This semester, we’re starting an exciting new class, aimed not at lawyers, but undergraduate CS students here at Harvard. It’s called CS42: Controlling Cyberspace – and we’re sharing the syllabus online.  Anything big we’re missing?

Computers Gone Wild: Impact and Implications of Developments in Artificial Intelligence on Society was an informal discussion that took place at Harvard Law School on December 8th, 2011. Hosted by Jonathan Zittrain, Marin Soljačić and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, we brought together eighteen mostly local guests to discuss the ways that AI is changing [...]

Here at Future of the Internet, we’ve already talked a little bit about Apple’s content requirements for both the iOS and Mac App Stores in JZ’s The PC is Dead post. As JZ said, “Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Mark Fiore found his iPhone app rejected because it contained “content that ridicules public figures.” Fiore was well-known enough [...]

Last week several members of Congress — Senators Wyden, Cantwell, Moran, and Paul, and Reps. Issa, Lofgren and Chaffetz — floated a proposal to substitute for the contentious proposed Stop Online Piracy Act, previously discussed here.  Sen. Wyden’s office has commented on the compromise, and TechDirt has a writeup and a copy of the document [...]

A Close Look at SOPA Jonathan Zittrain, Kendra Albert and Alicia Solow-Niederman This document is a guide to the Stop Online Piracy Act as proposed in the United States House of Representatives. Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), H.R. 3261, 112th Cong. (2011). It represents our notes as we sought to understand exactly what it does and [...]

From Technology Review: The Personal Computer Is Dead Power is fast shifting from end users and software developers to operating system vendors. By Jonathan Zittrain The PC is dead. Rising numbers of mobile, lightweight, cloud-centric devices don’t merely represent a change in form factor. Rather, we’re seeing an unprecedented shift of power from end users [...]

During the 1990s, PCs ran whatever software was installed on them. Users bought software (not yet called apps) from physical stores or got a copy from their friends. They stuck the CD in the drive, and went through the installation process, or dragged the application to their application folder.  The code was “signed” by the [...]

John Battelle asked me a few Qs about my thinking on the themes in The Future of the Internet in the three years since the book came out (four since it was drafted!).  John’s review is available on his blog, and I’ve reproduce the core of it here: JBAT: – You wrote the Future of [...]

IR-transmitted metadata. Last week, Apple filed for a patent on an iOS camera that can detect infrared in addition to visible light. If a user aims the camera at an object that is sending out additional information about that object in the IR band, the camera transmits that information to the device, and potentially also [...]

Smartphone tracking data. Two researchers reported last month that Apple has been storing time-stamped location information on users’ iOS devices since June. An unencrypted file with these data is saved onto a user’s computer each time she syncs her device with it, as well. Apple appears to have good reasons for collecting the location information, [...]