Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
I highly recommend a new book called More Than Human by Ramez Naam. He makes the case that the desire and implementation of biological enhancement is entirely human. Here’s a column I wrote weaving some of his ideas in with the controversy over “designer babies” in the UK.
Crossposted from www.soniaarrison.com
Earlier this year I read an interesting new book by Harvard Business School professor Debora Spar entitled “Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos, and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet.” Spar’s book is important because it can tell us a lot about where cyberspace and the Internet economy might be heading next.
The central thesis of Spar’s book is that there are predictable patterns associated with technological revolutions that can help us understand how rules for future industries might unfold. Importantly, when Spar speaks of rules, she doesn’t necessarily mean government regulation. She includes property rights, contracts, intellectual property, and industry standards as “rules” that are every bit as important in shaping how industries and technologies develop. Spar then examines the history of several important technologies or industries–shipping, the telegraph, radio broadcasting, satellite television, encryption, and online music–to help explain the four phases every industry or technology goes through:
Along with William Landes, the stunningly prolific Richard Posner is the author of a marvelous new book on “The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law.”
Posner, who is guest blogging this week over on the Lessig Blog is one of the great legal minds of our generation and everything he has to say is worth listening to. That is certainly true of this timely new book he has written on IP issues with Landes.
Over the years, a number of people have asked me which technology policy books have had the greatest impact on my thinking, or what I would recommend to others just getting started in the field. Toward that end, here’s my list of the 5 books on tech policy that changed my life:
I recently finished reading Daniel M. Kimmel entertaining new history of the rise of the Fox television network entitled The Fourth Network: How Fox Broke the Rules and Reinvented Television. While many younger Americans can’t remember a time when multiple networks and cable channels were not at their disposal, for most of television’s history, citizens had only three primary commercial options from which to choose. After inept regulatory policies caused the demise of the DuMont Television Network in the 1950s, no one thought a fourth network was feasible in America. Perhaps that explains why it took a non-American to think outside the box and roll the dice on the launch of a new network in the U.S.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
