open source – Technology Liberation Front https://techliberation.com Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology Thu, 03 Apr 2025 23:20:10 +0000 en-US hourly 1 6772528 Running List of My Research on AI, ML & Robotics Policy https://techliberation.com/2022/07/29/running-list-of-my-research-on-ai-ml-robotics-policy/ https://techliberation.com/2022/07/29/running-list-of-my-research-on-ai-ml-robotics-policy/#respond Fri, 29 Jul 2022 12:51:54 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=77020

[last updated 4/3/2025 – Check my Medium page for latest posts]

This a running list of all the essays and reports I’ve already rolled out on the governance of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotics. Why have I decided to spend so much time on this issue? Because this will become the most important technological revolution of our lifetimes. Every segment of the economy will be touched in some fashion by AI, ML, robotics, and the power of computational science. It should be equally clear that public policy will be radically transformed along the way.

Eventually, all policy will involve AI policy and computational considerations. As AI “eats the world,” it eats the world of public policy along with it. The stakes here are profound for individuals, economies, and nations. As a result, AI policy will be the most important technology policy fight of the next decade, and perhaps next quarter century. Those who are passionate about the freedom to innovate need to prepare to meet the challenge as proposals to regulate AI proliferate.

There are many socio-technical concerns surrounding algorithmic systems that deserve serious consideration and appropriate governance steps to ensure that these systems are beneficial to society. However, there is an equally compelling public interest in ensuring that AI innovations are developed and made widely available to help improve human well-being across many dimensions. And that’s the case that I’ll be dedicating my life to making in coming years.

Here’s the list of what I’ve done so far. I will continue to update this as new material is released:

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021 (and earlier)

]]> https://techliberation.com/2022/07/29/running-list-of-my-research-on-ai-ml-robotics-policy/feed/ 0 77020 Alex Tabarrok on innovation https://techliberation.com/2013/04/30/alex-tabarrok/ https://techliberation.com/2013/04/30/alex-tabarrok/#respond Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:00:22 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=44616 Launching The Innovation Renaissance: A New Path to Bring Smart Ideas to Market Fast discusses America's declining growth rate in total factor productivity, what this means for the future of innovation, and what can be done to improve the situation. ]]>

Alex Tabarrok, author of the ebook Launching The Innovation Renaissance: A New Path to Bring Smart Ideas to Market Fast discusses America’s declining growth rate in total factor productivity, what this means for the future of innovation, and what can be done to improve the situation.

Accroding to Tabarrok, patents, which were designed to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, have instead become weapons in a war for competitive advantage with innovation as collateral damage. College, once a foundation for innovation, has been oversold. And regulations, passed with the best of intentions, have spread like kudzu and now impede progress to everyone’s detriment. Tabarrok outs forth simple reforms in each of these areas and also explains the role immigration plays in innovation and national productivity.

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]]> https://techliberation.com/2013/04/30/alex-tabarrok/feed/ 0 44616 Marc Hochstein on bitcoin https://techliberation.com/2013/04/16/marc-hochstein/ https://techliberation.com/2013/04/16/marc-hochstein/#respond Tue, 16 Apr 2013 10:00:45 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=44516 American Banker,  a leading media outlet covering the banking and financial services community, discusses bitcoin. ]]>

Marc Hochstein, Executive Editor of American Banker,  a leading media outlet covering the banking and financial services community, discusses bitcoin.

According to Hochstein, bitcoin has made its name as a digital currency, but the truly revolutionary aspect of the technology is its dual function as a payment system competing against companies like PayPal and Western Union. While bitcoin has been in the news for its soaring exchange rate lately, Hochstein says the actual price of bitcoin is really only relevant for speculators in the short-term; in the long-term, however, the anonymous, decentralized nature of bitcoin has far-reaching implications.

Hochstein goes on to talk about  the new market in bitcoin futures and some of bitcoin’s weaknesses—including the volatility of the bitcoin market.

