2) Look up poker at Dictionary.com
“card game,” 1834, Amer.Eng., perhaps from the first element of Ger. Pochspiel, name of a card game similar to poker, from pochen “to brag as a bluff,” lit. “to knock, rap” (see poke (v.)). Another version traces the word to Fr. poque, also said to have been a card game resembling poker. The earlier version of the game in Eng. was called brag. Slang poker face “deadpan” is from 1885.

bluff comes closer than bet to the essence of the game

poker



poker is quintescentially an american game, american invention, universal in its appeal, open as the frontier to anyone to learn the skill of bid and call and bluff and raise and fold. no better game to learn how to win and lose and how to feel about it. no finer way to come to terms with your personal relationship to risk and resource, finding balance in the flow of signals in the brain for defense, for aggression, for neutrality, women, men, old, young, every race, every religion, a moment to learn a lifetime to master, understanding that the ante and the blinds buy you the privilege of neutrality in the choice you have to fold, but every time you fold you pay a little. you need a little aggression to offset this leak in the assets you have to live with. you start to feel and see that this is how you play not just this game but the game of life.

here’s email from amwoods at hlcentral

“Andrew M. Woods”
to me

show details
7:25 pm (7 hours ago)

Professor-

I happened upon this the other day, and have been meaning to forward it to you:

http://media.www.hlrecord.org/media/storage/paper609/news/2006/03/16/News/FirstTimer.Wins.Charity.Poker.Tournament-1688977.shtml

While the article isn’t exactly a stirring defense of the importance of skill in poker – a first time player won the tournament, you may be interested to notice at the bottom of paragraph 2 the article describes the faculty participation in the public interest charity tournament. That faculty included one Professor Charles Nesson, “who hung in for several rounds before being knocked out by 1L Andrew Woods”. 🙂

(While I may have put you out, you do look better in the photo – they only got the side of me…)

-Andrew

——————————–

Andrew M. Woods
Director of Events
HL Central
(310) 254-5218
amwoods@law.harvard.edu

as we spoke last night poker university took shape
enquiry into the genius of the game top down
professor and professor with sister annie
andy bloch producer
full tilt on a table of ten
avatars driven by students of all ages in classrooms round the globe
global classrooms to engage our poker curriculum in which the culmination course is tournaments
open to developing nations as an expression of american democracy

eon here
the crazy guy of lessig’s dedication
let poker be the message that goes out through libraries and classrooms
it’s the spirit of america we are fighting for

assume you are playing poker with a fundamentalist
schelling’s madman at the door
are you bargaining with him or is he bargaining with you

this is a better game than the game with bombs and guns
people who make bombs and guns are the enemy
why prefer their game to ours

we make the bombs and guns and the markets into which to sell them
we are on a road to blowing ourselves apart if we can’t figure out how to find our norms

one thing you can say about a fundamentalist
their action is grounded in deep spirit
twisted we may think to evil ends yet spirit nonetheless

suppose a poker game between the avatar of our spirit and the avatar of his
what would be our conversation
what have i got that he wants that i can give him
what is he looking for
he says he’s looking for one thing but you know he is looking for another

suppose the chips in the game are the minds of people
the question in each individual mind which spirit speaks truth in its understanding of the world
quick
the stick
fight
youre right

so okay let’s get to it
teresa and librarians of the world
eIFL.net consortium of consortia of libraries
communia thematic network
where better to assemble to play a global online poker game than is community libraries and schools starting with solar power electricity, hardware to structure and control the flow of electric bits, connection to the net and thus to UNIVERSITY

the berkman center has a grant from the state department of the united states of america to teach democracy. american democracy is spirit in US to express.

as i type into this blog i am listening to the recording of our poker meeting before the formal meeting began, low murmers and talk of separate conversations with lovely jokes. annie tells the story of a man addicted to water, was drinking eight gallons a day, he died, and me telling the story of last year’s public service poker tournament pictured above in which andrew m woods knocked me out, how we couldn’t do it this year because of government regulation.

uploading it to z share
hope it works
i’ll bet there are some folks out there deep enough into the game to listen to poker pros talking poker to each other
yes it does! here it is: http://www.zshare.net/audio/poker1-mp3.html

last night another berkman book party, david weinberger, everything is miscellaneous, a gift to all librarians as we come to see internet as library. david, a poker question. i have written to game theorists asking them how they classify texas hold’em poker in the taxonomy of their rigorous systematic way of understanding our reality. in answer to the conceptual question of relationship of one think to another miscellaneous doesn’t tell us much. are you speaking to scientists as well as to librarians?

off to a2k today

salubrious recording with fern this morning after soliloquy about fear in my heart, then clippinger telling me of a study comparing ability to detect deceit among harvard undergraduates and the shiwiar, an isolated amazonian tribe of hunter-horticulturalists. the shiwiar were just as adept at identifying a con as the harvard grads.

yesterday at northeastern after merley evars spoke i bought a book by bob moses urging algebra as answer to race transcendence. in the night i woke fern with a vision of classrooms of kids deciding on the move its avatar would make in a game of online poker and felt bob moses idea up a dimension.

