Harvard Law prof Jonathan Zittrain deals with big scary issues, like encroachment of first amendment rights online and the invasions of privacy from bad software. His recent book paints a possible dark future for the internet. So it was a wonderful surprise when on last week’s plane travel I watched his TED Talk on The Web as random acts of kindness Zittrain here gives a brilliant, upbeat talk, and actually explains how the internet works (no tubes) – as he does so by comparing the movement of packets to how a beer gets passed down the row to someone at the ball game. More than that, the picture he paints that the mechanisms and bits that make the whole machine hum along, the vehicle that propels Wikipedia, has to do with a small number of people volunteering to do collective acts of good deeds, kind of Amazing Story like things [...]
CogBlogged under ‘Blogroll’
