Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
In the ongoing debate over SOPA, PIPA, and rogue websites legislation, most commentators have focused on what Congress should and shouldn’t do to combat these sites. Less attention, however, has been paid to the underlying assumption that these rogue websites represent a public policy problem. While no one has defended websites that defraud consumers by [...]
Over at TIME.com, I consult public choice theory to glean the meaning of last week’s SOPA protest success: The SOPA blackout protest last week was an unprecedented event. Its massive success — with dozens of members of Congress switching their stance in one day under the withering intensity of thousands of phone calls — surprised [...]
In an provocative oped in today’s New York Times, Vint Cerf, one of the pioneers of the Net who now holds the position “chief Internet evangelist” at Google, makes the argument for why “Internet Access Is Not a Human Right.” He argues: technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a [...]
Just last week I was discussing the terrifically interesting work of Michael Sacasas who pens The Frailest Thing, a poetic blog about technology and culture. [see: "Information Revolutions & Cultural / Economic Tradeoffs"] I highly recommend you follow his blog even if you struggle to keep up with his brilliance, as I often do. He posted [...]
My thanks to both Maria H. Andersen and Michael Sacasas for their thoughtful responses to my recent Forbes essay on “10 Things Our Kids Will Never Worry About Thanks to the Information Revolution.” They both go point by point through my Top 10 list and offer an alternative way of looking at each of the trends I [...]
I have always struggled with the work of media theorist Marshall McLuhan. I find it to be equal parts confusing and compelling; it’s persuasive at times and then utterly perplexing elsewhere. I just can’t wrap my head around him and yet I can’t stop coming back to him. Today would have been his 100th birthday. [...]
Copyrights and patents differ from tangible property in fundamental ways. Economically speaking, copyrights and patents are not rivalrous in consumption; whereas all the world can sing the same beautiful song, for instance, only one person can swallow a cool gulp of iced tea. Legally speaking, copyrights and patents exist only thanks to the express terms [...]
John Perry Barlow famously said that in cyberspace, the First Amendment is just a local ordinance. That’s still true, of course, and worth remembering. But at least today there is good news in the shire. The local ordinance still applies with full force, if only locally. As I write in CNET this evening (see “Video [...]
I enjoyed this Wall Street Journal essay by Daniel H. Wilson on “The Terrifying Truth About New Technology.” It touches on many of the themes I’ve discussed here in my essays on techno-panics, fears about information overload, and the broader battle throughout history between technology optimists and pessimists about the impact of new technologies on [...]
John Naughton, a professor at the Open University in the U.K. and a columnist for the U.K. Guardian, has a new essay out entitled “Only a Fool or Nicolas Sarkozy Would Go to War with Facebook.” I enjoyed it because it touches upon two interrelated concepts that I’ve spent years writing about: “moral panic” and [...]
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.
