From the hundreds of libraries using Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) to meet the needs of their communities to the many working groups and vendors investigating its potential, it’s clear that this innovative library practice is on the rise.
Want to learn more about what’s going on across the community? Join us for a public webinar at 11am PT on March 10 to hear from active projects, including:
- Controlled Digital Lending Implementers group;
- NISO’s grant from The Mellon Foundation to support the development of a consensus standards framework for implementing CDL;
- Boston Library Consortium’s efforts around CDL for interlibrary loan;
- CDL Co-Op (ILL & resource sharing);
- Internet Archive, with an update on the publisher’s lawsuit against CDL & libraries;
- CDL vendors;
- and more!
Register now
Presentations will be followed by a facilitated Q&A. Whether you are new to Controlled Digital Lending or have already implemented it in your library, this session will give everyone an update on where the community is today & where it’s going.
Community Update: Controlled Digital Lending
March 10 @ 11am PT / 2pm ET – RegisterPosted in Event | Tagged CDL, controlled digital lending | Leave a reply
The Decentralized Web: An Introduction
Posted on by chrisfreeland
Amidst the hype and hoopla for decentralized tech, what should everyone really understand? Providing that baseline of knowledge is the goal of a series of six workshops called “Imagining a Better Online World: Exploring the Decentralized Web.” The series kicked off on January 27 with an introductory session establishing some common vocabulary for this new approach to digital infrastructure.The event was hosted by the Internet Archive, DWeb and Library Futures, and was presented by the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO).https://archive.org/embed/the-decentralized-web-an-introduction
On our current web, most platforms are controlled by a central authority—a company, government, or individual—that maintains the code, data and servers. Ultimately, consumers must trust that those central authorities will do what is in their best interest.
“In order to have ease of use, we have ceded control to these big platforms, and they manage our access to information, our privacy, our security, and our data,” explained Wendy Hanamura, Director of Partnerships at the Internet Archive, who led the workshop.
In contrast, the decentralized web is built on peer-to-peer technologies. Users could conceivably own their data. Rather than relying on a few dominant platforms, you could potentially store and share information across many nodes, addressing concerns about censorship, persistence and privacy.
“It is still very early days for the decentralized web,” Hanamura said. “All of us still have time to contribute and to influence where this technology goes.”
At the event, Mai Ishikawa Sutton, founder & editor at COMPOST Mag, explained how her publication can be viewed over the decentralized web using IPFS and Hypercore, while using Creative Commons licensing to openly share its contents. In addition, Paul Frazee demonstrated Beaker Browser, an experimental browser that allows users to build peer-to-peer websites on the decentralized web.
Using the current system, Web 2.0, relies on content living on web servers in a certain location.
“This is a problem because [publishers] want to change it. They want to update it. They … go out of business. They want to merge with somebody. And it goes away,” said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, noting that the average life of a web page is 100 days. The Wayback Machine was built to back up those web pages after-the-fact, but there is a need to build better decentralized technology that preserves a copy as the content is created, he said. “The Web should have a time axis.”
According to Kahle, in the future a decentralized web would look much the same to the user, but could build features such as privacy, resilience and persistence right into the code. It could also create new revenue models for creative works. For example, a decentralized web could enable buyers to make direct micropayments to creators rather than licensing them through iTunes or Amazon.
“This is a good time for us to try to make sure we guide this technology toward something we actually want to use,” Kahle said. “It’s an exciting time. We in the library world should keep focused on trying to make robust information resources available and make it so people see things in context. We want a game with many winners so we don’t end up with just one or two large corporations or publishers controlling what it is we see.”
Download the Session 1 Resource Guide.
Register for the next session:
Using Decentralized Storage to Keep Your Materials Safe
February 24 @ 1pm PT / 4pm ET
Register nowPosted in News | Tagged decentralized Web, DWeb | Leave a reply
Library as Laboratory: A New Series Exploring the Computational Use of Internet Archive Collections
Posted on by chrisfreeland
From web archives to television news to digitized books & periodicals, dozens of projects rely on the collections available at archive.org for computational & bibliographic research across a large digital corpus. This series will feature six sessions highlighting the innovative scholars that are using Internet Archive collections, services and APIs to support data-driven projects in the humanities and beyond.
Want to participate? Register below! Do you have a research project that uses materials from the Internet Archive? We’re offering a Lightning Talks session at the end of our series to give more people an opportunity to share your research with the world. Simply complete our online form to be considered.
