Nicholas Carr, bestselling author who writes on the social, economic, and business implications of technology, discusses his new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Carr posits that the internet is changing not only they way we consume information but also the biological and neurological workings of our brains. He addresses the internet’s effect on attention span and the ability to think deeply, neuroplasticity, multitasking, reading books v. snippets, Google, commonplaces, and much more.
Related Readings
Do check out the interview, and consider subscribing to the show on iTunes. Past guests have included Gina Trapani and Anil Dash on crowdsourcing, James Grimmelman on online harassment and the Google Books case, Michael Geist on ACTA, Tom Hazlett on spectrum reform, and Tyler Cowen on just about everything.
Coming up in next two episodes we’ll have Nick Carr and Clay Shirky discussing their new books. So what are you waiting for? Subscribe!
Pundits are foaming at the mouth about AT&T’s just-announced end to unlimited data packages for smartphones. Here is Jeff Jarvis calling the move “cynical,” “retrograde,” and “evil.” However, he provides no evidence that this is anything but AT&T facing economic reality. The iPhone was a revolution, and how much data people consume given an awesome device turned out to be much more than AT&T was ready for. Now they’re asking their customers who use the most data to pay more, and this is evil?
Not only is it not evil, it’s incredibly fair. Most people will probably pay less for service. The cheapest of AT&T’s new plans is $15 for 200 MB of data. That’s $15 cheaper than their current $30 for unlimited iPhone use. According to AT&T, 65 percent of their customers use less than 200 MB of data a month. I consider myself a heavy iPhone user, and I just came back from a trip to NYC on which my iPhone was the only device I took with me, and yet with 2 days left in my billing cycle, I’ve used 154 MB of data. So, AT&T’s change will actually be a price-cut for me and the majority of AT&T customers.
Yup, real evil.
Gina Trapani, blogger, author, software developer, and creator of ThinkTank, and Anil Dash, director of Expert Labs and blogging pioneer, talk about Expert Labs, an organization that seeks to improve government by letting policy makers tap into the collective wisdom of the public, and ThinkTank, an open source tool that the White House is using to crowdsource and sort policy ideas, insights, and recommendations offered through social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Related Readings
Do check out the interview, and consider subscribing to the show on iTunes. Past guests have included James Grimmelman on online harassment and the Google Books case, Michael Geist on ACTA, Tom Hazlett on spectrum reform, and Tyler Cowen on just about everything.
Coming up in next two episodes we’ll have Nick Carr and Clay Shirky discussing their new books. So what are you waiting for? Subscribe!
Many of my free market friends have been making the case that government action is unnecessary to address the privacy trouble in which Facebook has recently found itself. I agree with them completely. The reason is that I believe that the given choice, individuals acting in the market will act to discipline unscrupulous or stupid companies. This is precisely what we’ve begun to see happen to Facebook.
It therefore bothers me when folks go beyond mere defense of free market to pretending that corporations can do no wrong. Facebook, for example, has committed a terrible breach of trust against its users, and it should pay the price. Still, on the NetChoice blog, Steve DelBianco writes this about Facebook’s new privacy options:
Facebook is making these moves partly to placate a handful of professional privacy critics, as we described on our post this week. But as with most moves made in reaction to critics, there’s a chance Facebook might have moved too far.
As part of this change, Facebook is making it trivial for users to stop applications and websites from knowing anything about you. If lots of users select this option, I’m afraid it could restrict Facebook’s use of targeted advertising (those ads on the right side of your Facebook pages) and their new instant personalization program. Here’s why we should all be concerned if everyone opts-out of sharing anything:
First, we’ll still see ads, only they won’t be so relevant[.] … Second, and far more concerning, is the effect on Facebook’s ad revenue[.]
