SPEAKERS INCLUDE: Daniel Ellsberg, Former State and Defense Dept. Official prosecuted for releasing the Pentagon Papers Clay Shirky, Independent Internet Professional; Adjunct Professor, Interactive Telecommunications Program, New York University Neville Roy Singham, Founder and Chairman, ThoughtWorks Peter Thiel, President, Clarium Capital; Managing Partner, Founder’s Fund Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Law and Professor of Computer Science, […]
Author Archives: Clay Shirky, Daniel Ellsberg, Paul Jay, Roy Singham, Peter Thiel and Jonathan Zittrain
Clay Shirky teaches the theory and practice of social media in NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program and its Journalism department, where he is a Distinguished Writer in Residence. He is the author of, Here Comes Everybody: the Power of Organizing Without Organizations and Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.
He is a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.
In 1967, Daniel Ellsberg worked on the top secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000 page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; in 1971 he gave it to the New York Times, the Washington Post and 17 other newspapers. His trial, on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him, which led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.
Ellsberg is the author of three books: Papers on the War (1971), Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (2002), and Risk, Ambiguity and Decision (2001). In December 2006 he was awarded the 2006 Right Livelihood Award, known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize," in Stockholm, Sweden, ". . . for putting peace and truth first, at considerable personal risk, and dedicating his life to inspiring others to follow his example."
Since the end of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg has been a lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era, wrongful U.S. interventions and the urgent need for patriotic whistleblowing.
Paul Jay is the CEO and Senior Editor of The Real News Network. 9-11 and the Iraq war were turning points in history and it had an irreversible effect in Paul Jay's life. Alarmed by the inability of major media to ask the underlying questions, Paul decided to combine his film and television experience and his quest to know the undercurrents of news to build an independent television network. Three years later The Real News Network is on it's way. Paul is an internationally acclaimed, award winning filmmaker whose films include Return To Kandahar, Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows, Lost in Las Vegas, and Never-Endum-Referendum. For a decade, Paul was the Executive Producer of counterSpin - Canada's flagship debate show on CBC Newsworld. He was also the Founding Chair of Hot Docs!, International Documentary Film Festival (Toronto), now the largest in North America.
Roy Singham is founder and chairman of ThoughtWorks, Inc. With more than 20 years of technology and executive management experience, Singham is a globally-renowned information technology thought leader. Sigham and ThoughtWorks are recognized experts in Enterprise Architecture, Agile development, large scale software development including highly distributed teams, Open Source Software, Ruby, .NET and Web Services.
During the last five years, Singham has provided management services to clients in the insurance, mortgage, energy, leasing, retail and software development industries. He has also directed multi-million dollar projects with clients including Caterpillar Financial Services, Dixons Group, Progressive Insurance and Transamerica.
One of Sigham's passions is evolving cultural and organizational patterns to create the most advanced internally and externally socially networked Consultancies in the industry. Singham drives the innovative cultural changes that enable ThoughtWorks to remain the world's most influential company in the arena of bespoke business software development.
Peter Thiel is a technology entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. He has founded and helped launch numerous companies--from PayPal to Facebook--and runs Clarium, a global macro hedge fund manager. He also works to promote and protect freedom through the Thiel Foundation and by sponsoring many nonprofit organizations. Mr. Thiel earned a BA. in philosophy from Stanford University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. He lives in San Francisco.
Jonathan Zittrain is Professor of Law and Professor of Computer Science, Harvard University, and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. He is a member of the Board of Trustee of the Internet Society and is on the board of advisors for Scientific American.
His research interests include battles for control of digital property and content, cryptography, electronic privacy, the roles of intermediaries within Internet architecture, and the useful and unobtrusive deployment of technology in education.
He performed the first large-scale tests of Internet filtering in China and Saudi Arabia in 2002, and now as part of the OpenNet Initiative he has co-edited a study of Internet filtering by national governments, "Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering," and its sequel, "Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace. "
His book "The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It" is available from Yale University Press and Penguin UK.
