The Berkman Center for Internet & Society received some major media recognition this week with the publication of a June 10 article in USA Today headlined “Berkman pioneers steer the course of cyberspace.”
“The conclusions reached at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society have a far-reaching impact on public policy in the USA and abroad,” says the article. “Even more impressive — the Berkman Center has been a major force for 10 years, an eon in Web time.”
Throughout the last 10 years, the Berkman Center has led the effort to keep the Internet open, accessible, and safe. The USA Today article noted the Center’s formation of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force with MySpace and 49 state attorneys general to identify technologies to protect kids from online predators, and its StopBadware initiative to tackle computer viruses, malware, and spyware, among other projects.
The article also focused on Professors John Palfrey ’01 and Jonathan Zittrain ’95, who were both recently appointed to tenured positions at HLS. Palfrey’s new book – “Born Digital” – explores how children born and raised into the “digital world” use technology. In his recently published book, “The Future of the Internet—And how to Stop It,” Zittrain cautions that recent technological innovations are actually stifling.
The two professors – along with co-founder and Professor Charles Nesson ’63 and faculty co-directors Yochai Benkler ’94 and William Fisher ’82 – are prime examples of the “dream team” the Center has assembled, said USA Today in the article, which was written by technology writer Jon Swartz. “The 65-person organization — buttressed by more than 100 students and researchers — has assembled an impressive lineup of contributing inventors, legal scholars and entrepreneurs who recognized the technical and legal inadequacies of the nascent Internet ecosystem.”