[I’ve been working on an outline for a book I hope to write surveying technological skepticism throughout history. I first started thinking about this topic two years when I noticed that a great number of recent books about Internet policy could generally be grouped into one of two camps: Internet optimists vs. Internet pessimists. I subsequently penned an essay on the subject that generated a fair bit of attention. So, I figured I must be on to something, and the more Net policy books I read, the more I realized that the divisions between these two camps were growing wider and increasingly heated. Thus, I thought I would share this very rough draft (much of it still in outline form) of the opening chapter of that book I want to write about this great intellectual war over the impact of technology on society. I invite reader input.]
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The impact of technological change on culture, learning, and morality has long been the subject of intense debate, and every technological revolution brings out a fresh crop of both pessimists and pollyannas. Indeed, a familiar cycle has repeat itself throughout history whenever new modes of production (from mechanized agriculture to assembly-line production), means of transportation (water, rail, road, or air), energy production processes (steam, electric, nuclear), medical breakthroughs (vaccination, surgery, cloning), or communications techniques (telegraph, telephone, radio, television) have appeared on the scene.
The cycle goes something like this. A new technology appears. Those who fear the sweeping changes brought about by this technology see a sky that is about to fall. These “techno-pessimists” predict the death of the old order (which, ironically, is often a previous generation’s hotly-debated technology that others wanted slowed or stopped). Embracing this new technology, they fear, will result in the overthrow of traditions, beliefs, values, institutions, business models, and much else they hold sacred.
The pollyannas, by contrast, look out at the unfolding landscape and see mostly rainbows in the air. Theirs is a rose-colored world in which the technological revolution du jour is seen as improving the general lot of mankind and bringing about a better order. If something has to give, then the old ways be damned! For such “techno-optimists,” progress means some norms and institutions must adapt—perhaps even disappear—for society to continue its march forward.
Our current Information Revolution is no different. It too has its share of techno-pessimists and techno-optimists. Indeed, before most of us had even heard of the Internet, people were already fighting about it—or at least debating what the rise of the Information Age meant for our culture, society, and economy. Continue reading →
I’ve always generally agreed with the conventional wisdom about micropayments as a method of funding online content or services: Namely, they won’t work. Clay Shirky, Tim Lee, and many others have made the case that micropayments face numerous obstacles to widespread adoption. The primary issue seems to be the “mental transaction cost” problem: People don’t want to be diverted–even for just a few seconds–from what they are doing to pay a fee, no matter how small. [That is why advertising continues to be the primary monetization engine of the Internet and digital services.]
That being said, I keep finding examples of how micropayments do work in some contexts and it has kept me wondering if there’s still a chance for micropayments to work in other contexts (like funding media content). For example, I mentioned here before how shocked I was when I went back and looked at my eBay transactions for the past couple of years and realized how many “small-dollar” purchases I had made via PayPal (mostly dumb stickers and other little trinkets). And the micropayment model also seems to be doing reasonably well in the online music world. In January 2009, Apple reported that the iTunes Music Store had sold over 6 billion tracks.
And then there are mobile application stores. Just recently I picked up a Droid and I’ve been taking advantage of the rapidly growing Android marketplace, which recently hit the 20,000 apps mark. Like Apple’s 100,000-strong App Store, there’s a nice mix of paid and free apps, and even though I’m downloading mostly freebies, I’ve started buying more paid apps. Many of them are “upsells” from free apps I downloaded. In most cases, they are just 99 cents. A few examples of paid apps I’ve downloaded or considered buying: Stocks Pro, Mortgage Calc Pro, Currency Guide, Photo Vault, Weather Bug Elite, and Find My Phone. And there are all sorts of games, clocks, calendars, ringtones, heath apps, sports stuff, utilities, and more that are 99 cents or $1.99. Some are more expensive, of course.
Continue reading →
“Liberty upsets patterns.” That was one of the many lessons that the late Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick taught us in his 1974 masterpiece “Anarchy, State, and Utopia.” What Nozick meant was that there is a fundamental tension between liberty and egalitarianism such that when people are left to their own devices, some forms of inequality would be inevitable and persistent throughout society. (Correspondingly, any attempt to force patterns, or outcomes, upon society requires a surrender of liberty.)
No duh, right? Most people understand this today–even if some of them are all too happy to hand their rights over to the government in exchange for momentary security or some other promise. In the world of media policy, however, many people still labor under the illusion that liberty and patterned equality are somehow reconcilable. That is, some media policy utopians and Internet pollyannas would like us to believe that if you give every man, woman, and child a platform on which to speak, everyone will be equally heard. Moreover, in pursuit of that goal, some of them argue government should act to “upset patterns” and push to achieve more “balanced” media outcomes. That is the philosophy that has guided the “media access” movement for decades and it what fuels the “media reformista” movement that is led by groups like the (inappropriately named) Free Press, which was founded by neo-Marxist media theorist Robert McChesney.
Alas, perfect media equality remains an illusive pipe dream. As I have pointed out here before, there has never been anything close to “equal outcomes” when it comes to the distribution or relative success of books, magazines, music, movies, book sales, theater tickets, etc. A small handful of titles have always dominated, usually according to a classic “power law” or “80-20″ distribution, with roughly 20% of the titles getting 80% of the traffic / revenue. And this trend is increasing, not decreasing, for newer and more “democratic” online media.
