Yochai Benkler
Yochai Benkler
Yochai Benkleris an Israeli-American author and the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He is also a faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University...
NationalityIsraeli
ProfessionEducator
CountryIsrael
chronic contain fear public
I know terrorism is real. And I know fear of it distorts public judgment. Terrorism is like a chronic illness. We have to learn to contain it and live with it.
awareness fiction government scale science scope shut technology
Technology has enabled government to have investigative and situational awareness on a scale and scope that were science fiction when the Stasi shut its doors.
basic billion capacity capital connected knowledge means million necessary people physical producing
Computation, storage, and communications capacity are in the hands of practically every connected person - and these are the basic physical capital means necessary for producing information, knowledge and culture, in the hands of something like 600 million to a billion people around the planet.
allowed civil collect deeply drive government honest perceived reach servants
As long as government is allowed to collect all Internet data, the perceived exigency will drive honest civil servants to reach more broadly and deeply into our networked lives.
change hard internet looking problems separate
One of the problems of writing and working and looking at the Internet is that it's very hard to separate fashion from deep change.
beings culture freedom future knowledge next open property small social time
Next time you open the paper, and you see an intellectual property decision, a telecoms decision, it's not about something small and technical. It is about the future of the freedom to be as social beings with each other, and the way information, knowledge and culture will be produced.
greater judges legal legitimacy power precedent themselves wear
Judges wear legal professionalism and precedent as a mantel that secures legitimacy for their decisions. It's how they distinguish themselves from politicians or administrative agencies, while wielding power that is sometimes much greater than those democratically accountable actors.
fighting blow september
We suffered a terrible blow on 11 September 2001. We responded with fear and anger. A fight-or-flight response is adaptive in any species. For us, given our power, fight was the only response we could imagine.
organization ideas practice
Anonymous is not an organization. It is an idea, a zeitgeist, coupled with a set of social and technical practices.
new-york children world
On 11 September, I was living in Greenwich Village, New York; my children learned to tell south from north by looking at the World Trade Center.
israel years bags
Like crime, terrorism is a fact of life. I grew up in Israel, where every unattended bag was a suspected bomb; when my family moved for a few years, it was to London in the early years of the Troubles.
government needs surveillance
Bringing an end to mass government surveillance needs to be a central pillar of returning to the principles we have put in jeopardy in the early 21st century.