we are here to teach

through the net we can teach kids to transcend

i teach law students. many law students come to harvard law school risk averse. they have thrived in sheltered institutions. they are not yet ready for the world. learn to play poker i tell them, starting with one-card war.

i am proposing a collaboration among all of us who gathered and all who would have liked to be there at our poker meeting to create poker university with its classrooms linked on line.

think of a massive multiplayer game of games in which the software of the game is architecture for gatherings of people who learn the game together and play for fun and moderate money within an environment of understanding for addiction.

imagine an online poker table with each avatar a classroom in a different school, let’s try law schools out to start, maybe each in a different state, maybe each in a different country. may we do this? from whom do we seek a declaratory judgment?

we say poker is a more genuine expression of the AMERICA we want to be than slavery and white supremacy. together we can mobilize to make our future.

how to play a hand

at the noir bar after our poker meeting howard lederer told me about an interesting hand of poker he played with gabe kaplan. i asked him to send me the link.
http://www.nbcsports.com/poker/1083822/feature1.html

the hand occurs about 1/3rd of the way through, and here’s my blog of the experience of watching and listening to the leadup and the segment.

glitz for a full minute at the beginning
how the people who talk the game play the game
howard says he’s an analyst
mike sexton pushes it doing his thing
conversation going at the table
this is not a good idea because conversation at the poker table is desultory
blind 200 400
gabe in the big blind with 24000
lederer on the button 10s 7s with 15000
raises to 1200
kaplan qs js
call
flop 2d Ah 8s
gabe checks
howard bets 1300
gabe calls

turn 2h
kaplan bets 3000
howard calls

river Ad
gabe checks
howard bets 3000
gabe folds

in this hand there is a script expressed in the calls and raises
as judith donath observes this is communicative betting
howard, i’d love you to tell the story in words play by play
at each move pause and let clippinger and halperin have their say
this is pure poker

what did gabe think howard had
how did howard lead gabe to think that

here’s my morning audio walk transcribed:

april 27, 2007, i fell off my bike last night, skidded in the rain when i put on the brakes, not too bad considering, felt my helmet hit the pavement, felt the cushion of it, felt my shoulder hit, no cushion. i feel it now. it happened after charles ogletree’s conference salute to john doar

knowledge above authority -if knowledge is above authority and wants authority to respond to knowledge wisely how would one best proceed? is it a prisoner’s dilemma in which we are always required to tat? or can we give a little tit without getting carried away.

what are the ways in which issues press your buttons. what are the issues on which you could loosen up.

play with digital media that’s the name of our game -michael yap writes back delighted to collaborate in playing with digital media -back to singapore this summer comes state of play -i began this play with you when last i was there walking along that lovely esplanade out in front of the ritz hotel enjoying a weed in the land of lee quan yu and then offering that information to the crew i was teaching cyberlaw to, eight faces from the office of the attorney general at full attention, intelligence engaged -how could singaporeans learn to loosen up, how about coming to jamaica, how could jamaicans learn to tighten up just enough to get the place running right, visit singapore -suppose each were to create the other in virtual reality what would the other look like -could we meet in second life to learn to play poker together

on the thursday night of the is2k7 conference there is an open slot, a time for people who have had food for thought to sit down and play some poker -suppose we were to play in a newly structured way, suppose we were to record it, make it an asset, fill the airwaves -would we enjoy would we learn.

my shoulder stiff and aching last night i was up in the middle wathcing tv, watched poker after dark on nbc, saw little new in form over world poker tour but could see a more interesting way of using the talents there on display, wrote to howard this morning to see what he would say.

breakfast with yinlan

is it the mission of university to promote and foster the creation and lawful use of intellectual property? this is the creed of RIAA

and if there is some vision of our mission which includes some contextualized true form of the riaa creed how should university seek to accomplish it?

riaa-mpaa let’s get to it

talk with me
be my client
let me speak with yours
you be he or she

we see the old form is broken
to dependant on threat of law to keep its leaking hulk afloat
we feel the plight of those of you caught within it to transcend to an open environment
let us help you find you way

come play a game with us
in which we build a university together and together set the norms
poker university numbers and norms reality in the game you play the ultimate name of the game

breakfast with yinglan recording to yap playing poker in second life in singapore and jamaica each helping the other to loosen up sorry for the terrible sound we were in noisy henrietta’s table

Gay? Fine by me: A Grassroots Example


(that’s andy bloch in the background behind annie duke and howard. andy made it happen, and dan walsh and michael bolcerek)

gay fine by me on my t shirt to open yesterday’s poker meeting now thinking about it as i load the audio from my morning walk into my machine along the way to linking it here. let’s hear it for barney frank. let’s hear it for taking a sensible approach to poker at all levels of our society and throughout the world.
now the task is to fill the wiki. jay kadane please give us your story. make us smile.