Many thanks to the program advisory group:
- Dan Cohen, Vice Provost for Information Collaboration and Dean, University Library and Professor of History, Northeastern University
- Makiba Foster, Library Regional Manager for the African American Research Library and Cultural Center, Broward County Library
- Mike Furlough, Executive Director, HathiTrust
- Harriett Green, Associate University Librarian for Digital Scholarship and Technology Services, Washington University Libraries
Session Details & Registration:
March 2 @ 11am PT / 2pm ET
Supporting Computational Use of Web Collections
Jefferson Bailey, Internet Archive
Helge Holzmann, Internet Archive
What can you do with billions of archived web pages? In our kickoff session, Jefferson Bailey, Internet Archive’s Director of Web Archiving & Data Services, and Helge Holzmann, Web Data Engineer, will take attendees on a tour of the methods and techniques available for analyzing web archives at scale.
March 16 @ 11am PT / 2pm ET
Applications of Web Archive Research with the Archives Unleashed Cohort Program
Launched in 2020, the Cohort program is engaging with researchers in a year-long collaboration and mentorship with the Archives Unleashed Project and the Internet Archive, to support web archival research.
Web archives provide a rich resource for exploration and discovery! As such, this session will feature the program’s inaugural research teams, who will discuss the innovative ways they are exploring web archival collections to tackle interdisciplinary topics and methodologies. Projects from the Cohort program include:
- AWAC2 — Analysing Web Archives of the COVID Crisis through the IIPC Novel Coronavirus dataset—Valérie Schafer (University of Luxembourg)
- Everything Old is New Again: A Comparative Analysis of Feminist Media Tactics between the 2nd- to 4th Waves—Shana MacDonald (University of Waterloo)
- Mapping and tracking the development of online commenting systems on news websites between 1996–2021—Robert Jansma (University of Siegen)
- Crisis Communication in the Niagara Region during the COVID-19 Pandemic—Tim Ribaric (Brock University)
- Viral health misinformation from Geocities to COVID-19—Shawn Walker (Arizona State University)
March 30 @ 11am PT / 2pm ET
Hundreds of Books, Thousands of Stories: A Guide to the Internet Archive’s African Folktales
Laura Gibbs, Educator, writer & bibliographer
Join educator & bibliographer Laura Gibbs as she gives attendees a guided tour of the African folktales in the Internet Archive’s collection. Laura will share her favorite search tips for exploring the treasure trove of books at the Internet Archive, and how to share the treasures you find with colleagues, students, and fellow readers. Laura will demo how you can blog and tweet, how you can fit hundreds of books into a slideshow and squeeze thousands of stories into a spreadsheet, and how you can even publish your own book-of-books, creating a digital bibliography guide. After learning how Laura created the “Reader’s Guide to African Folktales at the Internet Archive,” maybe you’ll be inspired to make a reader’s guide of your own!
April 13 @ 11am PT / 2pm ET
Details announced soon!
April 27 @ 11am PT / 2pm ET
Details announced soon!
May 11 @ 11am PT / 2pm ET
Lightning Talks
You!
Do you have a quick project briefing you’d like to share in two minutes or less? Fresh research, cool collections and wild ideas welcome! Submit a proposal now to give a live or pre-recorded lightning talk at our closing session.
Register nowPosted in Event, News | Tagged digital humanities, text mining | Leave a reply
New additions to the Internet Archive for January 2022
Posted on by Alexis Rossi
Many items are added to the Internet Archive’s collections every month, by us and by our patrons. Here’s a round up of some of the new media you might want to check out. Logging in might be required to borrow certain items.
Notable new collections:
- Shakemore Festival (2007-present) Maryland: The Shakemore Music Festival is an annual weekend event comprised of 20 to 30 acts, featuring frequent appearances from what has become a large Shakemore family of bands (including Bang Bang Lulu, Caching Behavior, Cigarbox Planetarium, Go Pills, Weird Paul Rock Band, and many others).
- Quantum Leap Podcast: The Quantum Leap Podcast talks about every episode of the cult hit time travel program, as well as the novels and comic books it inspired.
- My Morton Grove – Oral History Interviews: A collection of oral history interviews conducted by Morton Grove Public Library in Morton Grove, Illinois.
Books 40,695
This month we’ve added books on varied subjects in more than 20 languages. Click through to explore, but here are a few interesting items to start with:
Audio Archive 79,099
The audio archive contains recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users.
The LibriVox Free Audiobook Collection 98
Founded in 2005, Librivox is a community of volunteers from all over the world who record audiobooks of public domain texts in many different languages.