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]]> https://techliberation.com/2013/04/16/marc-hochstein/feed/ 0 44516 Joseph Reagle on the gender gap in geek culture https://techliberation.com/2013/02/26/joseph-reagle/ https://techliberation.com/2013/02/26/joseph-reagle/#respond Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:00:02 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=43816

Is geek culture sexist? Joseph Reagle, Assistant Professor of Communications Studies at Northeastern University and author of a new paper entitled, “Free as in Sexist? Free culture and the gender gap,” returns to Surprisingly Free to address geek feminism and the technology gender gap.

According to Reagle, only 1% of the free software community and 9% of Wikipedia editors are female, which he sees as emblematic of structural problems in the geek community. While he does not believe that being a geek or a nerd is in any way synonymous with being a sexist, he concludes that three things that he otherwise loves—geekiness, openness, and the rhetoric and ideology of freedom–are part of the problem inasmuch as they allow informal cliques to arise, dominate the discussion, and squeeze out minority views. Reagle also comments on a unintentional androcentricity he has observed even amongst free software community heroes, highlighting the ways in which this behavior can be alienating to women and prevents geek culture from growing beyond its traditional base.

Reagle prescribes a 3-step solution to sexism in geek culture: talking about gender; challenging and expanding what it means to be a geek; and not allowing the rhetoric of freedom to be used as an excuse for bad behavior.

Reagle further supports efforts to form female-only subcultures within the geek community, which opponents argue goes against the free software value of openness. Instead of the balkanization of their movement that opponents fear, these closed-group discussions actually strengthen geek culture at large, according to Reagle.

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]]> https://techliberation.com/2013/02/26/joseph-reagle/feed/ 0 43816 Gabriella Coleman on the ethics of free software https://techliberation.com/2013/01/08/gabriella-coleman-2/ https://techliberation.com/2013/01/08/gabriella-coleman-2/#respond Tue, 08 Jan 2013 14:15:33 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=43410

Gabriella Coleman, the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy in the Art History and Communication Studies Department at McGill University, discusses her new book, “Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking,” which has been released under a Creative Commons license.

Coleman, whose background is in anthropology, shares the results of her cultural survey of free and open source software (F/OSS) developers, the majority of whom, she found, shared similar backgrounds and world views. Among these similarities were an early introduction to technology and a passion for civil liberties, specifically free speech.

Coleman explains the ethics behind hackers’ devotion to F/OSS, the social codes that guide its production, and the political struggles through which hackers question the scope and direction of copyright and patent law. She also discusses the tension between the overtly political free software movement and the “politically agnostic” open source movement, as well as what the future of the hacker movement may look like.

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]]> https://techliberation.com/2013/01/08/gabriella-coleman-2/feed/ 0 43410 The Case for Internet Optimism, Part 1: Saving the Net From Its Detractors https://techliberation.com/2011/01/31/the-case-for-internet-optimism-part-1-saving-the-net-from-its-detractors/ https://techliberation.com/2011/01/31/the-case-for-internet-optimism-part-1-saving-the-net-from-its-detractors/#comments Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:43:30 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=34765

Here’s the first of two essays I’ve recently penned making “The Case for Internet Optimism.” This essay was included in the book, The Next Digital Decade: Essays on the Future of the Internet (2011), which was edited by Berin Szoka and Adam Marcus of TechFreedom.  In these essays, I identify two schools of Internet pessimism: (1) “Net Skeptics,” who are pessimistic about the Internet improving the lot of mankind; and (2) “Net Lovers,” who appreciate the benefits the Net brings society but who fear those benefits are disappearing, or that the Net or openness are dying.  (Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with these themes since I sketched them out in previous essays here such as, “Are You an Internet Optimist or Pessimist?” and “Two Schools of Internet Pessimism.”) The second essay is here.

