Over the course of the year, I collect some of my favorite (and least favorite) tech policy essays and put them together in an end-of-year blog post so I will remember notable essays in the future. (Here’s my list from 2013.) Here are some of the best tech policy essays I read in 2014 (in chronological order).
- Joel Mokyr – “The Next Age of Invention,” City Journal, Winter 2014. (An absolutely beautiful refutation of the technological pessimism that haunts our age. Mokry concludes by noting that, “technology will continue to develop and change human life and society at a rate that may well dwarf even the dazzling developments of the twentieth century. Not everyone will like the disruptions that this progress will bring. The concern that what we gain as consumers, viewers, patients, and citizens, we may lose as workers is fair. The fear that this progress will create problems that no one can envisage is equally realistic. Yet technological progress still beats the alternatives; we cannot do without it.” Mokyr followed it up with a terrific August 8 Wall Street Journal oped, “What Today’s Economic Gloomsayers Are Missing.“)
- Michael Moynihan – “Can a Tweet Put You in Prison? It Certainly Will in the UK,” The Daily Beast, January 23, 2014. (Great essay on the right and wrong way to fight online hate. Here’s the kicker: “There is a presumption that ugly ideas are contagious and if the already overburdened police force could only disinfect the Internet, racism would dissipate. This is arrant nonsense.”)
- Hanni Fakhoury – “The U.S. Crackdown on Hackers Is Our New War on Drugs,” Wired, January 23, 2014. (“We shouldn’t let the government’s fear of computers justify disproportionate punishment. . . . It’s time for the government to learn from its failed 20th century experiment over-punishing drugs and start making sensible decisions about high-tech punishment in the 21st century.”)
- Carole Cadwalladr – “Meet Cody Wilson, Creator of the 3D-gun, Anarchist, Libertarian,” Guardian/Observer, February 8, 2014. (Entertaining profile of one of the modern digital age’s most fascinating characters. “There are enough headlines out there which ask: Is Cody Wilson a terrorist? Though my favourite is the one that asks: ‘Cody Wilson: troll, genius, patriot, provocateur, anarchist, attention whore, gun nut or Second Amendment champion.’ Though it could have added, ‘Or b) all of the above?'”)
- Michael Sacasas – “What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Technology?” February 14, 2014, and “Traditions of Technological Criticism,” February 15, 2014. (Sacasas continues his discussion of differing conceptions of the term “technology.” In the process, he surveys a wide swath of technology theorists & critics and then offers a rough taxonomy grouping them in various ways. Terrifically interesting. Note: I used Michael’s posts as the launching point for a blog post of my own on, “Defining ‘Technology.'”)
- Glenn Garvin – “TV’s Deregulated Golden Age: Why so few critics understand what made HBO possible,” Reason, February 2014. (Garvin explains how freedom to innovate was the key ingredient in unleashing the modern Golden Age of television. I love the opening lines: “For decades, no art form was more meticulously regulated by the government than television. For decades, no art form was more relentlessly bashed by its critics. Amazingly, nobody ever seems to make a connection between these two facts.” So damn true.)
- Antonis Polemitis – “Bitcoin Series 19: Bizarre Shadowy Paper-Based Payment System Being Rolled Out Worldwide,” Ledra Capital blog, February 17, 2014. (An absolutely epic satire of the Bitcoin technopanic. Hugely entertaining.)
- Eli Dourado – “Why the Left Doesn’t Have to Hate Innovation,” The Umlaut, April 2, 2014. (A sharp response to an Evgeny Morozov rant about innovation policy.)
- John Villasenor – “The Future Of Innovation: Five Things We Can Learn From Bitcoin,” Forbes, May 12, 2014. (Offers “five things that the growth of cryptocurrencies can teach us about the future of innovation.”)
- Marc Andreesen – “This is Probably a Good Time to Say That I Don’t Believe Robots Will Eat All the Jobs…,” Andreessen Horowitz blog, June 13, 2014. (Andreessen single-handedly revolutionized Twitter posting style in 2014 with his “Twitterstorm” format of essentially blogging via multi-part tweets. His mini-manifestos are powerful stuff, and none were better than this one, which he thankfully transcribed and posted to his firm’s blog. In it, he lays out the optimistic case for robotic automation and the many benefits he believes it will bring to society.)
- Adam Thierer – “Muddling Through: How We Learn to Cope with Technological Change,” Medium, June 30, 2014. (Is it wrong to put one of my own essays on this list. Probably! But I am quite proud of this one and, if nothing else, I hope it offers others a good reading list on the topic. Specifically, the essay surveys the extensive writing on “heaven” and “hell” scenarios about the impact of technological change on society.)
- Peter W. Singer & Allan Friedman, “The 5 Biggest Cybersecurity Myths, Debunked,” Wired, July 2, 2014. (Singer & Friedman inject some much-needed sanity back into the techno-panicky debates over cybersecurity and “cyberwar.”)
- Daniel Akst, “What Can We Learn From Past Anxiety Over Automation?” Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2014. (A nice look back at a century’s worth of hand-wringing over the looming threat of automation and job-displacement.)
- Clive Thompson, “How a 1974 sci-fi novel for teens eerily predicted the rise of personal drones,” Medium, September 5, 2014. (Probably my favorite essay of the year since Clive manages to combine lessons from one my favorite childhood books along with my current fascination with “precautionary principle” thinking. Splendid writing, as always, from Thompson.)
- Jason Feifer, “The Internet is Not Harming You. Here’s What’s Harmful: Fearmongering about the Internet,” Fast Company, November 2014. (“Falsely romanticizing the past allows us to think that we stand at a threshold as some last vestige of better, tech-disconnected humans. The truth is that as culture evolves our priorities change as well.”)
- Adam Elkus – “Don’t Fear Artificial Intelligence,” Slate, October 31, 2014. (Elkus pushes back against what he regards as the growing technopanic over artificial intelligence.)
- Steven Johnson – “We’re living the dream; we just don’t realize it,” CNN, November 28, 2014. (“Americans enjoy longer, healthier lives in more stable families and communities than we did 20 years ago. But other than the crime trends, these facts are rarely reported or shared via word-of-mouth channels.”)
- Blake Ross – “Uber.gov: It’s Time to Let the Government Drive,” Medium, December 2, 2014. (A fun tongue-and-cheek piece about just how badly Las Vegas, Nevada — like many other governments — have mangled their “consumer protection” mandate when it comes to transportation services.)
And my nominees for Worst Tech Policy Essays of 2014 go to:
- Evgeny Morozov – “Stunt the Growth” (As the old saying goes, you can’t put lipstick on a pig, but preeminent techno-crank Evgeny Morozov certainly tries his darnedest to dress up Ludditism and make it sexy in this elitist rant endorsing a “degrowth” movement for the world of information technology.)
- Anthony Weiner – “Here’s What Tesla And The Other Silicon Valley ‘Disruptors’ Don’t Get About Politics” (An astonishing defense of cronyist and protectionist state laws that harm consumer welfare. In essence, Weiner says that disruptive entrepreneurs should just shut up on get on with the business of playing ball with politicians and regulators. Don’t rock the boat, you damn innovators!)
- Richard Eskow – “Let’s nationalize Amazon and Google: Publicly funded technology built Big Tech” (Yes, some people still think converting tech companies into public utilities is a good idea. Do I really need to explain why that’s such a bad idea? OK, well I did in this 62-page paper!)
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.