april 25, 2007 hubbard park cambridge massachusetts united states of america planet earth –howard lederer perhaps the smartest man i’ve ever met -right up there with mort halperin maybe past at this point i’d say yes -game theory at the hightest level -conversations at the top – john clippingerhoward lederer talk about war annie duke talk about negotiation the power of position play why do you want your opposite number in a negotiation to make the offer first?

todd rakoff to teach contracts in second life in contract when you make an offer you are vulnerable to having your offer accepted then you will have a deal but what enforces it what are its terms poker at the highest level how we deal how we make deals how we learn what it takes to keep them sometimes deals we have to make with ourselves. now the wiki to fill it in to offer report to the conference on friday

first we spoke about the caution of not finding happiness in a database though there was contest over whether we could look for it perhaps even in the doing of that find it. then talk of addiction our struggle to find it the effort that seemed right to me to rethink it as an issue of public health collective health a problem that is of all of us when we act in our best interest. sometimes best interest means taking care of part of yourself that is rebelling see how gently you can put rebellion down see how lovingly you can do it like stretching out a pain the pleasure of the stretch a thank you that the pain was there.

thank you poker stars you were wonderful right up to the end where we foundered on secrecy just a bit. so here’s to barney frank barney we are with you -who are we let us figure out some way to let you know -how do you play rhetorical poker -now you see do it now you see don’t like the cards that flip in three card monte the queen that’s never there -like avery playing poker, fun to remember that here hello to avery

then on from addictions to life skills where annie duke took over and showed you how a woman runs the room -thanks to her older brother that was really nice –think of sister ivy andrew spoke he was great -lookin out over that laptop silouette in the room red headed energy chin up great smile talked about doin it for the money and giving it up because the money wasn’t good enough wanted to do other things -then lunch sitting next to neil trying to read him not succeeding interesting guy long and lanky voice booming deep journalist from the wall street journal before whom others will not speak wanting to hold back information because it’s part of the release on which barney has first claim. so go for it barney. i say it again.

-then the afternoon is poker a game of skill yes unquestionably is it a game in which skill predominates over chance -what is the chance one setting about to make a game could make a game as elegant as this?

poker is a work of art an exquisite game it is education to play it who needs to be convinced of this who does not see it why do you not see it what have you got against us we’ve got nothing against you except that you won’t let us play hey forgive us we are your children growing up -on some things we think we know better and you know letting your kids grow up is learning to let them decide -it’s a sensibility of loosening up -what is the skill of poker did we pin that down i don’t think so -what does it mean for skill to predominate well what do you mean it to mean do you mean it to mean that we can’t play this game howard lederer annie duke michael bolcerek keith whyte what is this game we play -what is the core of poker -the wiki’s there all you do is press [edit] i wish i’d showd them

going back over the aftermath at the noir bar cold sitting outdoors feeling shake inside sitting with howard fern andrew fern speaks of richard lederer as the greatest english teacher her face lit up when she connected howard and annie both sitting there with their dad and back around through st. pauls alright so it seems well enough done in one way and yet was feeling down in the cold of the noir not as warm as i wanted it to be it seems it has come later

so if one can’t find happiness in a database where can you find it we live in a digital world i guess we have to find it in a second life -the other one -the one besides this -the place where we aren’t when we are where we are right now -and be so much in that moment so well tuned in that you can see down the pathways of the other. that’s the story i heard howard tell across the table from i love that man gabe kaplan somewhere the clip is on the net nbcsports.com -the four o’clock session with the blue letters of the attorney generals opinion up on the screen coming around to run the arrow on the computer issac gave me his card andrew speaking out like clarity sign up for a clinical with the berkman center to work on a declaratory judgment action with andrew bradt of ropes and gray

we talked about universities with alcohol policies but not gambling policies and noted that those who had gambling policies were against it -we struggled with the taxonomy in which we are encased as meme -poker reclaim the name see it for the elegant game it is -who are the people you are playing against in poker -who are the people you are playing with -who will sign up for a berkman clinical project to help draft a model policy for a university with respect to poker

who will help the university generate its norm -who will convene the meeting send out the invitations -who will fill the wiki in when the conference event is done

a pain within me calls

to rise with many targets of attention yet to be drawn ineluctably to pain. do you soothe it do you stretch it do you work it out. first i pee then i shit then i take care of sammy. win or lose you pay your dues. do you give in to pain do you surrender.

attached see pics of the black law students association black and white ball sponsored by aiken gump for the benefit of children. i look at the image as i compose this picture for you to see . alex diane antonia fern and me.

whose dress is more beautiful? vote all. how can we?
aiken gump gets a double thump from me.
time for stretch and cup of tea
in the spirit of universality
life as we sometimes live it seems great to me
moment by moment one by one
all of them one present
stretch and behold

suppose there is one spirit above the rest
a spirit in us embracing
let mind go with recursion

last night in second life saw mandelbrot
after the verdict in josh wolf trial came in
beer around the table later
thanks ken and aaron, giselle and joel, mathew and becca
bits in the can with chris
waiting to come out

missed seeing tree throw out the first pitch
at the red sox yankees game
please send a link to the video

: