Agenda

This symposium will bring together computer scientists, ethnographers, architects, historians, artists and legal scholars to discuss how design influences privacy and public space, how it shapes and is shaped by human behavior and experience, and how it can cultivate norms such as tolerance and diversity.

Four main sessions anchor the day. The first sessions two focus on people: the makers, users and transformers of new spaces and technologies. The second two sessions focus on the future: looking at scenarios of radical technological change and creating a vision of the world we want to live in.

• 6:30PM OPENING RECEPTION

  Sounds for the Watched
  Julia Scher, Academy of Media Arts Cologne

• 8:30AM CHECK-IN

• 9:00 INTRODUCTION

  • Urs Gasser, Berkman Center
  • Judith Donath, Berkman Center
  • Jef Huang, Berkman Center

• 9:30 SESSION I: DELINEATING PUBLIC AND PRIVATE

  There are many approaches to creating public and private space. How does the design of physical spaces, virtual experiences, and legal codes form the experience of the public and the private? And how do the designers—from the software coders to legal scholars—see their role in shaping society?

  • Paul Dourish, University of California, Irvine
  • Laurent Stalder, ETHZ
  • John Palfrey, Berkman Center
  • Moderator: Jonathan Zittrain, Berkman Center [Q+A]

• 10:45 BREAK

• 11:00 CONNECTIONS TALK: THE HARDEST CHALLENGES TO DESIGNING PRIVACY-TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS

  • Latanya Sweeney, Harvard CRCS
    [More information on our wiki]

• 11:15 SESSION II: EXPERIENCE AND RE-CREATION

  People reshape new spaces and technologies to suit their needs. How do they perceive changing boundaries of private and public? How do they adapt to these changes—or change the technology?

  • Beatriz Colomina, Princeton University
  • danah boyd, Microsoft Research
  • Ethan Zuckerman, Berkman Center
  • Moderator: Jeffrey Schnapp, Harvard Metalab [Q+A]

• 12:30 CONNECTIONS TALK: SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY BY DESIGN

  • Gerhard Buurman, Zurich University of the Arts
    [More information on our wiki]

• 12:45 LUNCH

• 1:45 SESSION III: THE RISKS AND BEAUTY OF THE HYPER-PUBLIC LIFE

  Unprecedented amount of information is now gathered about everyone, everywhere – and displayed in a hyper-public forum that extends indefinitely in both time and space. Is this a future of great promise or a nightmare of relentless surveillance?

  • Adam Greenfield, Urbanscale LLC
  • Jef Huang, Berkman Center
  • Betsy Masiello, Google
  • Moderator: Jeff Jarvis, City University of New York [Q+A]

• 3:00 CONNECTIONS TALK: CRITERIA

  • Herbert Burkert, University of St. Gallen
    [More information on our wiki]

• 3:15 BREAK

• 3:30 SESSION IV: COOPERATION WITHOUT COERCION

  If we take the hyper-public future as a given, how do we cultivate the freedom and diversity that privacy had maintained? How do we design interfaces, systems and environments that foster harmonious coexistence in this future?

  • Charles Nesson, Berkman Center
  • Nicholas Negroponte, MIT
  • Martin Nowak, Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics
  • Moderator: Judith Donath, Berkman Center [Q+A]

• 4:45 CLOSING DISCUSSION

  David Weinberger, Berkman Center
  Colin Maclay, Berkman Center

• 5:15 END

• Optional self-organized Food for Thought Dinners to follow

 

There will also be time during the day for both structured and open discussion among the attendees.