Board of Directors

Public Knowledge is a Washington DC based public interest group working to defend your rights in the emerging digital culture. More about PK »

Directory

  • Hal Abelson
    Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    bio | resources | website

  • David Bollier
    Writer and Activist
    bio | resources | website

  • Warrington Hudlin
    Founder & Chief, dvRepublic
    President, Black Filmmaker Foundation
    bio | website

  • Hon. Reed Hundt
    Senior Advisor, McKinsey and Company
    bio | resources

  • Brewster Kahle
    Internet Archive, Digital Librarian, Director and Co-founder
    bio

  • Laurie Racine
    President, dotSub
    Senior VP of Strategy and Business Development, Eyespot
    bio | resources

  • Gigi B. Sohn
    President, Public Knowledge
    bio | resources

  • Jonathan Taplin
    Adjunct Professor, USC Annenberg School for Communication
    bio | resources | website

Board Bios

Hal Abelson

Hal Abelson

Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
resources | website

Harold (Hal) Abelson is Class of 1922 Professor Of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a Fellow of the IEEE. He holds an A.B. degree from Princeton University and a Ph.D. degree in mathematics from MIT. In 1992, Abelson was designated as one of MIT’s six inaugural MacVicar Faculty Fellows, in recognition of his significant and sustained contributions to teaching and undergraduate education. Abelson was recipient in 1992 of the Bose Award (MIT’s School of Engineering teaching award). Abelson is also the winner of the 1995 Taylor L. Booth Education Award given by IEEE Computer Society, cited for his continued contributions to the pedagogy and teaching of introductory computer science.

Abelson has a longstanding interest in using computation as a conceptual framework in teaching. He directed the first implementation of Logo for the Apple II, which made the language widely available on personal computers beginning in 1981; and published a widely selling book on Logo in 1982. His book “Turtle Geometry,” written with Andrea diSessa in 1981, presented a computational approach to geometry has been cited as “the first step in a revolutionary change in the entire teaching/learning process.”

Together with Gerald Sussman, Abelson developed MIT’s introductory computer science subject, “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs,” a subject organized around the notion that a computer language is primarily a formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology, rather than just a way to get a computer to perform operations. This work, through Abelson and Sussman’s popular computer science textbook, videotapes of their lectures, and the availability on personal computers of the Scheme dialect of Lisp (used in teaching the course), has had a world-wide impact on university computer-science education.

Abelson and Sussman also cooperate in codirecting the MIT Project on Mathematics and Computation, a joint project of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, whose goal is to create better computational tools for scientists and engineers. Together with their students, Abelson and Sussman are combining techniques from numerical computing, symbolic algebra, and heuristic programming to develop programs that not only perform massive numerical computations, but that also interpret these computations and “discuss” the results in qualitative terms. Programs such as these could form the basis for intelligent scientific instruments that monitor physical systems based upon high-level behavioral descriptions. More generally, they could lead to a new generation of computational tools that can autonomously explore complex physical systems, and which will play an important part in the future practice of science and engineering. At the same time, these programs incorporate computational formulations of scientific knowledge that can form the foundations of better ways to teach science and engineering.

Selected Resources

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David Bollier

David Bollier

Writer and Activist
resources | website

David Bollier is an independent strategist, journalist, and consultant specializing in progressive public policy, the impact of digital media on democratic culture, consumer rights and citizen action.

Much of Bollier’s recent work has focused on developing a new analysis and language for reclaiming “the commons,” the diverse array of publicly owned assets, gift-economies and natural systems that function in tandem with markets. His critique of the topic is set forth in Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth (Routledge; www.silenttheft.com).

Bollier is a Senior Fellow at the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg Center for Communication and has been a public affairs and political advisor to television writer/producer Norman Lear since 1984. He is also co-founder of a new public-interest policy advocacy organization, Public Knowledge, which represents the public’s stake in copyright, patent and Internet issues. Bollier consults with a variety of nonprofit organizations and foundations, has served as a rapporteur for the Aspen Institute for many years, and is the author of six books (www.bollier.org.)

