Articles by Adam Thierer 
Senior Fellow in Technology & Innovation at the R Street Institute in Washington, DC. Formerly a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, President of the Progress & Freedom Foundation, Director of Telecommunications Studies at the Cato Institute, and a Fellow in Economic Policy at the Heritage Foundation.
This catfight between Ron Rosenbaum of
Slate and Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine about the future of journalism in the Internet Age is quite a heated affair. But what I found most interesting about it is that it reflects one element of the Net “optimist — pessimist” divide that I have been writing about here recently. Specifically, it touches on the divide over whether the Internet and digital technologies are reshaping the media marketplace and the field of journalism for better or for worse.
Rosenbaum is playing the pessimist role here and asking some sharp questions about the advice being dished out by “Web futurists” and “new-media gurus” as it relates the reversing the decline of the journalism profession. Rosenbaum says that the problem with Jarvis is that:
he’s become increasingly heartless about the reporters, writers, and other “content providers” who have been put out on the street by the changes in the industry. Not only does he blame the victims, he denies them the right to consider themselves victims. They deserve their miserable fate — and if they don’t know it, he’ll tell them why at great length. Sometimes it sounds as if he’s virtually dancing on their graves.
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A few months ago, I penned a mega book review about the growing divide between “Internet optimists and pessimists.” I noted that the Internet optimists — people like Chris Anderson, Clay Shirky, Yochai Benkler, Kevin Kelly, and others — believe that the Internet is generally improving our culture, economy, and society for the better. They believe the Net has empowered and liberated the masses, sparked unparalleled human creativity and communication, provided greater personalization and customization of media content, and created greater diversity of thought and a more deliberative democracy. By contrast, the Internet pessimists — including Nick Carr, Andrew Keen, Lee Siegel, and others — argue that the Internet is destroying popular culture and professional media, calling “truth” and “authority” into question by over-glamorizing amateurism and user-generated content, and that increased personalization is damaging deliberative democracy by leading to homogenization, close-mindedness, and an online echo-chamber. Needless to say, it’s a very heated debate!
I am currently working on a greatly expanded version of my “Net optimists vs. pessimists” essay for a magazine in which I will draw out more of these distinctions and weigh the arguments made by those in both camps. I plan on concluding that article by arguing that the optimists generally have the better of the argument, but that the pessimists make some fair points about the downsides of the Net’s radically disintermediating role on culture and economy.
So, this got me thinking that I needed to come up with some sort of a label for my middle-of-the-road position as well as a statement of my personal beliefs. As far as labels go, I guess I would call myself a “pragmatic optimist” since I generally side with the optimists in most of these debates, but not without some occasional reservations. Specifically, I don’t always subscribe to the Pollyanna-ish, rose-colored view of the world that some optimists seem to adopt. But the outright Chicken Little-like Ludditism of some Internet pessimists is even more over-the-top at times. Anyway, what follows is my “Pragmatic (Internet) Optimist’s Creed” which better explains my views. (Again, read my old essay first for some context about the relevant battle lines in this intellectual war).
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With the publication of Understanding Privacy (Harvard University Press 2008), George Washington University Law School professor Daniel J. Solove has firmly established himself as one of America’s leading intellectuals in the field of information policy and cyberlaw. Solove had already made himself a force to be reckoned with in this field with the publication of important books like The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet (Yale University Press 2007), The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age (NYU Press 2004) and his treatise on Information Privacy Law with Paul M. Schwartz of the Berkeley School of Law (Aspen Publishing, 2d ed. 2006). But with Understanding Privacy, Solove has now elevated himself to that rarefied air of “people worth watching” in the cyberlaw field; an intellectual — like Lawrence Lessig or Jonathan Zittrain — whose every publication becomes something of an event in the field to which all eyes turn upon release.
Like those other intellectuals, however, my respect for their stature should not be confused with agreement with their positions. In fact, my disagreements with Lessig and Zittrain are frequently on display here and, we have been critical of Solove here in the past as well. [Here’s Jim Harper’s review of Solove’s last book, with which I am in wholehearted agreement.] In a similar vein, although I greatly appreciate what Prof. Solove attempts to accomplish in Understanding Privacy — and I am sure it will change the way we conceptualize and debate privacy policy in the future — I found his approach and conclusions highly problematic.
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Good editorial in the Boston Globe today about “The Dangers of Internet Censorship” by Harry Lewis, a professor of computer science at Harvard and fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Lewis argues that:
Determining which ideas are “harmful” is not the government’s job. Parents should judge what information their children should see – and should expect that older children will, as they always have, find ways around restrictive rules.
Worth reading the whole thing. Incidentally, Harry Lewis is the co-author of an interesting new book I am reading right now,
Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion. I’m going to try to review it here eventually.
