The New Freedom

Tuesday, May 29th, 2007...3:15 pm

Going to IS2K7!

Sorry I haven’t updated in a while. Finals were intense and now I’m home and playing through the new Zelda game for the Wii (which is brilliant). I’ve got some ideas for projects to keep me busy during the summer, though, so look out for those. Anyway.

A few weeks ago I received an email from Rebecca Tabasky inviting me to attend Harvard Law School’s Internet and Society Conference - University: Knowledge Beyond Authority at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. By participating in working groups, the participants of the conference will discuss the place of the University in the future of the digital realm. I never thought I’d end up doing any serious blogging, but looks like I’m going to don my blogger hat and take lots of photos for my Flickr stream and write everything down and all that Web2.0mgblogosphere! stuff. Not bad considering TheNewFreedom started out as a side project for what is essentially a bizarre porn repository.

University: Knowledge Beyond Authority at Harvard Law School

A lot of my excitement is actually coming from getting to ride the Chinatown buses from Philly to New York and New York to Boston. I’ve heard some great stories (”The bus was actually a van,” “The bus broke down and filled with black smoke,” “I had to sit next to a chicken!”) and can’t wait to experience this fantastically cheap mode of transportation. I was hoping I’d get to crash with somebody from the BU-Anarchists mailing list but nobody ever got back to me so I’m staying at the Hilton in the Back Bay. Hotel party, anybody?! Anyway, about the conference..

Universities have a unique role in society, with vastly different goals than governments and businesses. Ideally, a University’s goals are purely intellectual, to further mankind’s general understanding so that knowledge can trickle into society and therefore improve it. What it all boils down to is the idea that the more smart people there are, the better. Unfortunately, this currently isn’t the way things are. A certain few of the very top universities may claim advancing knowledge as their top priority, but from what I’ve seen and from what I’ve heard from people in other schools, this isn’t the case throughout most of the system. For the overwhelming majority, universities are just big businesses. This is especially so for Boston University, which is essentially a gargantuan degree-dealer. Nearly two hundred thousand dollars and four years in exchange for a piece of paper which slightly enhances my employability. Improving knowledge to improve society is not a focus at all. Internet technology has made it so easy, so easy, for schools like this to really prove they actually care about learning and not just money, but they refuse to do it. Hopefully, when the discussion groups present their conclusions to conference’s general assembly, Harvard will begin setting a new precedent about openness in learning which will spread throughout the university system.

Harvard Law Shield
The big issue, however, is money. American private universities are ridiculously expensive, and costs are constantly rising. I assume that most families can’t afford to send their kids to the top schools, which have historically been filled with upper class white people. Although there are some scholarships, most universities (especially BU) are not concerned about rising costs, because as I said earlier, they are simply businesses. If the schools were to embrace openness and use internet technology to let their educations be open to everyone, higher education wouldn’t be restricted to only the rich. Unfortunately, a business has no motivation to do this.
I remember when I told my frat-boy roommate about MIT’s OpenCourseWare. His reaction was “That’s stupid. Why would people still pay to go to MIT?” I wasn’t sure how to answer. Of course, MIT is MIT, and people will always want to go there, but it’s reputation puts it in a special league. I don’t know if the same would be true for a lesser school.

Some questions I’d like to bring up during the conference (from my notebook):

Where do most universities (public/private) get their funding? Will this be reduced if research is opened?
Should public universities be required to provide online courses? Open research?
Should there there be tax deductibility for institutions which release legitimate research into the public domain?
Should there be the creation of Share-Alike type licensing for keeping research open?
Should public universities be required to have complete financial transparency?

I’m not an economist. I don’t know anything about the financing behind Universities. However, I’m certain that if the conference seeks “to establish University as a collective force much like ‘Government’ or ‘Private Enterprise’ in its ability to negotiate and compromise for our needs in the digital environment,” then there will have to be an effort to create a greater divide between University and Business.

One thing I’m really curious about is how capitalism will factor into the discussion. On the conference’s Questions page, there are no mentions of capitalism. It has been a long time since there have been any serious criticisms of capitalism in America, but unfortunately it seems that it might be about time. By no means am I a communist or a socialist, but it isn’t hard to see that the capitalist glories of the 80s and 90s have passed and we are left with a system of legalised bribery and a corporate controlled culture and government. Can internet technology and openness correct these existing problems, or is it time to start looking for new systems entirely? It’ll be interesting to see if anybody even brings the idea up. I doubt it.