For example, recent research has revealed that “the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets” and “the top 15% of the most prolific [Wkipedia] editors account for 90% of Wikipedia’s edits.” As Clay Shirky taught us back in 2003 in this classic essay, the same has long held true for blogging, where outcomes are radically inegalitarian, with a tiny number of blogs getting the overwhelming volume of blogosphere attention. The reason, Shirky pointed out, is that:
Continue reading →
Mark Cuban penned a sharp piece over the weekend entitled “Who Cares What People Write?” in which he explains why people shouldn’t get too worked up about what they might read about themselves (or their organizations) online since, chances are, very few people are ever going to see it anyway. To explain why, Cuban identifies two kinds of “Outties” (which is shorthand for someone who publishes on the web): (1) “professional outties” (or “Those that attempt to publish in a limited number of locations to a maximum number of readers or listeners, with a reasonable expectation of building a following.”) and (2) “amateur outties” (“Those that attempt to publish in as many places as possible hoping they are “discovered.”) But those “amateur outties… really [have] no impact on 99.99pct of the population,” Cuban argues, “[and the] vast majority of what is written on the web goes unread and even that which is read, is quickly forgotten.” Moreover, “even when something is heavily commented on, it is usually just an onslaught by the ‘amateur outties.’”
Thus, Cuban concludes:
Fragmentation applies to 100pct of media. We have gotten to the point where it is so easy to publish to the web, that most of it is ignored. When it is not ignored and it garners attention, the attention is usually from those people, the amateur outties, whose only goal is to create volume on the web in hopes of being noticed.
That’s not to say there are no sites that people consume and pay attention to. There obviously are. That’s where the “professional outties” come in. They are branded. They have an identity that usually extends beyond the net. They are able to make a living publishing, even if its not much of one. They are the sites that people consume and may possibly remember.
The moral of the story is that on the internet, volume is not engagement. Traffic is not reach. When you see things written about a person, place or thing you care about, whether its positive or negative, take a very deep breath before thinking that the story means anything to anyone but you.
Continue reading →
It’s been a big year for tech policy books. Several important titles were released in 2008 that offer interesting perspectives about the future of the Internet and the impact digital technologies are having on our lives, culture, and economy. Back in September, I compared some of the most popular technology policy books of the past five years and tried to group them into two camps: “Internet optimists” vs. “Internet pessimists.” That post generated a great deal of discussion and I plan on expanding it into a longer article soon. In this post, however, I will merely list what I regard as the most important technology policy books of the past year.
What qualifies as an “important” tech policy book? Basically, it’s a title that many people in this field are currently discussing and that we will likely be talking about for many years to come. I want to make it clear, however, that merely because a book appears on this list it does not necessarily mean I agree with everything said in it. In fact, I found much with which to disagree in my picks for the two most important books of 2008, as well as many of the other books on the list. [Moreover, after reading all these books, I am more convinced than ever that libertarians are badly losing the intellectual battle of ideas over Internet issues and digital technology policy. There's just very few people defending a "Hands-Off-the-Net" approach anymore. But that’s a subject for another day!]
Another caveat: Narrowly focused titles lose a few points on my list. For example, as was the case in past years, a number of important IP-related books have come out this year. If a book deals exclusively with copyright or patent issues, it does not exactly qualify as the same sort of “tech policy book” as other titles found on this list since it is a narrow exploration of just one set of issues that have a bearing on digital technology policy. The same could be said of a book that deals exclusively with privacy policy, like Solove’s Understanding Privacy. It’s an important book with implications for the future of tech policy, but I demoted it a bit because of its narrow focus.
With those caveats in mind, here are my Top 10 Most Important Tech Policy Books of 2008 (and please let me know about your picks for book of the year):
Continue reading →
A number of very interesting books have been released over the past year or two which debate how the Internet is reshaping our culture and the economy. I’ve reviewed a couple of them here but I have been waiting to compile a sort of mega-book review once I found a sensible way to conceptually group them together. I’m not going to have time to cover each of them here in the detail they deserve, but I think I have at least found a sensible way to categorize them. For lack of better descriptors, I’ve divided these books and thinkers into two camps: “Internet optimists” versus “Internet Pessimists.” Here’s a list of some of the individuals and books (or other articles and blogs) that I believe epitomize these two camps of thinking:
Adherents & Their Books / Writings
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Internet Optimists
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Internet Pessimists
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Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks
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Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur
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Chris Anderson, The Long Tail and “Free!”
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Lee Siegel, Against the Machine
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Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody
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Nick Carr, The Big Switch
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Cass Sunstein, Infotopia
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Cass Sunstein, Republic.com
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Don Tapscott, Wikinomics
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Todd Gitlin, Media Unlimited
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Kevin Kelly & Wired mag in general
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Alex Iskold, “The Danger of Free”
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Mike Masnick & TechDirt blog
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Mark Cuban
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And here’s a rough sketch of the major beliefs or key themes that separate these two schools of thinking about the impact of the Internet on our culture and economy:
Beliefs / Themes
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Internet Optimists
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Internet Pessimists
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Culture / Social
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Net is Participatory
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Net is Polarizing
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Net yields Personalization
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Net yields Fragmentation
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a “Global village”
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Balkanization
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Heterogeneity / Diversity of Thought
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Homogeneity / Close-mindedness
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Net breeds pro-democratic tendencies
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Net breeds anti-democratic tendencies
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Tool of liberation & empowerment
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Tool of frequent misuse & abuse
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Economics / Business
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Benefits of “free” (“Free” = future of media / business)
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Costs of “free” (“Free” = end of media / business)
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Increasing importance of “Gift economy”
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Continuing importance of property rights, profits, firms
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“Wiki” model = wisdom of crowds; power of collective intelligence
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“Wiki” model = stupidity of crowds; errors of collective intelligence
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Mass collaboration
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Individual effort
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So, what to make of this intellectual war? Who’s got the story right?
Continue reading →
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Posted in: Digital Policy Reading List, Philosophy & Cyber-Libertarianism 
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