Educated at Amherst College (B.A.) and Yale Law School (M.S.L.), Bollier lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Selected Resources

  • Control of creativity? Fashion’s secret
    David Bollier and Laurie Racine wonder why the film and music industries battle over copyright while the fashion industry accepts derivation and appropriation as creative tools. David Bollier and Laurie Racine, Christian Science Moniter. 2003/09/09

  • The Cornucopia of the Commons
    David Bollier on the gift economy in software development, blood donation and community gardens in New York City. David Bollier, Yes! Magazine. 2001/06/01

  • Reclaming the American Commons
    A transcript of David Bollier’s keynote speech from the New America Foundation’s conference reclaiming the commons. David Bollier. 2001/03/12

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Warrington Hudlin

Warrington Hudlin

Founder & Chief, dvRepublic
President, Black Filmmaker Foundation
website

Warrington Hudlin is the Founder & Chief of the dvRepublic.org online community and the President of the Black Filmmaker Foundation (BFF). Warrington Hudlin has built a distinguished career as a pioneering black filmmaker, organizer, and curator.

Warrington Hudlin has production deals with MTV Networks and Black Entertainment Televison (BET). He is currently producing IRON RING, a martial arts reality television series that premieres on BET in the Fall of 2007.

Warrington Hudlin is best known as the producer of popular feature films, HOUSE PARTY, BOOMERANG, and BEBE KIDS.

His television producing credits include the HBO award winning drama trilogy, COSMIC SLOP, and UNSTOPPABLE, a conversation with the legendary pioneers of African America cinema: Melvin Van Pebbles, and the late Gordon Parks and Ossie Davis.

Equally at home with digital media as traditional film and television, Hudlin is the Executive Producer of several online destinations including dvRepublic.org, Weapons of Misdirection.com, Changing the Frame.com, the soon to be launched, Where My Ladies At.com.

Hudlin serves as the Executive Producer of the BFF Lab (a non profit incubator of multi-cultural, socially concerned, entertainment driven, new media). With funding from the Ford Foundation, the BFF Lab commissioned digital films by a new generation of filmmakers of color including THE ANTI-VIGILANTE; THE BREACH; HATERS; and ONCE UPON A RIDE.

The first online interactive narrative produced in the BFF Lab, WEAPONS OF MISDIRECTION, was funded by the Nathan Cummings Foundation and won a 2005 Webby Award as best political website. The BFF Lab’s most recent online narrative, WHERE MY LADIES AT, was funded by the Ford Foundation and will launch in the 2007.

Warrington Hudlin’s success in identifying and developing new talent led to a contract with MTV networks to set up a Lab to assist with their diversity outreach during the launch of the Spike TV channel. In the lab and for the channel, Hudlin executive produced TV pilots for BIG HEAD PEOPLE; HERE COMES MUSTAFA; and WATCHMEN: DEFENDERS OF DEMOCRACY. Hudlin created and administered a Lab for The N Channel (MTV Networks) based on the same model.

Warrington Hudlin is a member of the board of trustees and guest film curator at the Museum of Moving Image in NYC. At the Museum, Hudlin curates a monthly martial arts film series: Fist & Sword.

Hudlin is a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences and is on the board of directors of Public Knowlege ( an advocacy group working to defend your rights in the emerging digital culture). He is a member of the Nielsen Media Research African American Advisory Council as well as the NYC Working Group on Diversity in Television and Film Production.

Hudlin serves on the advisory board of the Tribeca Film Institute’s All Access Program, Asian Cinevision, the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE), Yale in Hollywood Film Festival, and the national advisory board of the Intel Computer Clubhouse.

Hudlin has programmed film festivals and series in Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean and was the co-founder and curator of the Acapulco Black Film Festival, which was held in Mexico from 1997 to 2001.

For his service to the film and television industry, Hudlin received the inaugural Diversity Award from the Mayor of the City of New York, the Melvin Van Peebles Trailblazer Award from the American Black Film Festival, the Pioneer Award from African American Women in Cinema, the Trailblazer Award from the Hip Hop Association, and the Revolution Award from Imagenation.

Warrington Hudlin is a native of East St. Louis, Illinois, and a graduate of Yale University.

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Hon. Reed Hundt

Reed Hundt

Senior Advisor, McKinsey and Company
resources

Reed E. Hundt is an advisor on information industries to McKinsey and Company, a worldwide management consulting firm. His work with McKinsey has focused on helping senior management and boards address a wide range of strategic and other leadership challenges.