This essay focuses on the first variant of Internet pessimism, which is rooted in general skepticism about the supposed benefits of cyberspace, digital technologies, and information abundance. The proponents of this pessimistic view often wax nostalgic about some supposed “good ‘ol days” when life was much better (although they can’t seem to agree when those were). At a minimum, they want us to slow down and think twice about life in the Information Age and how it’s personally affecting each of us.  Occasionally, however, this pessimism borders on neo-Ludditism, with some proponents recommending steps to curtail what they feel is the destructive impact of the Net or digital technologies on culture or the economy.  I identify the leading exponents of this view of Internet pessimism and their major works. I trace their technological pessimism back to Plato but argue that their pessimism is largely unwarranted. Humans are more resilient than pessimists care to admit and we learn how to adapt to technological change and assimilate new tools into our lives over time. Moreover, were we really better off in the scarcity era when we were collectively suffering from information poverty?  Generally speaking, despite the challenges it presents society, information abundance is a better dilemma to be facing than information poverty.  Nonetheless, I argue, we should not underestimate or belittle the disruptive impacts associated with the Information Revolution.  But we need to find ways to better cope with turbulent change in a dynamist fashion instead of attempting to roll back the clock on progress or recapture “the good ‘ol days,” which actually weren’t all that good.

Down below, I have embedded the entire chapter in a Scribd reader, but the essay can also be found on the TechFreedom website for the book as well as on SSRN.  I have also includes two updated tables that appeared in my old “optimists vs. pessimists” essay.  The first lists some of the leading Internet optimists and pessimists and their books. The second table outlines some of the major lines of disagreement between these two camps and I divided those disagreements into (1) Cultural / Social beliefs vs. (2) Economic / Business beliefs.

The Case for Internet Optimism Part 1 – Saving the Net From Its Detractors (Adam Thierer) http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf

______

Theuthian Technophiles ( “The Internet Optimists”)

Thamusian Technophobes ( “The Internet Pessimists”)

Optimists

Pessimists

Cultural / Social beliefs
Net is participatory Net is polarizing
Net facilitates personalization (welcome of “Daily Me” that digital tech allows) Net facilitates fragmentation (fear of the “Daily Me”)
“a global village” balkanization and fears of “mob rule”
heterogeneity / encourages diversity of thought and expression homogeneity / Net leads to close-mindedness
allows self-actualization diminishes personhood
Net a tool of liberation & empowerment Net a tool of frequent misuse & abuse
Net can help educate the masses dumbs down the masses
anonymous communication encourages vibrant debate + whistleblowing (a net good) anonymity debases culture & leads to lack of accountability
welcome information abundance; believe it will create new opportunities for learning concern about information overload; esp. impact on learning & reading
Economic / Business beliefs
benefits of “Free” (increasing importance of “gift economy”) costs of “Free” (“free” = threat to quality & business models)
mass collaboration is generally more important individual effort is generally more important
embrace of “amateur” creativity superiority of “professionalism”
stress importance of “open systems” of production stress importance of “proprietary” models of production
“wiki” model = wisdom of crowds; benefits of crowdsourcing “wiki” model = stupidity of crowds; collective intelligence is oxymoron; + “sharecropper” concern about exploitation of free labor

Theuthian Technophiles ( “The Internet Optimists”)

Thamusian Technophobes ( “The Internet Pessimists”)

· Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (1995)

· Kevin Kelly, Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World (1995)

· Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies (1998)

· James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds (2004)

· Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More (2006)

· Steven Johnson, Everything Bad is Good For You (2006)

· Glenn Reynolds, An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths (2006)

· Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (2006)

· Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations (2008)

· Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (2008)

· Jeff Howe, Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business (2008)

· Tyler Cowen, Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World (2009)

· Dennis Baron, A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution (2009)

· Jeff Jarvis, What Would Google Do ? (2009)

· Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010)

· Nick Bilton, I Live in the Future & Here’s How It Works (2010)

· Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants (2010)

· Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1993)

· Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (1994)

· Clifford Stoll, High-Tech Heretic: Reflections of a Computer Contrarian (1999)

· Cass Sunstein, Republic.com (2001)

· Todd Gitlin, Media Unlimited: How the Torment of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives (2002)

· Todd Oppenheimer, The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology (2003)

· Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture (2007)

· Steve Talbott, Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in an Age of Machines‎ (2007)

· Nick Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (2008)

· Lee Siegel, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob (2008)

· Mark Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (2008)

· Mark Helprin, Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manifesto (2009)

· Maggie Jackson, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (2009)

· John Freeman, The Tyranny of E-Mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox (2009)

· Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget (2010)

· Nick Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (2010)

