Broadband and Democratization

Register Now for ‘Will Broadband Succeed in Changing the DNA of Universities?’ BroadbandBreakfast.com’s Program at The Cable Show 2012

Published

11 years ago

May 2, 2012

WASHINGTON, Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 – The internet policy news and events service BroadbandBreakfast.com will hold a special event at The Cable Show 2012 in Boston, MA entitled “Will Broadband Succeed in Changing the DNA of Universities?” on Monday, May 21^st, 2012 from 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, 415 Summer Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02210, Room 154E

Tickets are available at $75.00 each. A plated lunch is included. Lunch is served promptly at 12:00 pm.

Registration for The Cable Show is also required and can be found at http://2012.thecableshow.com

Registration for the program can be found at:

http://broadbandbreakfastatthecableshow.eventbrite.com

This special event is sponsored by The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA)

‘Will Broadband Succeed in Changing the DNA of Universities’ Event Description:

Universities, once regarded as essential and untouchable foundations for education in our democracy, are now beginning to feel the pressure toward disintermediation. Will the ivory tower go the direction of travel agencies, video stores and newspapers? Why are more universities putting their courses online? And what are the global impacts of broadband, “cloud computing” and distributed learning, on the traditions of university education, scholarship and research?

Panelists:

Cecilia D’Oliveira, Executive Director. MIT Open CourseWare

As Executive Director of OpenCourseWare (OCW) at MIT, Ms. d’Oliveira provides leadership for the institution’s highly acclaimed OCW program. She heads a staff of 25 professionals who work with MIT faculty to publish MIT’s educational materials for free and open access and with external groups to advance the adoption of the opencourseware approach worldwide. As Technology Director for OpenCourseWare, from 2002 to 2007, she implemented the technical infrastructure supporting OCW publishing and worldwide distribution. Ms. d’Oliveira is a member of MIT’s Council on Educational Technology and works closely with MIT faculty and staff on issues related to educational technology innovation, implementation and support on the MIT campus. She has been a member of the MIT community for over 30 years, initially as a student and subsequently in professional roles, which have focused on the use of technology in support of MIT’s education, research, and administrative programs. She has had the opportunity to be involved in the introduction of many high-impact innovations to the MIT campus including computer networking, email, the Web, e-commerce, and most recently, OpenCourseWare. Ms. d’Oliveira received a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT and a Master of Science in Management from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Jerry Grochow, Interim Vice President for Internet2 NET+ Services, Internet2

Jerry retired as MIT’s Vice President for Information Services and Technology in 2009 where he had been an active member of the research and education community, and now consults to members of the community on increasing the business value of information technology. He is also a Research Affiliate with the MIT Energy Initiative project on the future of the United States electric grid. Jerry was the Chief Technology Officer at FOLIOfn, Inc., a start-up providing innovative Internet-based financial services, and CTO and a vice president of consulting at American Management Systems, an international management and systems firm. Early in his career, Jerry was a member of the MIT team developing the Multics Time-Sharing System and MIT’s first use of the ARPANET.

Jay A. Halfond, Dean, Metropolitan College and Extended Education, Boston University

Jay A. Halfond is Dean of Metropolitan College and Extended Education at Boston University, where he has worked since 1997. Previously, he served as Associate Dean of Northeastern University’s College of Business Administration and held various administrative positions at Harvard University. He received his bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in History from Temple University in 1973, a master’s degree in Comparative History from Brandeis University in 1974, and his Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from Boston College in 1981. Dean Halfond oversees a diverse and innovative college (www.bu.edu/met), one of the largest at Boston University, which educates a wide array of students, primarily adults studying part-time. Metropolitan College enrolls over four thousand undergraduate and graduate degree candidates and thousands of others for non-degree programs – on campus, on site at corporations and other locales, overseas, and online. He oversees the University’s distance learning enterprise, MET International, and BU’s summer offerings, and has chaired the President’s Council for a Global University. Dean Halfond has published over one hundred articles, and contributed a monthly column, “On Ethics,” for the Boston Business Journal over a five year period. He served as trustee of the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology and as the Board chairman from 2003 to 2005. In addition to over forty presentations at professional association meetings, Dean Halfond taught frequently at the undergraduate and graduate level on social and ethical aspects of management and conflict resolution and negotiations. He served on the American Council on Education’s Commission for Lifelong Learning from 2005-08 and as a contributing editor of the Journal of Continuing Higher Education since 2005, and has written a monthly commentary for the New England Journal of Higher Education since June 2010.

