If you’re near Milwaukee, please come join the audience. Details below.

4th STREET FORUM at MILWAUKEE TURNER HALL

Privacy: Checking You Out

For our grandparents, gossip and gumshoes were the great threats to privacy.  Now our data is collected digitally by the government, businesses, social networks, online banking, and even our doctors. How much should today’s hi-tech gumshoes be able to find out about you?

Each forum is taped in front of a studio audience for later broadcast on Milwaukee Public Television, Channel 10.1.  The forums are free and open to the public.  Bring your lunch and a friend.  Join the discussion by asking a question of the guests.

FORUM DATE AND TIME: February 24, NOON
WHERE: Milwaukee Turner Hall, 2nd Floor, 1034 N. 4th Street
Main entrance across from the Bradley Center on 4th (please pardon the construction); elevator access off the parking lot on 4th and Highland.

WITH HOST ENRIQUE FIGUEROA, PhD, Director, Roberto Hernández Center, UW-Milwaukee

AND WITH GUESTS -

• CHRIS AHMUTY is the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin, a position he has held since 1992. The nonprofit organization’s stated mission is to ensure the rights of all people under the laws and Constitution of the United States.
• BRUCE BOYDEN, JD is a Marquette Law School assistant professor.  He teaches and writes on internet law, privacy, electronic commerce, and computer security law.  Professor Boyden’s interests also include digital rights management.
• TANNETTE ELIE is an independent on-line news journalist who, in her everyday work, deals with issues of new media and privacy.  For nineteen years, Ms. Elie was a reporter and business columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.  She was one of the first traditional journalists in Milwaukee to embrace twitter as a fundamental part of reporting.
• MICHAEL ZIMMER, PhD is co-director of the Center for Information Policy Research at UW-Milwaukee.  Dr. Zimmer studies the social, political, and ethical dimensions of new media and information technologies, including privacy and surveillance issues.

CAN’T ATTEND?

• Milwaukee Public Television will broadcast this forum on Channel 10.1, Friday, 25, 10PM and Sunday, February 27, 9AM.
• Full-length viewing of past programs are available from our website at www.4thStreetForum.org.
• Programs also run on Time Warner’s, “Wisconsin on Demand,” (WIOD). Check listing.
• All programs are available from the Milwaukee County Federated Library System.

The program has aired and is available via YouTube:

The School of Information Studies (SOIS) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) is accepting applications for fall of 2010 for its PhD program in Information Studies.

Building on one of the largest and most varied MLIS programs in the United States, the PhD program prepares researchers, educators, and administrators with specializations in three major areas (with other areas also supported):

• Information Organization
• Information Policy
• Information Retrieval

The School’s international faculty are recognized for their research productivity, ranking in the top five nationally in per capita publications in a recent study among American schools of library and information science (Adkins & Budd, 2007). The School also has established agreements and collaborations with a number of institutions around the world that offer students international learning and research experiences. SOIS is home to the Center for Information Policy Research (CIPR), which facilitates information policy research through its lecture series and research paper series, outreach activities, and Information Ethics Fellows program. The School also supports an Information Organization Research Group (IOrg), Research Group for Information Retrieval (RGIR), as well as an Information Intelligence & Architecture Research Lab, which serves as a hub for research on information analysis, system design & evaluation, digital libraries, data mining, and usability.

Located in a residential neighborhood near Lake Michigan, UWM serves a diverse community of over 30,000 students, faculty and staff. The very livable city of Milwaukee offers the cultural amenities of a large metropolitan area with the conveniences of a smaller city.

Financial aid is available in the form of competitive graduate assistantships (full-time students), tuition scholarships, and adjunct teaching opportunities. Priority consideration for admission will be given to applications received by January 15, 2010.

Detailed information about the program is available on the SOIS website (http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/SOIS/academics/doctoral.htm). For additional information, please contact Dietmar Wolfram (dwolfram@uwm.edu).

