Yesterday was the final classroom session of CyberOne, though for many of the projects, the work continues indefinitely.  As we were creating the Facebook group supporting Joel Tenenbaum, I found myself following links relating to Joel’s case and our representation of him.  The trail of hyperlinks finally led me to a brief article on Gawker: “Insane Harvard Law Professor Promises MP3 Justice.”  I am confident that, were such a headline written about most of the professors I have learned from, I would dismiss it out of hand as absurd.  But synthesizing my experiences in CyberOne with rumors of past courses and stories (likely apocryphal) of silly projects and antics that have led students to receive top grades, well, the headline at least gave me pause.  Moments later, when I overheard a student suggest a final project of videotaping himself smoking marijuana, perhaps, I thought, Gawker was on to something.  (Though, in fairness, if I were a pot smoker instead of just a poker player, I would likely consider a similar idea myself.  If my choice to turn in straightforward written work costs me an “A+,” so be it; I would gladly film myself playing poker, but I can think of few things less interesting to watch.  If I were a stoner I would also include this link somewhere in my paper: Spiders on Drugs.) 

     As I actually read the article, and as I thought more deeply about CyberOne, I realized that if “insane” is an apt descriptor, it simply could not be meant as a pejorative.  Even this pithy story on a snarky website felt compelled to mention the defense of Daniel Ellsberg and several other unambiguously good and noble, albeit dissimilar and sometimes “quirky,” legal problems tackled.  In the same vein, amidst forays into Second Life of at times debatable pedagogical utility, we in CyberOne have: caused the donation of thousands of grains of rice to the impoverished, while helping to improve upon a potentially very useful learning mechanism; contributed to the rewriting of a nation’s constitution; helped decriminalize a rather innocuous drug, while defending two charged with violating a law; sought to legitimize poker as a strategic thinking tool; and, of course, brought attention and much needed legal defense to a young man facing obscene penalties for violating an arbitrarily enforced law.  Further, I was able to help draft an op-ed that was submitted to the New York Times evaluating the presidential candidates in the framework of the games they play.  This is a tremendous body of work, and I am enormously proud to have played a part in it.  Our tasks and accomplishments imply that “insane” must simply mean “unusual and diverse,” because though our projects lie off the beaten path, they are important, meaningful and legally and intellectually fascinating.

     As I said, I am a poker player.  I have been playing for half of my life, and have been playing seriously for nearly ten years.  (I had about a three month gap between working and the start of law school, during which time I considered myself semi-professional.  I spent several weeks alone in Las Vegas at the World Series of Poker, and, playing online, managed to earn a meaningful portion of my first-year tuition and expenses.)  While I do not think I am a particularly introspective person, my closest friends and I frequently ask each other hypotheticals, most bizarre and silly, but some more serious and interesting.  Questions have included: Airplane food, what's the deal with that?  Who is the walrus? and Who put the goat in there?  One seemingly simple question we have discussed is whether we would still play and enjoy poker if we were incredibly rich.  That is, if the monetary wins and losses of a game of a poker had literally no impact on wealth, would it still be fun to play?  Our gut reactions are that of course it would be fun, in fact, if we didn’t work, we would want to play poker nearly all the time.  Understanding why this was so was considerably harder, and we never reached a satisfactory answer.  Enter CyberOne.  In discussions of poker, and in considering new forms like ThwartPoker, the appeal of the game to me has moved beyond instinctual, to one where I can cogently specify what I like about it.  Aside from the opportunity to win money in a game where I rationally believe I have an edge (although recently it seems everyone in the world has an edge over me), I understand that I enjoy poker for the strategy.  The thrill of poker does not lie in raking a huge pot by getting lucky, but by outmaneuvering an opponent, and raking a huge pot because you were the better player and thinker.  I truly expect that the skills of poker will transfer to my career as a lawyer, or whatever else I end up doing down the line.  Simply, because it is a game that requires thinking about what your opponent’s next move will be given your move (i.e., one must figure out how to exercise control over another person’s future decision, based on past and future actions, while simultaneously interpreting past actions), it really is a useful training tool for any real life scenario that requires decision making under uncertainty.  CyberOne has helped me understand why I love the game so much and I hope that when grading this assignment my professor will take into account how enthusiastic I have been when referring to his course. 

     So CyberOne is a course where we have learned important things, contributed meaningfully to important causes, and explored topics unusual for a place with the gravity of Harvard Law School.  If this really adds up to “insane,” we should all hope the inmates take over the asylum.

What should CyberOne be?

[Suggest future projects and areas of learning.]

1) Poker as an insight into interpersonal relations and leadership. FIRO-B  (developed by Will Schutz from Esalen) is an instrument used by many organizations to help employees understand how and why they interact with each other the way they do. The three primary components of inclusion, control, and openness say a lot about how we interact with others, how we lead, and how we play poker.

2) Using poker as tool to learn about learning. Most people do not have a sophisticated understanding of how they learn. Poker can be a very deep game with complex variables. There is the obvious aspect of learning ABC poker -- many people never even reach that stage. Once players move up, they are often learning more complex poker concepts tacitly. They then have to make that tacit knowledge explicit so that they can challenge it and apply it appropriately in diverse contexts.

3) Related to both 1 and 2, Jared Tendler is working with several high-stakes online players. He is using a psychology/counseling approach to help these players play at their peak performance levels for longer periods of time. I don't have a lot of details, but I imagine that many of these people are developing in ways that impact their general lives in addition to poker.

4) If poker is game that can teach Harvard Law Students (and others) about strategies they can use in their other life experiences, then why can't Nesson use his credentials to find away to legalize the game in most states???  I'm sick of feeling like I have to drive miles to be able to play poker in a legal casino and I'm wary about what is considered legal for me to be playing from my home!  Can he use his knowledge and students (through his class) to work on building a strong case to legalize gambling (poker) in more states/cities???

5) Why not use Prof. Nesson's status as the leading evidence and cyberlaw expert to research and, likely, come out against the increasing reach of Big Brother (i.e., traffic cameras, FISA warrants, digital surveillance, warrantless tracking and processing of emails and phone calls with programs like Carnivore)?  Now that we have a new president, perhaps we can actually affect policy choices in this highly important area.

[Suggestions for editing the article]

1) I recommend having a solid opening paragraph that describes each section of the page and/or some headings. A lot of your mainstream wikis (e.g., wikipedia) have the titles and use them liberally. This helps with organization and navigation.

2) Your linking is sporadic and not well done. First, you refer to several things that your readers may not be familiar with (e.g., Tenenbaum, your op-ed). on your page, You should very briefly describe or summarize what your linking to (e.g., in the case of Tenenbaum). I don't want to get into a clickfest reading a bunch of other stuff that I'm not really that interested in. I also am interested in certain things that your refer to but don't link to (your op-ed piece, the "innocuous drug", poker as a strategic thinking tool, etc.). I can guess what you are referring to in most cases, but I can't be certain enough to edit. maybe you did this intentionally, but it comes across as a sloppily written page.

3) Your final question "what should CyberOne be" simply strikes me as too vague. I suppose it's good at generating a lot of responses -- if you throw enough shit up against the wall, some of it is going to stick. This is not my favorite form of community interaction on the web. Was this your intent, or do you actually have something more specific in mind?

4) I am interested in getting to know this Nesson after reading this article.  I have heard many things about his teachings and was skeptical about taking his course, but after reading this article and researching the articles that were referenced I feel more confident that Nesson can help me learn about strategies that will be beneficial to my career!