78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings 6,849
The Great 78 Project! Listen to this collection of 78rpm records, cylinder recordings, and other recordings from the early 20th century.
by
Jack Dieval
by
Donald Peers
by
Jesse Powell Orchestra
Live Music Archive 799
The Live Music Archive is a community committed to providing the highest quality live concerts in a lossless, downloadable format, along with the convenience of on-demand streaming (all with artist permission).
by Greensky Bluegrass
Netlabels 486
This collection hosts complete, freely downloadable/streamable, often Creative Commons-licensed catalogs of ‘virtual record labels’. These ‘netlabels’ are non-profit, community-built entities dedicated to providing high quality, non-commercial, freely distributable MP3/OGG-format music for online download in a multitude of genres.
by
minc
Posted in 78rpm, Audio Archive, Books Archive, Cool items, Lending Books, Live Music Archive, News | 9 Replies
Artist in Residence Casey Gray Exhibits New Work at Hashimoto Contemporary
Posted on by Amir Saber Esfahani
SAN FRANCISCO – Hashimoto Contemporary is pleased to present Wild Animal, a solo
exhibition by San Francisco-based artist Casey Gray, his third with the gallery. Utilizing
his signature process of complex masking techniques and acrylic spray paint, the
artist’s latest body of paintings, sculptures and works on paper are a meditation on the
vibrancy of life as seen through the animal kingdom.https://archive.org/embed/casey-grey-22air-video-3.mp-4-720p
Drawing from his experience as a new father, and the chaotic stasis of the last two
years to reconsider both subject and audience, Gray narrows his vision into a singular,
charming topic; a colorful world of dynamic animals in action. Eight highly stylized
portraits of solitary animals make up the majority of the show; Eagle, Bear, Horse, Tiger,
Pelican, Crocodile, Trout and Duck. The figures are flat, graphic and modernist, painted
with a variety of competing treatments and textures, and set amidst dreamy, gradient
backgrounds.
Gray describes his inspiration for the work, “Raising a toddler has my life overrun with
animal themes, from children’s books to toys, clothing, television, trips to the zoo. You
name it, they’re everywhere. It was a natural evolution for me to move in this direction
because animals seem to be everything I’m looking at, and simply put, I can’t separate
my life from my work.”
The exhibition is a direct extension of the artist’s recent residency at The Internet
Archive in San Francisco from 2020-2021. During his residency, Gray used the
Archives’s vast magazine cover art collection as a source for representation, specifically
focusing on the dramatic Adventure and Nature Magazine illustrations of the early 20th
century. Gray re-contextualizes the animals from the covers, instead imagining them as
plastic children’s toys, into two obsessively composed window box paintings central to
the show. In the first, a meticulously rendered feral herd of mammals, snakes and birds
intermix around a large bonsai tree with a heightened sense of alert. In the second, a
school of fish, sharks and other aquatic creatures clash with a deep sea diver in a
powerful fight for survival. Each layered still life arrangement offers a sense of
excitement, bewilderment and sentimentality for the outdoors in their theatre and
spectacle. The interactions the wildlife and their placement in space create a narrative
tension that mirrors the emotional turmoil of this day and age.
Wild Animal will be on view February 5th – 26th with an opening reception on Saturday,
February 5th from 1pm-7pm. For more information please contact gallery director
Vanessa Indies at [email protected] in News |
Virtual Gathering Welcomes Creative Works from 1926 into the Public Domain
Posted on by Caralee Adams
Free from copyright restrictions, the public can now enjoy unlimited access to creative works from 1926 including A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, classic silent films with Buster Keaton, and jazz standards by Jelly Roll Morton.
A virtual party hosted by the Internet Archive, Creative Commons, and many other community co-sponsors on January 20 celebrated the availability of the newly released material. This year’s festivities also welcomed nearly 400,000 sound recordings from the pre-1923 era into the public domain as a result of the Music Modernization Act passed by the U.S. Congress.https://archive.org/embed/a-celebration-of-sound-public-domain-day-2022
“What a big win for our country, especially for libraries and archives that preserve our cultural history,” said U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) of the newest crop of creative work entering the public domain, including the early sound recordings. “It’s also a big win for our artists, who can now freely use these classic recordings and transform them into new works.” [WATCH the segment with Senator Wyden.]
Wyden has supported groups that advocate for balanced copyright laws that support public access. In the recent federal legislation addressing compensation in the music industry, he pushed back against a provision that would have locked up older recordings for almost 150 years from their publication.
