Harvard’s Berkman Center Launches Publius Project
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Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 5/19/2008 8:52:00 AM
A new venture of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society strives to foster conversation about regulation of the Internet. Launched just this month, the Publius Project could be considered a Federalist Papers for the Cyber Age.As educators know well, the digital landscape is changing at supersonic speed—fueled by young people who, practically born with a mouse in their hand, are helping transform the online world.
What the next iteration of this new terrain will be, and how it will grow and be supported, are some of the issues the Publius Project plans to address. Engaging authors—many with deep roots in related areas including new media, government, and economics—will join the dialogue, contributing short op-ed-style pieces online.
The hope is that within these papers, and the rebuttals and comments that will inevitably follow, a way to shape and view this frontier will blossom.
The project’s launch coincided with the expansion of Berkman Center, originally founded as a research center within Harvard University in 1997, to an “interfaculty initiative,” according to a release, which will allow other university faculty and departments to work together in fueling discourse about this new cyber era, with the Publius Project one of its first efforts.