· William Powers, Hamlet’s BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age (2010)
]]> https://techliberation.com/2011/01/31/the-case-for-internet-optimism-part-1-saving-the-net-from-its-detractors/feed/ 10 34765 video: Some Thoughts on the Free Culture Debate https://techliberation.com/2010/03/21/video-some-thoughts-on-the-free-culture-debate/ https://techliberation.com/2010/03/21/video-some-thoughts-on-the-free-culture-debate/#comments Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:26:52 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=27327

Andrew Keen recently asked me to sit down and chat with him as part of a new series of video interviews he is conducting for Arts + Labs called “Keen on Media.” You can find the discussions with me here (or on Vimeo here). Keen asked me to talk about a wide variety of issues, but this first video features some thoughts about the tensions between the free culture movement and those that continue to favor property rights and proprietary business models as the foundation of the economy. Consistent with what I have argued in the past, I advocated a mushy middle-ground position of preserving the best of both worlds. I believe that free and open source software has produced enormous social & economic benefits, but I do not believe that it will or should replace all proprietary business models or methods.  Each model or mode of production has its place and purpose and they should continue to co-exist going forward, albeit in serious tension at times.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=10260819&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1 Adam Thierer (part 1) from andrewkeen on Vimeo.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2010/03/21/video-some-thoughts-on-the-free-culture-debate/feed/ 8 27327 Open Source and Auto Safety https://techliberation.com/2010/02/22/open-source-and-auto-safety/ https://techliberation.com/2010/02/22/open-source-and-auto-safety/#respond Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:19:24 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=26342

Tim Lee points to “The Toyota Recall and the Case for Open, Auditable Source Code.”

Knowing how the technology in our cars work is not just a safety issue, but a privacy issue—and maybe even a tax issue.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2010/02/22/open-source-and-auto-safety/feed/ 0 26342 Google on “Open”: Myopic Self-Focus https://techliberation.com/2009/12/23/google-on-open-myopic-self-focus/ https://techliberation.com/2009/12/23/google-on-open-myopic-self-focus/#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:15:16 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=24607

It may be possible to wring consistency from the “open” manifesto Google SVP of Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg published earlier this week, but I can’t.

He correctly extols the virtues of openness in technology and data for its pro-competitive effects. Closed systems may be profitable in the short run, but they are weak innovation engines:

[A] well-managed closed system can deliver plenty of profits. They can also deliver well-designed products in the short run — the iPod and iPhone being the obvious examples — but eventually innovation in a closed system tends towards being incremental at best (is a four blade razor really that much better than a three blade one?) because the whole point is to preserve the status quo. Complacency is the hallmark of any closed system. If you don’t have to work that hard to keep your customers, you won’t.

But his paean to openness draws a tight line around Google’s profitable products:

While we are committed to opening the code for our developer tools, not all Google products are open source. Our goal is to keep the Internet open, which promotes choice and competition and keeps users and developers from getting locked in. In many cases, most notably our search and ads products, opening up the code would not contribute to these goals and would actually hurt users. The search and advertising markets are already highly competitive with very low switching costs, so users and advertisers already have plenty of choice and are not locked in. Not to mention the fact that opening up these systems would allow people to “game” our algorithms to manipulate search and ads quality rankings, reducing our quality for everyone.

This is a fascinating exhibition of self-focus. Rosenberg finds that the benefits of openness cut off just exactly where Google’s profitability kicks in (credit: Rob Beschizza on BoingBoing).

If Google were to open its search algorithm, torments would befall users, he says—but much moreso torment would befall Google because their competitive edge in search and ad placement would shrink. Their competition would have a real chance to catch up and lower the premium Google could charge advertisers.

Now, would opening the algorithm allow gaming? Yes. And a new burst of competition and creativity would further improve search and ad serving across the entire Internet—exactly the kind of improvement Rosenberg says Google strives to produce.

Rosenberg’s attempt to strip Google down to a coherent philosophy of openness fails—search and ad-serving are a codpiece staring you right in the face. Or, if you prefer, Google’s heart is closed…

SVPs of product management are free to be wrong about philosophy, of course. It doesn’t matter at all—except when Google tries to impose its philosophy on others. And in the debate over ‘net neutrality regulation it has done exactly that.

