This week UC Berkeley is recognizing the 40th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement with a series of lectures and re-enactments. You can check out the goings-on in Sproul Plaza yourself at demonstrate.
Ken Goldberg’s viewer-controlled robotic camera has attracted a lot of controversy on campus lately, which of course was exactly the point. Most people assume that the name of the project was selected to evoke the memory of the demonstrations that took place here 40 years ago. Personally, I believe that the term is used more in the spirit of a software demonstration: to show the power and promise of a particular technology. In this case, the audience is not a conference table full of VCs or a potential customers but the citizens of Berkeley, who are mostly asleep to the fact that they are constantly surveilled.
Anyway, check out the cam and remember the moment when power stopped trying to limit speech overtly and began studying how to limit it covertly…
