Open Transcripts

Warm Understanding

presented by Dan Klyn

We don’t have an unlimited number of innovations to keep pushing the hockey stick shape of growth forward. Each time we innovate and we push the end further ahead in time, it shortens the amount of time in total that we have to address complexity and problems. So this is…this is not good. I’m just gonna say it, this is not good.

George Steiner on How To Reform The Humanities

presented by George Steiner

What then shall we do? Some reforms are not difficult to envisage. We must purge our vocabulary, we must clean up our language to say what we mean.

George Steiner: The Humanities Don’t Humanize

presented by George Steiner

When we invoke the ideals and practices of the humanities, there is no assurance…that they humanize.

George Steiner on Science and the Humanities

presented by George Steiner

The explosion of science and technology has transformed not only our universities but after Descartes and Leibniz the very status of knowledge and of truth.

How to Fix the Internet #1: The Secret Court Approving Secret Surveillance

presented by Cindy Cohn, Danny O’Brien, Julian Sanchez

Our topic today is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is also called the FISC or the FISA Court. The judges who sit on this court are hand-picked by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court; that’s currently Justice Roberts. The FISA Court meets in secret, and has a limited public docket. And until recently it had almost no public records of its decisions.

Governing Algorithms Welcome Note

presented by Helen Nissenbaum

This is the second day of our conference on governing algorithms and we’ve already been treated to two outstanding presentations by Bob Tarjan and Claudia Perlich, with insights into what…well, a little bit into what algorithms do. And today we continue to explore the social, philosophical, ethical, legal significance of algorithms.

Governing Algorithms, An Introduction

presented by Malte Ziewitz

So how did this start? Actually all of us—Solon, Sophie, and many other fellows and research, not just at PRG, the Information Law Institute, but also at MCC—we’ve been studying computation, automation, and control in different forms for quite a long time. But it was only at the end of last summer really that we realized that there’s this new notion of the algorithm gaining currency.

Geek of the Week: Scott O. Bradner

presented by Carl Malamud, Scott Bradner

Carl Malamud: Internet Talk Radio, flame of the Internet. Malamud: This is Geek of the week. We’re talking to Scott Bradner. He’s a consultant on the staff of Harvard University, he’s Area Director in the Internet Engineering Task Force for Operational Requirements, and has also been named in the special interim area looking at the question …read the full transcript.

Geek of the Week: Keith Moore

presented by Carl Malamud, Keith Moore

Carl Malamud: Internet Talk Radio, flame of the Internet. Malamud: This is Geek of the Week. We’re talking to Keith Moore from the University of Tennessee. Welcome to Geek of the Week. Moore: Thank you, Carl. Malamud: You’re one of the principal contributors to the to MIME, the multimedia Internet um, extensions for mail on the Internet. …read the full transcript.

Geek of the Week: Bob Kummerfeld

presented by Bob Kummerfeld, Carl Malamud

Carl Malamud: Internet Talk Radio, flame of the Internet. This is Geek of the Week. We’re talking to Bob Bob Kummerfeld, former chairman of the computer science department at the University of Sydney, and one of the codeveloper of a suite of messaging protocols known alternatively as ACSnet, SUN3, SUN4, MHSnet. This sounds like the protocol …read the full transcript.