Charles R. Severance, Clinical Associate Professor, School of Information, University of Michigan

Charles is currently a Clinical Associate Professor and teaches in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. Charles is a founding faculty member of the Informatics Concentration undergraduate degree program at the University of Michigan. Charles also works with the IMS Global Learning Consortium promoting and developing standards for teaching and learning technology. Previously he was the Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation and the Chief Architect of the Sakai Project. Charles is the author of the book, “Sakai Free as in Freedom” that describes the early days of the open source Sakai project. Charles is also the author of the book, “Using Google App Engine” from O’Reilly and Associates and the book “Python for Informatics: Exploring Information”. He also wrote the O’Reilly book titled, “High Performance Computing”. Charles has a background in standards including serving as the vice-chair for the IEEE Posix P1003 standards effort and edited the Standards Column in IEEE Computer Magazine from 1995-1999. Charles is active in television and radio as a hobby, he has co-hosted several television shows including “Nothin but Net” produced by MediaOne and a nationally televised program about the Internet called “Internet:TCI”. Charles appeared for over 10 years as an expert on Internet and Technology as a co-host of a live call-in radio program on the local Public Radio affiliate (www.wkar.org). Charles has a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Michigan State University.

Moderator:

The event will be moderated by Drew Clark, Founder and Publisher, BroadbandBreakfast.com, a news and events company building a community around broadband stimulus, the national broadband plan, and intellectual property. Drew Clark has a long-standing reputation for fairness and depth in his reporting. He worked for the National Journal Group for eight years, ran the telecommunications and media ownership project of the Center for Public Integrity, and was Assistant Director of the Information Economy Project at George Mason University. He has written widely on the politics of telecom, media and technology for a variety of publications, including the Washington Post, GigaOm, Slate, and Ars Technica. Drew launched BroadbandCensus.com in January 2008 as a means of providing objective information about broadband speeds, prices, availability, reliability and competition

Background on BroadbandBreakfast.com

BroadbandBreakfast.com is in its fourth year of hosting monthly breakfast forums in Washington on internet policy issues. These events are on the record, open to the public and consider a wide range of viewpoints. Our Broadband Breakfast Club meets on the third tuesday of every month (except for August and December) from 8 am – 10 am at Clyde’s of Gallery Place.

Our elected official keynotes have included Representatives Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), John Conyers (D-MI), Diane Watson (D-CA), Joe Barton (R-TX) and Rick Boucher (D-VA).

Our agency and commission official keynotes have included Deputy Undersecretary for Agriculture Dallas Tonsager, Julius Genachowski, Chairman FCC; Jonathan Adelstein, RUS Administrator; FTC Commissioner, Julie Brill; Anna Gomez, Deputy Assistant Secretary NTIA; FCC Wireless Telecommunications Bureau Chief, Rick Kaplan; FCC Wireline Competition Bureau Chief, Sharon Gillette; Ari Schwartz, Senior Internet Policy Advisor to the Secretary of Commerce; Nick Sinai, Senior Innovation Advisor to the US Chief Technology Officer.

Our moderated discussion panels are comprised of leaders from a wide variety of organizations including government, industry, law firms, academia, nonprofit, journalism and many others. Our audiences are equally diverse. The keynote speech is followed by a moderated panel discussion in which audience participation is encouraged.

The Broadband Breakfast Club schedule can be viewed at

http://broadbandbreakfastseries.eventbrite.com

Read our website for broadband news and event write-ups

http://www.broadbandbreakfast.com

Videos of our previous events are available at:

https://broadbandbreakfast.com/category/broadband-tv/

For More Information Contact:

Sylvia Syracuse

Director of Marketing and Events

BroadbandBreakfast.com

Sylvia@broadbandcensus.com

646-262-4630

Related Topics:broadband Cable Show education

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Broadband and Democratization

Stamping out Election Falsehoods Like Playing Whack-a-Mole, Says Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger

Published

3 years ago

February 5, 2021

Derek Shumway

Photo of Brad Raffensperger from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

February 5, 2021 – With election misinformation and conspiracy theories rampant in Election 2020, secretaries of state representing pivotal states swapped stories on Thursday about the howlers they faced – and what they did to try to maintain public trust in upholding election integrity.

