Work here: have a voice and change the world (4/16); How to archive for the future? (4/23); DPLA Launch (4/18-19)
Current Berkman People and Projects 2013-04-10
Summary:
Work here: have a voice and change the world
Tuesday, April 16, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor. This event will be webcast live.
Companies like Google and Twitter and Facebook are thought to provide some of the most envied work environments on the planet. These employers promise not only tons of "perks" but the opportunity to work collaboratively on incredibly important, intellectually challenging, and cool problems that matter. These employers also promise employees a real voice in the company through things like weekly all-hands where employees can ask top level executives tough questions and a generally flat corporate structure. These are high trust, high cooperation, open work environments and studies have shown they pay off -- employees work harder and companies do better. But should employees be worried that their trust in their employer, so purposefully cultivated, has been built on promises that are more illusion than enforceable promise? What happens when employees, enticed by these dream-like environments and promises of doing good, see their employer make choices that appear anything but? From unilateral and dramatic changes in working conditions (e.g. taking away work from home being only a recent example) to normatively-laden business decisions (e.g., entering oppressive regimes and handing over user data to them, using software patents offensively [or not], or even donating money to political candidates employees ideologically oppose), are these employers holding up their end of the bargain? Are employees really getting a voice that commands employer response? Some in the labor movement think these employers create nothing more than a mirage, that like the now-prohibited company unions of the past, these employers work to ensure workers feel a sense of ownership and voice but, when push comes to shove, have nothing the company cannot just as easily take away. Others, including many who work at these companies, disagree. This talk will outline the debate and try to make headway towards some answers. Heather Whitney is a Berkman fellow and J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School, where she heads up Submissions for the Journal of Law and Technology. RSVP Required. more information on our website>
How to archive for the future? Ensuring the Present benefits from a Relevant Past
Tuesday, April 23, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor. This event will be webcast live.
If we want to preserve accessibility to valuable information about legal, political, social and cultural discourses in an era of information abundance, it becomes vital to design carefully how we distinguish between noise and significant pieces of information. In order to secure our future, we need to know how to organize our past. Daniel J. Caron joined the federal public service in 1982. In 2009, he was appointed Librarian and Archivist of Canada. One year later, he launched the modernization initiative to ensure that Library and Archives Canada could meet the multiple challenges of the digital environment. Eric Mechoulan is a professor at the Université de Montréal and visiting prof at Harvard, chair of the Intermedial Research Center on Letters, Arts and Techniques as well as the Interdisciplinary Research Center on Emerging Technologies (Montreal). RSVP Required. more information on our website>