Two years ago, Google sought and got “openness” conditions from the Federal Communication Commission on the 700MHz spectrum auction. Purchasers of it can’t use it as they see fit. For fear that it will cede profits to providers of transport, Google supports public utility-style regulation for network operators. Google thinks that “openness” rules to protect its profitability are ‘good for the Internet’. But they are just seeking competitive advantage through regulation.

This extraordinary self-focus—projecting one’s own interests onto others—is mirrored in the intellectual debate about openness versus proprietary systems. As I wrote in a 2007 book review, property rights and openness advocates both think their theories “explain the world.”

In fact, Google (and the Internet) benefit from openness some of the time and “closedness” some of the time. Open is not an organizing theory for Google, and it’s not an organizing theory for the Internet—just for parts of each.

Rosenberg’s myopia—thinking that what is good for Google is good for everyone—is the same as the myopia that politicians acquire after years in office. Fawned over by special pleaders and staff, they come to believe that their interests are the public interest. They honestly—but wrongly—believe that their defeat in an election would harm the country. So it is with Google’s support for net neutrality. L’Internet, c’est moi.

If Jonathan Rosenberg and the nice folks at Google were self-aware, it would be fair to call them hypocrites. But they are unlikely to see Google’s self-serving openness ideology as simply that. In Washington, D.C. we see all the time how hard it is to get a fish to talk about water.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2009/12/23/google-on-open-myopic-self-focus/feed/ 13 24607 Whitehouse.gov Switches to Drupal https://techliberation.com/2009/10/24/whitehouse-gov-switches-to-drupal/ https://techliberation.com/2009/10/24/whitehouse-gov-switches-to-drupal/#comments Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:26:06 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=22878

There was some buzz earlier this year when the White House used the free, open-source Drupal content management platform for Recovery.gov. Now the administration’s marquee Web site Whitehouse.gov will be using it.

The AP story linked just above does a good job of recounting the benefits of open source in this application: chiefly, low cost and high security.

Arnold Kling wrote recently on the Library of Economics and Liberty blog relating the work Elinor Ostrom did to win the nobel prize in economics to how the Internet enables private provision of public goods—no regulation, little to no centralized authority at all.

Open source is nothing if not an example of that, and it’s good to see this use of open source joining many others across the big, beautiful Internet.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2009/10/24/whitehouse-gov-switches-to-drupal/feed/ 13 22878 Software: the Public Option? Genachowski’s Government iTunes Apps Store https://techliberation.com/2009/10/11/software-the-public-option-genachowskis-government-itunes-apps-store/ https://techliberation.com/2009/10/11/software-the-public-option-genachowskis-government-itunes-apps-store/#comments Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:01:51 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=22459

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski suggested at an FCC field hearing this week that the federal government might create its own “version of iTunes.” Multichannel News reports: Itunes Store

The chairman asked panelists to think about the value of a clearinghouse where best practices could be shared. He suggested that might be a way to spur the spin-off of public-sector apps from private sector initiatives and to prevent reinventing the wheel, rather than tapping into what is already being done. There is not a lot of shared info out there, he said.

If all we’re talking about is a clearinghouse that provides easy access to apps for government-developed apps, Google Code or SourceForge may be a better model than iTunes—though perhaps without the instant name recognition by ordinary consumers. Like SourceForge, Google Code allows hosting and management of open source projects, including Google’s own products. iTunes, by contrast, essentially offers consumers finished apps. Also, iTunes is a stand-alone piece of software, of which the Apps Store is  just one part, while I can’t imagine why Genachowski’s “store” need be anything more than a website.

Whatever the analogy, such a “store” could well be a valuable tool for sharing the benefits of software development by government employees, both with the private sector and among federal agencies as well as state, local and even foreign governments. But what, exactly, Genachowski had in mind for the store remains awfully vague: Multichannel News mentions, as examples, “applications that do everything from monitoring heart rates and blood sugar to checking for greenhouse gas levels.” If the idea ever goes anywhere, it should be based on two principles:

  1. All apps should be open source and available to all users to use as they see fit.
  2. The store should be limited to apps developed by government employees to meet the needs of government agencies.