He also serves on the board of directors of three publicly traded companies, Allegiance Telecom, Inc., Expedia, and Intel Corp. He is a special advisor to Blackstone Group, a New York-based private equity firm, and a venture partner at Benchmark Capital, a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California, specializing in investments in high-tech companies. He teaches a seminar cross-listed at the Yale Law School and the Yale School of Management, where he serves as a member of the advisory committee.

Hundt served four years as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), from 1993 to 1997. He also helped negotiate the World Trade Organization Telecommunications agreement, opening markets in 69 countries to competition and dropping barriers to foreign investment. He is especially proud of his role in making the largest single national commitment to K-12 education in America’s history: the Snowe-Rockefeller program that dedicates more than $2 billion annually to connect all classrooms in the country to the Internet.

Hundt is the author of, “You Say You Want A Revolution: A Story of Information Age Politics.” (Yale University Press, 2000). He has also been Co-Chairman of The Forum on Communications and Society at The Aspen Institute.

Selected Resources

  • TV Goes Digital
    A background report on the DTV Transition by PBS’s NewsHour featuring Gigi B. Sohn, PK’s President, and Reed Hundt, former FCC Chairman who is on PK’s Board of Directors. PBS. 1997/04/03

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Brewster Kahle

Brewster Kahle

Digital Librarian, Director and Co-founder, Internet Archive

Brewster has built technologies, companies, and institutions to advance the goal of universal access to all knowledge. He currently oversees the non-profit Internet Archive as founder and Digital Librarian, which is now one of the largest digital archives in the world.

As a digital archivist, Brewster has been active in technology, business, and law.

Keywords: MIT’82, helped start Thinking Machines, founder WAIS Wide Area Information Servers, Internet strategist AOL, co-founded Alexa Internet, sold to Amazon.com, directs Internet Archive.

Details: After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1982, he helped start a supercomputer company, Thinking Machines, that built systems for searching large text collections. In 1989, he invented the Internet’s first publishing and distributed search system, WAIS (Wide Area Information Server). WAIS Inc. created the online presence for many of the world’s largest publishers, and was purchased by America Online in 1995. In 1996, Brewster co-founded Alexa Internet, which provides search and discovery services included in more than 90 percent of web browsers, and was purchased by Amazon in 1999.

Brewster has also worked to revise law and policy in light technical advances. He is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a plaintiff in Kahle v. Gonzales (formerly Kahle v. Ashcroft), which challenges recent copyright term extensions.

Brewster is profiled in Digerati: Encounters with the Cyber Elite (HardWired, 1996). He was selected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005, the AlwaysOn/Technorati Open Media 100 in 2005, the Upside 100 in 1997, the Micro Times 100 in 1996 and 1997, and the Computer Week 100 in 1995.

Appointments:

  • Univeristy of North Carolina, School of Library and Information Science, Visiting Scholar 2006-Present
  • Internet Archive, Digital Librarian, Director, Co-Founder 1996-present
  • American Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected as a member in 2005
  • Electronic Frontier Foundation, Board Member
  • Alexa Internet, President, CEO, Co-Founder (sold to Amazon.com) 1996-2002 The Library of Congress, National Digital Strategy Advisory Board April 2001
  • America Online, Internet Strategist 1995-1996
  • Wide Area Information Servers, Inc (WAIS), Founder, President (sold to AOL) 1992-1995
  • Thinking Machines with Apple, Dow Jones, KPMG, WAIS Inventor and Project Leader 1989-1992
  • Thinking Machines, Scientist 1983-1992. Helped start company, chips, boards, architected CPU of CM2

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Laurie Racine

Laurie Racine

President, dotSub
Senior VP of Strategy and Business Development, Eyespot
resources

Laurie Racine is Co-founder and President of dotSUB, a young technology company that has developed a browser based tool for subtitling films from one language into any other language. Racine holds the position of Senior Fellow at the Norman Lear Center of the Annenberg School of Communications, University of Southern California. She serves as co-director of the Lear Center’s Creativity, Commerce and Culture Project. She is Chair of Teachers Without Borders and serves on the board of directors of Creative Commons and National Video Resources.

Until she closed the foundation in January of 2006, Racine served as President of the Center for the Public Domain, a private foundation endowed by the founders of Red Hat Inc. The Center was devoted to exploring the balance between intellectual property rights and freely reusable knowledge that is the basis of our cultural and scientific heritage. During her tenure she co-founded Public Knowledge and currently serves as Board Chair.

