Creating the Policy and Legal Framework for a Location–Enabled Society (5/2-5/3); Filling the News Gap (5/4)

conference

CGA Annual Conference: Creating the Policy and Legal Framework for a Location–Enabled Society

May 2-3, CGIS Tsai Auditorium, Harvard University. Organized by the Center for Geographic Analysis and co-sponsored by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

The 2013 CGA Annual Spring Conference will be held Thursday and Friday, May 2-3, 2013 in the CGIS Tsai Auditorium. It is free and open to the public. Location matters. Energy, sustainable agriculture, biodiversity, natural hazards, traffic and transportation, crime and political instability, water quality and availability, climate change, migration and urbanization – all key issues of the 21st century – have a location component. Critical geographic thinking, understanding and reasoning are essential skills for modern societies, and geospatial technologies for location based data collection, management, analysis and visualization have developed rapidly in recent decades. Today, these technologies are widely applied in routine operations in large corporations, entrepreneurial businesses, government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the social media of our daily lives. They save cost, improve efficiency, increase transparency, enhance communication, and help solve problems. Location-enabled devices are weaving "smart grids" and building "smart cities;" they allow people to discover a friend in a shoppi ng mall, catch a bus at its next stop, check surrounding air quality while walking down a street, or avoid a rain storm on a tourist route – now or in the near future. And increasingly they allow those who provide services to track, whether we are walking past stores on the street or seeking help in a natural disaster. Such deep penetration of the geospatial technologies into people's daily lives, however, generates policy and legal concerns with privacy, ownership rights of location information, national and homeland security, uncertainty about government funding and regulation, and more. These issues are relatively new to the academic community and to human societies at large. Technology developers, industries, legal experts, policy makers and citizen rights advocates would be well served in talking to one another as they grapple with the opportunities and challenges of a location-enabled society. The Centre for Spatial Law and Policy based in Washington, DC, the Center for Geographic Analysis, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University are co-hosting a two-day program examining the legal and policy issues that will impact geospatial technologies and the development of location-enabled societies. Registration Required. more information on CGA's website>

special event

Filling the News Gap in Cambridge and Beyond: Citizen Journalism and Grassroots Media

Saturday, May 4, 9:30-1:30pm ET, Cambridge Public Library. Co-sponsored by the Berkman Center's Digital Media Law Project, Cyberlaw Clinic, and MIT's Center for Civic Media.

Cambridge Community Television will present a half-day forum entitled "Filling the News Gap in Cambridge and Beyond: Citizen Journalism and Grassroots Media" at the Cambridge Public Library on May 4th. The Berkman Center's Digital Media Law Project and Cyberlaw Clinic are pleased to be co-organizers, along with MIT's Center for Civic Media.

The event will explore the quickly expanding world of citizen journalism: how technology is fueling its growth; how that growth is changing the way we see our world, enact change, and disseminate the news; and how people in communities around the world are taking the in