On Monday, September 21 (7:00pm, UWM Union Theater),  UW-Milwaukee’s Center for Information Policy Research and School of Information Studies is hosting a free screening of the Girl Talk-produced documentary Good Copy/Bad Copy. The film (featuring appearances by Girl Talk, Danger Mouse, and Lawrence Lessig) examines the state of copyright in today’s tech-savvy and dynamic remix culture. The film also features music by RJD2, Santogold, Girl Talk, Danger Mouse, Gnarls Barkley, De La Soul, and more.

The event will also feature a panel discussion and commentary by:

• David Bollier – Independent policy strategist, journalist, activist and consultant whose work focuses on reclaiming the commons, the effects of digital technology on democratic culture, and fighting the excesses of intellectual property law.
• Brad Lichtenstein – Award-winning documentary filmmaker, president of 371 Productions, and currently producing “What We Got: DJ Spooky’s Quest for the Commons”.
• Nancy Kranich – A former President of the American Library Association, Nancy focuses on the role of libraries in democracies by undertaking advocacy, civic engagement, and information literacy projects. A champion of the public’s information rights, she has spoken out against censorship, privatization, and other attempts to limit public access to vital information.

On Tuesday, September 22 (1:00pm, UWM Union, room 191), David Bollier, Brad Lichtenstein, and Nancy Kranich will reconvene for a panel discussion on “Copyright, Commons and the Struggle to Control Culture”.

Feel free to download and distribute our fliers for the film screening and the panel discussion. Please join us!

The School of Information Studies and the Center for Information Policy Research had an information booth set up in the middle of Spaights Plaza on the UW-M campus, and were inundated with interested students.

I was amazed at how many students rushed to collect information and learn about how to tweak their privacy settings on Facebook. “Oh, I need that!” was the common reaction. I was equally surprised at how many students conveyed that their professors told them to never use Wikipedia. (I’m going to start an educational campaign on campus or both faculty and students to better educate them on the value of Wikipedia, and that all information sources need to be vetted for accuracy, etc).

We also attracted a nice crowd for the 4 keynote speakers. Dean Johannes Britz reminded the audience that the Internet is still not fully global and not equally available to all (Amazon, apparently, doesn’t ship to South Africa, for example). I presented a version of the Yale Information Society Project’s “9.5 Theses” I helped draft, while Professor Thomas Malaby (Anthropology) spoke about what is at stake with online gaming, especially related to how gaming competencies are increasing becoming valued outside of traditional gaming circles. Finally Anthony Hoffmann gave a provocative talk directed to his peers (the “under 30 crowd”), arguing that they have a social responsiblility to ask “WTF!?!” related to an assortment of political and cultural issues related to social networking and other online activities.

Full event details are here, some press coverage here, Flickr photos, and YouTube videos of the speeches.

I can’t wait for OneWebDay 2009!

If you won’t be in Milwaukee, hopefully you can join a OWD celebration somewhere else across the globe.

On Monday, September 22, OneWebDay will be celebrated across the globe, including Milwaukee.

OneWebDay (OWD) is like Earth Day for the Internet: it was created so there would be a single day where everyone across the globe could join together to celebrate the Web, reflect on its role in our lives, and take steps to ensure its survival as a sphere for public discourse, the open flow of ideas, the spread of knowledge, the fostering of communities, and so on.

(I had the great pleasure to meet and work alongside OWD’s founder, Susan Crawford, while she was visiting the Yale Information Society Project this past spring.)

OWD celebrations are planned worldwide for Sept 22, and thanks to the support of the School of Information Studies and the Center for Information Policy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee will have its own OWD event this year.

The details are below, and you can download the flyer here (PDF).

OneWebDay – Milwaukee

Logistics

• Date: Monday, September 22, 2008
• Time: 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
• Location: Spaights Plaza (located outside the Union), University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Topics

• Net Neutrality and Internet Policy Issues
• Internet Globalism and Ethics
• Ethics, Gaming, and Virtual Worlds
• Privacy, Social Networks, and Online Life

Speakers

• Johannes Britz, Dean & Professor, School of Information Studies, UW-Milwaukee
• Michael Zimmer, Assistant Professor, SOIS, UW-Milwaukee
• Thomas Malaby, Associate Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, UW-Milwaukee.
• Anthony Hoffmann, Graduate Student, SOIS, UW-Milwaukee