Racine was the first managing director of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and then served as President of Doc Arts for six years, the non-profit corporation that produces the festival. Before starting the Center for the Public Domain, Racine was the Director of the Health Sector Management Program at the Fuqua School of Business of Duke University. She has spent many years as a strategist and consultant for non-profit and for-profit corporations.

Selected Resources

  • Control of creativity? Fashion’s secret
    David Bollier and Laurie Racine wonder why the film and music industries battle over copyright while the fashion industry accepts derivation and appropriation as creative tools. David Bollier and Laurie Racine, Christian Science Monitor. 2003/09/09

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Gigi B. Sohn

Gigi B. Sohn

President, Public Knowledge
resources

Gigi Sohn is an internationally known communications attorney. In September 2001, she founded Public Knowledge with Laurie Racine (then President of the Center for the Public Domain) and activist/author David Bollier.

Gigi serves as PK’s chief strategist, fundraiser and public face. She is frequently quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, as well as in trade and local press. Gigi has been published in the Washington Post, Variety, CNET and Legal Times. In addition, she has appeared on numerous television and radio programs, including the Today Show, The McNeil-Lehrer Report, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition.

Gigi is a Non-Resident Fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg Center, and a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne Faculty of Law. She has been an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University.

Gigi served as a Project Specialist in the Ford Foundation’s Media, Arts and Culture unit and as Executive Director of the Media Access Project, a public interest law firm that represents citizens’ rights before the FCC and the courts. In 1997, President Clinton appointed Gigi to serve as a member of his Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters. In May 2006, the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Gigi its Internet “Pioneer” Award.

Gigi currently serves on the board of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC) and Broadcasters’ Child Development Center (BCDC). She is a member of the advisory board of the Future of Music Coalition and the Center for Public Integrity’s “Well Connected” Telecommunications Project. Gigi served on the District of Columbia Bar Board of Governors from 1997-2000.

Gigi holds a B.S. in Broadcasting and Film, Summa Cum Laude, from the Boston University College of Communication and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Selected Resources

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Jonathan Taplin

Jonathan Taplin

Adjunct Professor, USC Annenberg School for Communication
resources | website

Jonathan Taplin’s areas of specialization are in International Communication Management and the field of digital media entertainment. Taplin began his entertainment career in 1969 as Tour Manager for Bob Dylan and The Band. In 1973 he produced Martin Scorsese’s first feature film, Mean Streets which was selected for the Cannes Film Festival. Between 1974 and 1996, Taplin produced 26 hours of television documentaries (including The Prize and Cadillac Desert for PBS) and 12 feature films including The Last Waltz, Until The End of the World, Under Fire and To Die For. His films were nominated for Oscar and Golden Globe awards and chosen for The Cannes Film Festival seven times.

In 1984 Taplin acted as the investment advisor to the Bass Brothers in their successful attempt to save Walt Disney Studios from a corporate raid. This experience brought him to Merrill Lynch, where he served as vice president of media mergers and acquisitions. In this role, he helped re-engineer the media landscape on transactions such as the leveraged buyout of Viacom. Taplin was a founder of Intertainer and has served as its Chairman and CEO since June 1996. Intertainer was the pioneer video-on-demand company for both cable and broadband Internet markets. Taplin holds two patents for video on demand technologies.

Mr. Taplin graduated from Princeton University. He is a member of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and sits on the advisory board of the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland.

Selected Resources

  • The IPTV Revolution
    The IPTV Revolution, presented at “The Network Society and the Knowledge Economy: Portugal in the Global Context”, a seminar convened in Lisbon, Portugal, by His Excellency the President of the Portuguese Republic, Dr. Jorge Sampaio. Jonathan Taplin. 2005/06/01

  • IP3
    Conventional wisdom would suggest that the rise of a U.S.-centric knowledge economy would lead to a world where American economic and cultural forces continue to dominate. But what if that vision is a misreading of the current moment in history? Perhaps the age of the large-scale hierarchical enterprise such as Time Warner or Pfizer is at its zenith and the forces of the digital revolution are about to introduce an era of profound devolution where power is surrendered to local units from vast centralized Knowledge distribution conglomerates. Jonathan Taplin. 2005/06/01

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