I’m not a “professional privacy critic,” yet I know I’ll never trust Facebook with any of my data ever again. I hear the same sentiment from many of my friends, acquaintances, and other regular folks I follow online. Sometimes, companies react because they made a dumb mistake (or perhaps in this case a repeated one that makes one wonder whether it’s a mistake at all), not only in response to privacy advocates. I know Steve’s saying Facebook’s only
partly reacting to critics, but I believe that any such fraction is very small. Continue reading →
In this week’s episode of the Surprisingly Free Podcast, I talk to TLF’s very own Adam Thierer, president of The Progress & Freedom Foundation and the Director of its Center for Digital Media Freedom. We discuss the future of media and Adam explains recent proposals to subsidize journalists and media companies. He outlines problems with the proposals, such as threats to free speech and separation of press and state. He also addresses newspapers as non-profits, shared experiences vs. diversity, and journalism ethics in the context of the recently scooped iPhone.
Do check out the interview, and consider subscribing to the show on iTunes. Past guests have included James Grimmelman on online harassment and the Google Books case, Michael Geist on ACTA, Tom Hazlett on spectrum reform, and Tyler Cowen on just about everything.
Coming up in the next few weeks we’ll have Adrian Johns, Nick Carr, Clay Shirky, Gina Trapani, and many more great guests! So what are you waiting for? Subscribe!
In this week’s episode of the Surprisingly Free Podcast, I talk to David Post, the I. Herman Stern Professor of Law at the Beasley School of Law at Temple University and author of In Search of Jefferson’s Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace. He discusses the general state of the internet and contrasts a decentralized Jeffersonian approach to the internet with a more centralized Hamiltonian one. He also addresses netizenship, open vs. closed systems, and online global relations.
Do check out the interview, and consider subscribing to the show on iTunes. Past guests have included James Grimmelman on online harassment and the Google Books case, Michael Geist on ACTA, Tom Hazlett on spectrum reform, and Tyler Cowen on just about everything.
Coming up in the next few weeks we’ll have TLF’s own Adam Thierer, as well as Nick Carr, Clay Shirky, Gina Trapani, and many more great guests! So what are you waiting for? Subscribe!
In this week’s episode of the Surprisingly Free Podcast, I talk to Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University, general director of the Mercatus Center, and author of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution. We discusses how the internet influences and changes practically everything. The conversation broadly centers on how the web allows us to find, distill, and sort information as never before, which has profoundly affected people’s consumption of culture and creation of their own economies. During the podcast Cowen touches on Lost and Battlestar Gallactica, the iPad, books, the future of the publishing industry, old and new media, Facebook, Twitter, ChatRoulette, and his favorite things on the internet.
Do check out the interview, and consider subscribing to the show on iTunes. Past guests have included James Grimmelman on online harassment and the Google Books case, Michael Geist on ACTA, and Tom Hazlett on spectrum reform.
In this week’s episode of the Surprisingly Free Podcast, I talk to Bruce Yandle, Dean Emeritus at Clemson College of Business and Behavioral Sciences. We talk about a public choice puzzle: how do you explain the explosion of social regulation in the 1970s at the same time we saw an explosion in economic deregulation? Yandle thinks it might have to do with the advent of national television networks. National networks allowed national brands to develop. Firms behind national brands had an interest in deregulated transportation and telecommunications networks, but at the same time had an interest in seeing uniform federal safety and environmental regulations. We also talk about the decline of common law and the growth of code law, and the death (and return) of good beer in America.
Do check out the interview, and consider subscribing to the show on iTunes. Past guests have included James Grimmelman on online harassment and the Google Books case, Michael Geist on ACTA, and Tom Hazlett on spectrum reform.
MP3 File: Yandle on the rise of national TV and the spread of social regulation
In the most recent episode of the Surprisingly Free Conversations podcast, I interview Evgeny Morozov, Yahoo! Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University and contributing editor for Foreign Policy. We discuss the limits of social networks in promoting democracy. The discussion also turns to Morozov’s experience as a promoter of online freedom in Eastern Europe and cybersecurity.
Do check out the interview, and consider subscribing to the show on iTunes. Past guests have included James Grimmelman on online harassment and the Google Books case, Michael Geist on ACTA, and Tom Hazlett on spectrum reform.
MP3 File: Morozov on democracy, the limits of social networks, and cybersecurity
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.