Can broadband policymakers learn from more than 100 years of American experience with railroad regulation?
February 2010
Over at “Convergences,” I write on the origins of the idea of a “public option” for health insurance. In part, I note: At a superficial level, the “public option” for health care is both appealing and puzzling. From a competition policy standpoint, the entry into the market of a subsidized competitor offering a wide array [...]
At the FTC’s second Exploring Privacy roundtable at Berkeley in January, many of the complaints about online advertising centered on how difficult it was to control the settings for Adobe’s Flash player, which is used to display ads, videos and a wide variety on other graphic elements on most modern webpages, as well the potential [...]
Clearly many groups contend there’s a “crisis” in journalism, even to the extent of advocating government support of news organizations, despite the dangers inherent in the concept of government-funded ideas and their impact on critique and dissent. Georgetown is hosting a conference today called “The Crisis In Journalism: What should Government Do,” (at which Adam Thierer is speaking), with [...]
Yesterday fellow TLFers Jim Harper and Berin Szoka joined me for an episode of the Surprisingly Free Conversations podcast in which we discussed the buzz around Google Buzz. You can listen to it here. You might also want to check out our other recent episodes, which include: Johannes Bauer on economic incentives and cybersecurity Edmund [...]
This morning I spoke at a Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy event on, “The Crisis in Journalism: What Should the Government Do?” The panel also included Steven Waldman, senior advisor to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, who is heading up the FCC’s new effort on “The Future of Media and the Information Needs of [...]
Ryan Radia brought to my attention this excellent Slate piece by Vaughan Bell entitled, “Don’t Touch That Dial! A History of Media Technology Scares, from the Printing Press to Facebook.” It touches on many of the themes I’ve discussed here in my essays on techno-panics, fears about information overload, and the broader optimists v. pessimist [...]
Just a reminder about tomorrow’s Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy event on, “The Crisis in Journalism: What Should the Government Do?” It will be held at 9:30am tomorrow at the Newseum (Knight Conference Center) located at 555 Pennsylvania Ave here in Washington, DC. Breakfast will be served. (You can RSVP please by emailing: [...]
Of the many tech policy-related books I’ve read in recent years, I can’t recall ever being quite so torn over one of them as much as I have been about Jaron Lanier‘s You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. There were moments while I was reading through it when I was thinking, “Yes, quite right!,” [...]
See my new commentary at CircleID — “How to Manage Internet Abundance”: The Internet has two billion global users, and the developing world is just hitting its growth phase. Mobile data traffic is doubling every year, and soon all four billion mobile phones will access the Net. In 2008, according to a new UC-San Diego [...]
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.