“These restrictions defied common sense, and they would have been a major disadvantage for historians, academics and American cultural heritage,” said Wyden, who helped secure a better deal that allowed sound recordings to be public property each year. “The Music Modernization Act was not our first rodeo, and I’m certain it is not going to be our last. I look forward to working with all of you closely in the days ahead, continuing the fight for balanced IP laws that work for all Americans.”
Meredith Rose, senior policy counsel with Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., said the new federal legislation is a “huge game changer” for libraries. For the first time, sound recordings before 1972 can be made available for noncommercial and educational uses with no restrictions or threat of statutory damages. [WATCH this segment.]
Also speaking at the event was Jennifer Jenkins of Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. She shared a video highlighting the range of work becoming open this year from Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises to the film “For Heaven’s Sake” with Harold Lloyd and poetry by Langston Hughes. [WATCH this segment.]
“Public domain enables both creativity and access to preservation,” Jenkins said, noting some classic works have been lost to history. “For those that have survived, it’s time to discover or rediscover and breathe new life into them.”
A musical part of the program featured performances by Citizen DJ and Roochie Toochie and the Ragtime Shepard Kings. There was also an interview with Colin Hancock, a musician and historian who has built his career playing early jazz, blues and ragtime music and using period technology to record it. [WATCH this segment.]
Professor Jason Luther of Rowan University explained how his students research 78rpm records from the early 20th century through the Internet Archive’s Great 78 Project to create podcasts. Two of his students shared their excitement in being able to access these vintage recordings and make connections to artists’ work of today. (Read more about Luther’s project in this blog post.) [WATCH this segment.]
The work of writers, musicians, filmmakers, scientists, painters should be consumed, built upon and enjoyed, said Catherine Stihler, chief executive officer of Creative Commons: “I see the public domain as a gift. A package of time, wrapped in excitement of discovery and revitalization that sheds light on the past and enriches the present.” [WATCH this segment.]
The Public Domain Day event was organized by the Internet Archive and co-sponsored by SPARC, Creative Commons, Library Futures, Authors Alliance, the Bioheritage Diversity Library, Public Knowledge, ARSC, the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain, and the Music Library Association.
[Cross-posted blog with SPARC]Posted in Event, News | Tagged event, public domain, public domain day | 5 Replies
Join Us For A Celebration of Sound: Public Domain Day
Posted on by chrisfreeland
1/21/22: Registration is now closed for the event. Watch the recording above or at https://archive.org/details/a-celebration-of-sound-public-domain-day-2022
Join us today for a virtual party at 1pm Pacific/4pm Eastern time with a keynote from Senator Ron Wyden, champion of the Music Modernization Act and a host of musical acts, dancers, historians, librarians, academics, activists and other leaders from the Open world! This event will explore the rich historical context of recorded sound from its earliest days, including early jazz and blues, classical, and spoken word recordings reflecting important political and social issues of the era.
Additional sponsoring organizations include: Library Futures, SPARC, Authors Alliance, the Biodiversity Heritage Library, Public Knowledge, ARSC, the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain, and the Music Library Association.
REGISTER FOR THE VIRTUAL EVENT HERE!Posted in Event, News, Upcoming Event | 3 Replies
Scanning periodicals for patrons with print disabilities
Posted on by chrisfreeland
[tweet]
The Internet Archive has increased periodical digitization of purchased and donated print and microfilm resources to enhance our services for our patrons with print disabilities. Those patrons can receive priority access to the collections, bypassing waitlists and borrowing materials for longer circulation periods. These periodicals will also be made available to the EMMA and ACE projects to support student success. Some of these materials are also available to researchers via interlibrary loan, digital humanities research, and other ways.
The Internet Archive has a longstanding program serving patrons with print disabilities. The modern library materials that we digitize are first made available to qualified patrons, including affiliated users from the National Library Service, Bookshare, and ACE Portal. For more than ten years, thousands of patrons have signed up through our qualifying program to receive special access to the digital books available in our collection.
Organizations can sign up for free to be a Qualifying Authority to be able to authorize patrons, and individual patrons can sign up.
Our patrons share inspiring stories with us about the impacts of the service. Pastor Doug Wilson said it’s been a “profound gift” to discover books in our digital theology collections. The breadth of materials is also compelling. “You never know what you will come across. You can search for something specific, but also just wander the virtual shelves,” said musician and graduate student Matthew Shifrin. In addition to serving our own patrons, we partner with the EMMA and ACE projects, which support students with print disabilities at schools across the US and Canada.
