Musings on law, tech, chess & other topics by a geek

I am currently half way through my first quarter teaching at the University of Washington’s Information School.  This has been a great experience thus far.  We have covered topics as diverse as John Rawls’ Theory of Justice, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Bilski, software patents, the Access to Justice Technology Principles and disability rights in text to speech. The class I am teaching is IMT550:  Policy, Law, and Ethics in Information Management , and the iSchool has given me a lot of license in constructing the syllabus for this class. I kept the same basic topics that I have been in other iterations of this class while adding three major additions patents, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Access to Justice Technology Principles. I see a grounding in ethics as an important prerequisite to engaging in information policy issues.

In running this class I am working to create a envorment where students can explore ethical issues both in the classroom and in the larger technology community.  To connect with the larger technology community I assigned several blogs to follow and am requiring each student to write 2 blog posts.  These blog post may be made directly to the class website or made privately on the class list server.  The best part of the class thus far has been the student’s blog posts which cover some amazing topics including:
Who is more evil, Google or the Chinese government?
User-centered Privacy Principles
Facebook and Privacy Changes
ISPs – Copyright Cops?
Can social media replace the news?
Global Photograph Album – who wants to be in the picture? (google street view)
Whole Body Imaging Technology and Body Scanners (w/ images)
Supreme Court Ruling on Corporate Spending Limits
Changing the way we see things (3d tv)
Should Business Methods be Patentable?

This is just a sampling of the topics that have been covered.  With topics like The Cape Town Open Education Declaration, the Google Book Settlement and  Wikileaks.org still to come I am curious to see where the online and offline discussions go.

Outside of the blogging assignments each student is also required to give a 5 minute ignite like talk on a topic of their choosing and  do a group project evaluating the information management policies of a cooperation.

Two quick notes on the class website:

1. Ideally I would have run the blog through UW’s iSchool site.  I worked with a graduate assistant for 2 two weeks trying to get something set up, but the ischool’s servers do not currently support blogging.  The GA eventually just sent me a wordpress.com account for the class to use.  At that point I decided to just host the site on my dreamhost account which makes updating and maintenance a lot easier.  I thought it was best to put the class site in an online location that would be easy to leave up for archival purposes.

2. I wish I had found this before the class stated WordPress as a Learning Management System - it is a great article on doing just what I am doing now with wordpress.

Great talk, information overload is often related to an inability to filter what comes in.  For the longest time had a love/hated relationship BoingBoing, this changed when I learned to filter for Cory and Xeni, and wait for my friends to share other worthy posts.  With other blogs I often look for someone like Kevin Donovan or Sarah Davies who do a great job reading through several blogs and sharing the better stuff via tools like Google Readers shared /w a note function.  The fact that people like Kevin and Sarah are willing to share with thier friends saves us all time.  One of the keys to managing your information is finding tools that allow you to leverage your network to filter the ever growing stream of new information.

Filtering & privacy points:
“facebook has the best expressed and best executed privacy management tools on any network”

“the problem is managing your privacy preferences is an unnatural act”

“Privacy was inefficiency in the system”

I strongly agree the current systems is extremely good at sharing information, what I call sharing others may (especially lawyers but not usually techie geeks) call a violation of privacy. This does not look good for privacy, the cost of filtering out information is so much higher then the cost of production and distribution that something has to give.  Although when privacy and free speech come into conflict, I am almost always on the side of free speech.

For people wanting to learn more about TEDx Seattle. This Friday there is a Happy Hour and TEDxSeattle Discussion at the Rat and Raven.

Here is the announcement from the Master of Communication in Digital Media list:

This Friday, in addition to our usual socializing and networking at our First Fridays Happy Hour, we will be having a discussion about where we stand so far on TEDxSeattle.

As part of this discussion, we’ll have Tim Reha presenting his ideas for filming, streaming and live synthing the event with his internet dashboard approach.  Tim will be looking for student volunteers to learn about this approach and work on the TEDxSeattle event.  He hopes to pitch this work to the main TED based on our efforts here.  This presentation will go on around 6:00, once Hanson and the campus crew arrive.

We’ll be in our normal spot at the Rat and Raven (http://www.ratandraven.com), conveniently located in the University District.

5260 University Way NE Seattle, WA 98105 – 206 524 3166

Street parking up there on the Ave is free and available at that time.  Happy hour specials include $2 off the entire menu (bar food, mostly standard with some twists); $3 wells, $3 domestic drafts and $4 imports (and $2 PBR if that is to your taste). We have reserved the *upstairs deck* (covered year-round, heated in cool weather, but open for nice weather).  It also has a shuffleboard.  There are also two pool tables upstairs, just outside the glass doors to the deck.