Perhaps no one faced more pressure to act to overturn the results of his state’s presidential vote tally than Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Among the many false accusations he faced was that a Ron Raffensperger, allegedly a brother of his, works for a Chinese technology firm. While there is such a person, and that person does in fact work for the Chinese telecom equipment giant Huawei, that Ron Raffensperger is not Brad Raffensperger’s brother.

At Thursday’s meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State, Raffensperger said again that he does not have a brother named Ron. He also expressed condolences for the real Ron Raffensperger out there.

Stamping out falsehoods is like playing a game of ‘rumor-whack-a-mole,’ said Brad Raffensperger. Once you eradicate one rumor, another just pops up. It’s as if the truth has 30,000 Twitter followers while falsehood has 80 million followers, he added.

Screenshot of the NASS webinar

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs addressed the “Sharpiegate” scandal, another fake claim concocted by Republicans. Sharpiegate was the wrong notion pushed by some that Sharpie pens distributed at polling places were handed out for voting.

But the felt-tip pen’s ink bled through the ballot, making it unreadable by a machine and thus keeping the Sharpie victim’s vote from being counted. The twist in this particular story is that only the Sharpie-marked ballots cast by Republican candidates were thrown out, somehow.

While recognizing the seriousness of this misinformation campaign, exacerbated by Eric Trump’s tweets about it, souvenir Sharpies were ordered bearing “Sharpiegate 2020” printed on them – just as a joke, said Hobbs.

Michigan had a plan in place for months on how to collect, process, and release voting results, said Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. However, because its processes were so efficient, Michigan caught its critics off guard. This exposed Michigan to accusations of allegedly counting its ballots too fast in an effort to try to “fix” the election. Robocalls targeted minority majority communities, including in Detroit.

Ohio also anticipated a barrage of misinformation. As a preemptive measure, the state rolled out numerous tools and resources to inform citizens of voting processes.

Secretaries of state need to help voters build confidence knowing their voice will be heard in a fair and honest contest, and not to tear it down, said Frank LaRose, Ohio Secretary of State. He praised Ohio’s election integrity and said it had a record low in ballot rejection, and a record high in ballot workers.

The state also tried to stop spreaders of misinformation by warning of felony charges for spreading lies.

Broadband and Democratization

At New America Foundation Event on India, Panelists Talk of ‘Digital Colonization’ by U.S. and China

Published

3 years ago

October 1, 2020

Liana Sowa

Screenshot from the webinar

October 1, 2020 – When it comes to social media, India is currently in a “two-house race” between the United States and China, explained India expert Madhulika Srikumar at New America on Wednesday.

Tiktok and Facebook have been big players in this race, each attracted to India’s large audience base.

Srikumar, an attorney formerly with the Cyber Initiative at Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, cited two statistics. First, one-third of TikTok’s users were Indian, before the app was banned in June by the Indian government. Second, if India’s Facebook audience were a country, it would be the fourth largest in the world.

She explained the recent trend of Chinese and U.S. companies each investing in Indian companies.

New American CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter said in response, “When I hear you Madhu, all I can think of is digital colonization.”

Slaughter stressed that it was vital we don’t have a world where states lock down their internet and asserted that the world would be a better place if there was more competition and if companies had to be more open with their policies

“Our institutions for holding power accountable are still from the analog age,” Said Rebecca MacKinnon, founding director of New America’s Ranking Digital Rights project, adding that there’s nothing in our law that could prevent Tiktok from becoming a vehicle for hate speech.

Slaughter blamed the platforms, claiming that platforms were publishers wielding great political power who were responsible for polarization and declining trust.

She pointed to a future Biden-Harris administration, and projected that if elected, it would provide a new vision for internet policy by working with a number of other countries, including Europe, to adopt global standards for a free internet. This consortium would insist that companies abide by such rules.

