This past Friday the Berkman Center hosted a hyperpublic symposium on designing privacy in public spaces online. Urs Gasser opened the conference with an excellent example: Google street view, which allows users looking for directions to wander the streets like a pedestrian would. Google was sued over its street view application in Switzerland right after it went online, and the court ordered that Google couldn't take its street view cameras anywhere a normal pedestrian wouldn't go, nor could it show any faces. In essence, we have an application available online to the public that still maintains some private spaces. Speakers at the symposium included computer scientists, ethnographers, architects, historians, artists and legal scholars, all of whom talked about how they define privacy in their respective fields and how they define spaces for that in what they produce.
After the syposium, the interns went out to the Cheers Pub and did a little touring around downtown Boston. The Cheers pub was nice, though super touristy (what do you expect, really?) and we also hit another small bar called the Mallilave in the North End of Boston. This Saturday, I went to the Union Oyster House in downtown Boston with one of the Berkman Center interns. It bills itself as the oldest restaurant in the U.S., and was a favorite of JFK. If you're ever in Boston and you like seafood, I'd recommend it. All in all, the weekend was a good time and I got to see some nice attractions in the city.
However, after being crammed on the subway with hundreds of people -- by that I mean each train was standing room only and everyone had to grab onto metal rails to keep from falling -- I've gotten sick. It started Sunday with my usual symptoms, but by Monday I decided I wouldn't let it beat me. I was determined to make it to the Berkman Center and all in all had a productive day. I got several bits of work done and met up for lunch with Trey Grayson, former Secretary of State and new director of the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy Center. After work hours I met with an HLS professor (Stephen Shay) to talk about job hunting advice, and in the end felt pretty good about my plan for the coming year.
And as I walked home, the Ick started. It got worse the closer I got to Somerville, and eventually I realized that maybe working today wasn't a good call.
I've been at home for two days now, and hope to venture back to the land of the living Thursday.
But my advice for any travelers not used to mass transit -- bring along hand sanitizer. Seriously.
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