Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
[Not sure if someone else has mentioned this here yet, but... ] There’s a terrific piece by Paul Korzeniowski in Forbes this week about the Comcast-BitTorrent debacle called, “Feds and Internet Service Providers Don’t Mix.” It’s well worth reading the whole thing, but I particularly like this passage: For whatever reason, some believe ISPs should [...]
Apologies for the non-technology post, but since the only topics of conversation these days are Wall Street, credit default swaps, and Putin’s flights over Alaska, I thought I’d post my review of Dave Smick’s new book The World is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy…the Mortgage Crisis Was Only the Beginning. <div style=”100%”><a href=”http://www.scribd.com/doc/6320801/Not-So-Flat-After-All-Forbescom-092908-by-Bret-Swanson”>”Not [...]
Three new pieces by me are up this week: Over at Ars Technica, I’ve got the first installment of a three-part series on the future of self-driving cars. The technology has made tremendous strides in the last five years, and we’re now at the point where it’s less a science fiction concept and more an [...]
If you find the title of this post provocative, you’ll be interested in a Cato Institute book forum on Friday, October 10th. In The Crime of Reason, Nobel laureate in physics Robert Laughlin argues that intellectual property laws and government security demands threaten the development of new knowledge. Without change, we risk bequeathing our heirs [...]
This is a good article by Harvard professor Harry Lewis. He worries that the ease of spreading lies on the Net puts us at risk of losing “a thoughtful, analytical, educated citizenry, capable of sharing responsibility for the long-term welfare of the nation.” Here’s a excerpt from his piece: “If he wins, Barack Obama is [...]
Register here for what looks like a very interesting event: In 1995, Internet entrpreneur Craig Newmark started Craigslist — an online community featuring free classified ads. Thirteen years later, Craigslist serves 567 cities in 55 countries and is a good example of how the power, reach and openness of the Internet can help turn a simple idea [...]
In my nearly 17 years of public policy work, I have never felt so vindicated about something as I did this weekend when I read Dan P. Lee’s Philadelphia magazine feature on “Whiffing on Wi-Fi.” It is a spectacularly well-written piece about the spectacular failure of Philadelphia’s short-lived experiment with municipally-subsidized wi-fi, which was called [...]
I’ve posted a copy of the proposed bailout legislation online in html format, which is easier to read, copy, and paste. Considering its size and significance, I urge you to review it and share it with others. I pointed out before that my employer, the Cato Institute, has several experts on the bailout, and media [...]
Incidentally, I’ve been perusing 419eaters.com, and it’s full of comedy gold. I think this one might be my favorite: Dead Parrot sketch – Scammer style! from 419eater.com on Vimeo. First the guy got the scammer to carve a bust of his own head. Then he claimed an African squirrel had eaten a hole through the [...]
Walking around campus has given me plenty of time to listen to podcasts lately, and I wanted to recommend the best of what I’ve listened to over the last couple of weeks: Russell Roberts and Chris Anderson: I just recently started listening to Russ Roberts’s excellent podcast, EconTalk, and so I’ve been catching up on [...]
February 13, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