When asked whether the UN could play a role, Slaughter said that it could, but it would need to have strong member support since “the current U.S. government has distain for non-US institutions.” The United Nations would have difficulty putting regulations in place with one of it’s biggest members not being supportive.

MacKinnon agreed that UN involvement would be complicated. For the past decade, there’s been a fight brewing over who sets standards for the tech community and for global technologies.

Srikumar, in turn, appealed for greater resources to flesh out what exactly an open internet means, as well as a move to divorce content from gatekeepers.

Joshua Keating, senior editor of Slate moderated the webinar.

See also “The Privacy Negotiators: The Need for U.S. Tech Companies to Mediate Agreements on Government Access to Data in India,” by Madhulika Srikumar on New America

Broadband and Democratization

Mobile Technology Aided the Growth of Black Lives Matter, But Will Hashtag Outrage Lead to Change?

Published

3 years ago

September 21, 2020

Jericho Casper

Screenshot of panelists on the Brookings Institution webinar

September 21, 2020 — In the United States, widespread public use of mobile phone cameras and social media has thrust the longstanding issue of police brutality against Black Americans into the national spotlight like never before.

Delving deeply into the subject of how digital tools have contributed to the goals of anti-brutality activists, panelists at a Brookings Institution event on September 14 detailed the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and whether the explosive growth of the hashtag #BLM might result in any institutional change.

In the summer of 2014, videos, images, and text narratives of violent encounters between police officers and unarmed Black people circulated widely through news and social media, spurring public outrage.

“A large digital archive of Tweets started in 2014, when Michael Brown was killed,” said Rashawn Ray, professor of sociology and executive director of the Lab for Applied Social Science Research at the University of Maryland.

Media activism fueled by the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner gave rise to Black Lives Matter, or #BLM, a loosely-coordinated, nationwide movement dedicated to ending police brutality, which uses online media extensively.

The panelists referenced the “Beyond the Hashtag” report authored by Meredith Clark, assistant professor at the University of Virginia, analyzes the movement’s rise on Twitter.

“Mobile technology became an agent of change,” said Mignon Clyburn, former commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission, referring to the 2007 introduction of the iPhone as a turning point in the way individuals utilize devices. “Devices became smaller, less expensive, and more ubiquitous,” said Clyburn, “we are now seeing a global, mobile revolution.”

Increased accessibility to mobile devices and social media cracked open doors previously kept tightly shut by pro-corporate, pro-government gatekeepers of the media, which spread anti-Black ideologies. Mobile devices initiated a leveling of the media playing field, allowing for marginalized groups to intervene in dialogues.

“Black Americans have the opportunity to share distinctively what is happening to us,” said Nicol Turner Lee, senior fellow in governance studies and the director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institute.

“These videos show our humanity, and how it is destroyed and undermined,” added Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

While videos taken to report instances of police brutality are critical resources, they come with significant consequences for those filming and viewing them.

In order to record an instance of police, an individual has to be courageous, as many citizen journalists attempting to capture an act of police brutality, end up a subject of cruelty.

“You have the right to record protected under First Amendment,” Clarke informed, urging that officers be trained on respecting citizens First Amendment rights to film.

While recording instances of police brutality is distressing in itself, sharing the video online, although necessary, amplifies the video’s power to traumatize indefinitely. “There will no doubt be a generation of children that will be traumatized,” by repeatedly seeing images of Black Americans brutalized by the police, said Lee.

Clarke urged individuals who decide to share content, to do so with a trigger warning.

While digital tools have enabled video evidence of brutality to be caught, amass widespread attention, and cause public outrage, as of yet, it has not translated into real-life justice for Black individuals. Difficulty to bring prosecution against excessively violent officers remains.

Clarke noted that police union contracts are barriers to reform. “The terms of collective bargaining agreements allow officers to see video evidence before reporting on how the events transpired,” detailed Clarke.

Ray called for the passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, H.R. 7120, introduced by Rep. Karen Bass, D-California, which he said was currently ‘collecting dust’ in the Senate.

The bill would establish new requirements for law enforcement officers and agencies, necessitating them to report data on use-of-force incidents, obtain training on implicit bias and racial profiling, and wear body cameras.