We have resources online to help you learn more about the Internet Archive’s program for patrons with print disabilities, including how to qualify. Please contact our Patron Services team with additional inquiries.
Thank you to the Mellon Foundation, the Institute of Museum & Library Services, the Arcadia Fund, the Kahle/Austin Foundation, and donors for their support of these services.Posted in Books Archive | Tagged access to knowledge, accessibility, print disability | 1 Reply
International patrons speak out: “Access to knowledge shouldn’t be for the rich and privileged.”
Posted on by chrisfreeland
Last fall, we invited our patrons to share how you use the Internet Archive. The response was overwhelming, and gave us exactly the kinds of testimonials and messages of support we were hoping to gather.
As we worked through the responses, we were struck by the number of patrons from all over the world who use our collection. Here now, we’d like to share some of the powerful stories we received from our international users.
If you haven’t already done so, please share your story.
Editorial note: Statements have been edited for clarity.
Lisa M., Educator, England – “Internet Archive helped me help a student! I have students in one class that attend from around the globe. One student was unable to find the required texts and our university did not have digital copies that could be lent. If she were to order the book – not carried in any local stores – it could take up to 3 months for them to arrive, long after the course was over!”
Claudia G., Researcher, Romania – “Even before the pandemic, depending on the topic of my essay and thesis, it was difficult to find books on certain topics in local libraries or bookstores…Access to knowledge shouldn’t be for the rich and privileged.”
Ana S., Communications assistant, Brazil – “I borrowed a book about Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim’s story and body of work is definitely an inspiration for me as someone always trying to learn ways to exercise my creativity. I just wanted to browse one section, and it was really amazing. I’m really thankful you had it available, for anyone in the world, and the borrowing process was really easy to follow through.”
Mike D., Librarian, New Zealand – “I’m a Digital Librarian in a public library in the small town of Hokitika, New Zealand, whose job is making local history more accessible to the community – many of the New Zealand history works in our public library collection are rare or reference-only. It turns out many works of New Zealand history have been digitised by the Internet Archive from US collections”
Callum H., Yard operative, Scotland – “As a non-academic with interests in literature, history, and philosophy, the IA gives me access to books I can’t otherwise afford or access.”
Yuri L., Educator, Brazil – “I spent months of 2020 bed-ridden, and was able to view items from your digitized collection. I would not have been able to go to any physical place for my books, and the titles I was looking for were sometimes available only on the Internet Archive. There are no other means for me, in my part of South America, to have access to limited-circulation ancient newspapers of other continents without digitizing and digital libraries. Without the Internet Archive and other libraries like it, I would have no alternatives.”
Simay K., Researcher, Turkey – “Living in a developing country with so many political and economic turmoils, I believe that the Internet Archive provides a huge service and a unique platform for dissolving the injustice and inequality of [access] to knowledge between disadvantaged countries and classes.”
Lydia S., Student, Canada – “I’ve used materials from the Internet Archive many times throughout my time as an undergrad studying history…There are many primary and secondary sources on the IA that I was unable to find anywhere else online or in physical copies through my university’s library. Many of the books I’ve accessed through the IA have been out of print for many years, so it’s incredibly helpful to have [access] to titles that would otherwise be nearly impossible to track down.“
Kim C., Librarian, Canada – “I use the materials on the Internet Archive often on a personal and a professional level. I have been able to help patrons access books that we have not been able to procure for them in other ways, for reference material for every school level from primary to masters degree research. I have used the collection on many occasions to access local history or genealogical material unavailable elsewhere.”
Richard G., Poet, Canada – Richard used books within the Internet Archive’s library, “to reference other author’s prose and poetry for quotations and references.”
Chloe J., Student, Canada – “It has given me access to material that I would not otherwise have access to.”
Shehroze A., Educator, Pakistan – “I am surprised that books pertaining to learning the Urdu language are available on archive.org, and those which were used for preparation in the civil services. These books are just not available in the country anymore and are immeasurably useful as far as the history of the colonized area is concerned. These are not published anymore, and finding a copy is exceedingly rare. This is why archive.org is important and we should endorse and support it.”
Stephen C., Graduate student, Canada – “The Internet Archive has been an invaluable resource for a research project I am involved in. We have been able to access numerous historical travel narratives that are essential for our project. We have been able to view books that we could not access in archives due to travel restrictions and lending policies during the pandemic.”