Great post over on the Tor blog about how “anonymity on the Internet is not going away.” This is a subject I care about deeply. Here, for example, is an essay I wrote about mandatory age verification and the threat it poses to online anonymity. I love this paragraph from the Tor essay, and agree with it wholeheartedly:
Anonymity is a defense against the tyranny of the majority. There are many, many valid uses of anonymity tools, such as Tor. The belief that anonymous tools exist only for the edges of societies is narrow-minded. The tools exist and are used by all. Much like the Internet, the tools can be used for good or bad. The negative uses of such tools typically generate huge headlines, but not the positive uses. Raising the profile of the positive uses of anonymity tools, such as Tor, is one of our challenges.
Amen brother.
This afternoon at the New America Foundation, Jonathan Zittrain and I engaged in a spirited debate about his provocative new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. As always, Jonathan gave an us an interesting and highly entertaining show, and it was a great honor for me to be given the opportunity to provide some feedback about his book. I’ve been quite critical of the thesis that Jonathan sets forth in his book, and I have discussed my reservations in a lengthy book review and a series of follow-up essays here and elsewhere. (Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
Jonathan opens with about 45 minutes of remarks and I come into the conversation around the 49 mark of the video. Michael Calabrese of NAF also has some comments about Jonathan’s book after I speak and then there is some interaction with the audience.
http://www.youtube.com/v/KDgxGN6cqTA&hl=en&fs=1
Today was a big day — and not just because there was an election going on! As I mentioned yesterday, the other big news was that the U.S. Supreme Court was hearing oral arguments in the potentially historic free speech case of Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, Inc. Again, all the background you need can be found in my post yesterday, so here I will just be summarizing my general thoughts about how the oral arguments played out this morning.
Unfortunately, because no electronic devices or even notepads are allowed in the courtroom, much of what I am relaying here is from memory or from the notes that I surreptitiously scribbled on a tiny piece of scrap paper when the guards weren’t looking. (And yes, I have been reprimanded before for taking notes in the Court!) The transcript has just been released, however, so you can read it through and judge for yourself. Anyway, here are some general thoughts:
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A new study (which is actually based on an old study) by Dr. Craig Anderson of Iowa State University and two other researchers is making news today because it suggests a link between violent video games and real-world aggression. I have written extensively about such studies here in the past, and have included a list of relevant links down below. But let me just use the opportunity to restate the fundamental problem with the way the press reports these things.
- First, the press typically accepts the assertion made by authors of studies like these that the social “science” is unanimous in support of such a link between exposure to violent video games and real-world aggression. there is another side the story, but the press usually doesn’t report on it.
- Second, reporters almost always fail to ask about how the researchers define “violent” games and the resulting “aggression” found in these studies.
- Third, reporters almost never ask about how strong the correlation is or, more importantly, what other variables might have had an influence on the the subjects who were studied. (For example, did they factor in real violence in the home or at school?)
- Finally, the reporters almost never query the researchers about the biases they bring to the task of studying this issue (namely, do these researchers have strong feelings about the content in the games they review such that they think they should be regulated in some fashion?).
Luckily, other social researchers are willing to point out these deficiencies. (See, for example, my reviews of the recent books by Drs. Kutner & Olson as well as Dr. Kourosh Dini.) With reference to the new study reported in the press today, Texas A&M researcher Dr. Christopher Ferguson has challenged the study on many of the grounds I listed above. Specifically, in a letter to the journal (Pediatrics) in which the Anderson study appeared, Dr. Ferguson argues:
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Tomorrow morning, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the potentially historic free speech case of Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, Inc. I plan on attending and will try to post some thoughts about how the arguments played out here later tomorrow afternoon or evening. [I won’t be able to live blog of Twitter it because no electronic devices are allowed in the courtroom, which I’ve always thought is outrageous.] In the meantime, here again is the background of the case.
The
FCC v. Fox case is the indecency case involving the FCC’s new policy for “fleeting expletives.” I wrote about the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision here and the full 2nd Circuit decision is here. [By contrast, the so-called “Janet Jackson case” — CBS v. FCC — took place in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and that court recently handed down a decision that also went against the FCC. I wrote about the Third Circuit’s decision here.]
In a 2-1 decision, the Second Circuit ruled that “the FCC’s new policy sanctioning “fleeting expletives” is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act for failing to articulate a reasoned basis for its change in policy.” The decision demonstrates how, over just the past few years, the FCC has arbitrarily thrown out 30+ years worth of precedent and greatly expand the scope of its regulatory authority over speech on broadcast TV and radio. As a result, the FCC’s order was vacated and remanded to the agency. The agency appealed the decision, however, and the Supreme Court accepted it for review.
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