Simon H., Printing press operator, Switzerland – “I often find interest in old and niche books, sometimes from parts of the world far away from me. In those cases, I have two options for accessing such a book:
1. I order a physical copy of the work and let it ship to my home. That is incredibly expensive, harmful to the environment and occasionally damaging to an old and fragile book, conserved for such a long time with care and passion.
2. I’m lucky enough to find a digital reproduction of a work, which can be accessed for free and “shipped” eco-friendly through wires and antennas.
The difference between those two possibilities is so pronounced, that the latter almost seems like an utopian fairy tale. But it is not! It is 21st century’s technology at work.”Posted in Books Archive, Lending Books, News | Tagged CDL, controlled digital lending | 11 Replies
Imagining a Better Online World: Exploring the Decentralized Web
Posted on by chrisfreeland
The World Wide Web started with so much promise: to connect people across any distance, to allow anyone to become a publisher, and to democratize access to knowledge. However, today the Web seems to be failing us. It’s not private, secure, or unifying. The internet has, in large part, ended up centralizing access and power in the hands of a few dominant platforms.
What if we could build something better—what some are calling the decentralized web?
In this series of six workshops, “Imagining a Better Online World: Exploring the Decentralized Web,” we’ll explore the ways in which moving to decentralized technologies may enhance your privacy, empower you to control your own data, and resist censorship. Join us to hear from experts in the leading peer-to-peer technologies, from identity to data storage. We’ll see demonstrations of how decentralized tech is being used in publishing, data management and preserving cultural assets. Learn how the decentralized web might yet create systems that empower individuals by eliminating central points of control.
This series is a partnership between Internet Archive, DWeb, Library Futures, and presented by the Metropolitan New York Library Council.
Sessions Include:
The Decentralized Web: An Introduction
What is the decentralized web, why is it important, and where is it along the path of development? What are the problems the decentralized web seeks to solve? Who are the players working to realize this vision? Why is the Internet Archive, a library, a leader in the decentralized web movement?
Thursday, January 27th, from 4:00pm to 5:00pm EST
Watch Video
In an Ever-Expanding Library, Using Decentralized Storage to Keep Your Materials Safe
Libraries understand the headache of storing materials. How do you create room for an ever-expanding collection? What if you don’t want to weed materials to make room? Enter decentralized storage—a network of P-2-P servers that store materials across a global network of storage nodes. What problems does this solve? What problems does this create? Where is the state of decentralized storage today? We ‘ll see media collections and how they are preserved in Storj, Filecoin, and beyond.
Thursday, February 24th, from 4:00pm to 5:00pm EST
Register
Keeping Your Personal Data Personal: How Decentralized Identity Drives Data Privacy
Want your FedEx package? Now you must allow the company to scan your ID. Check into a hotel? Hand over your passport. Rent an e-bike? Key in your driver’s license, which includes your address, birthdate, and weight. What if you could maintain control over your personal identity and share only what is needed? Enter decentralized or self-sovereign identity (SSI). In the future, we believe each person will hold an e-wallet and control his/her/their own personal information.
Thursday, March 31, from 4:00pm to 5:00pm EST
Register
Goodbye Facebook, Hello Decentralized Social Media? Can Peer-to-Peer Lead to Less Toxic Online Platforms?
Facebook, Twitter… we’ve seen them go awry when faced with the scourges of misinformation and trolling. In authoritarian regimes, entire platforms are easily blocked. Would decentralized social media, where there is no central controlling entity, be better? How do you take down damaging posts when there is no central command center? We walk you through some of the top decentralized social media platforms, from Matrix to Twitter’s Blue Sky initiative. Demonstrations of how to get on some of these systems.
Thursday, April 28, from 4:00pm to 5:00pm EST
Register
Decentralized Apps, the Metaverse and the “Next Big Thing”
Why did Facebook rename itself for the Metaverse? What is the metaverse & how are people experiencing it? How are artists, nonprofits, even the NBA are racking up seven-figure payouts for otherwise mundane pieces of media called NFTs (non-fungible tokens)? Why are they so despised? In this session, we look at the crazy breakthrough apps and items populating decentralized web. Plus demonstrations of how people are working, trading & creating in the metaverse.
Thursday, May 26, from 4:00pm to 5:00pm EST
Register
Ethics of the Decentralized Web & Uses for the Law, Journalism and Humanitarian Work
Web 1.0 and 2.0 started out full of idealism, too. What is to prevent the decentralized web from being corrupted by profit, market domination, and bad actors? What is the normative or social layer we need to build alongside the tech?
Thursday, June 30, from 4:00pm to 5:00pm EST
RegisterPosted in News |