These principles would maximize the store’s value in making taxpayer-funded software development easily accessible. As a moral matter, it might be appropriate to limit access to U.S. taxpayers, but why bother? Attempting to authenticate users would add unnecessary complexity and raise privacy concerns needlessly: Any app we wouldn’t want to fall into the hands of, say, North Korea, simply shouldn’t be in the store at all. Sharing apps internationally would expand the potential developer base while helping to public and private sectors alike in the U.S. and abroad. If a school district in Sheboygan, WI or a village in Sudan can benefit from an app rather than starting over, so much the better for everyone!

The second requirement, combined with the open source requirement, would also help to reduce direct competition between government coders and private coders. A clearinghouse for apps government truly needs to develop on its own makes a great deal of sense: If we’re already paying a government-employee to write an app so his agency can function more effectively, that  should be shared. But a broader “public option for software” could well harm both for-profit and not-for-profit development of software by the private sector. Unless its mandate were carefully constrained by statute, such a clearinghouse could easily grow into a “public works” program for the digital age, with pressure rising for government to fund software development for as a “public good.” How to draw that line would be difficult, and it’s probably not a task that should be left to the FCC; Congress should address the question.

Keeping government-developed apps open source would allow the private sector to benefit from public sector development, rather than competing with it. But if a private company wants to incorporate a government-developed app into proprietary software, they should be free to do so. The government shouldn’t be prejudicing the private sector’s choice of business models by requiring that its apps stay open source. Nor should the government prevent commercialization of software that springs from federally funded research, as currently permitted by the Bayh-Dole Act.

Perhaps the greatest danger of such a program is that it could become a vehicle for subtle government propaganda—in violation of existing laws against using taxpayer dollars to distribute propaganda inside the U.S. The iTunes store analogy is particularly inapt (no pun intended) because iTunes, of course, provides pure content as well as apps. But apps themselves could come with a particular slant because it is increasingly difficult to distinguish “pure content” from “pure apps.” This danger could be particularly acute if the store turned into a “jobs program,” which would be inherently political, just as FDR’s New Dealers used programs like the WPA Arts Project to advance a certain ideological message, and New Deal programs in general as a way of rewarding supporters and punishing opponents. We certainly wouldn’t a Republican administration, say, trying to take revenge on Google for its support of Democrats by investing public money into direct competitors to Google’s software. Nor would we want to funding for software development to become just another dimension for the culture wars.

With those important caveats, this could be a great idea.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2009/10/11/software-the-public-option-genachowskis-government-itunes-apps-store/feed/ 19 22459 Shame on Mozilla https://techliberation.com/2009/02/10/shame-on-mozilla/ https://techliberation.com/2009/02/10/shame-on-mozilla/#comments Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:37:03 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=16531

Over at Ars, Ryan Paul has an appropriately sharp-tongued response to the Mozilla Foundation’s troubling move to become a cheerleader for the European Commission’s ongoing antitrust efforts against Microsoft. Apparently Mozilla will assist the EC’s investigation “by offering expertise about the browser market.”

Paul focuses on what’s wrong with this in both a micro and macro sense. He rightly points out that the potential remedies here do not bode well for the future of this sector, since regulatory tinkering with high-tech product standards is bound to end badly and create a terrible precedent for future interventions. “It’s hard to find a rational argument in favor of mandatory standards enforcement,”  Paul says. “It would be punitive and unhelpful to the advancement of the web.” Moreover, Paul notes that things have never looked better on the browser front:

Claims that Microsoft’s monopoly status has eliminated competition in the browser market sound hollow in the face of the profoundly vibrant browser market that exists today. The record-setting launch of Firefox 3 added up to over 8 million downloads in the first 24 hours alone. Firefox’s global market share continues to climb every month and the browser has grabbed almost 30 percent of the European market.

And let’s not forget about those two little companies called Google and Apple who have competing products in the field! They’re making serious inroads in the browser wars. Moreover, Microsoft is struggling to hold on to whatever “dominance” they have left in their core market: OS. As Paul concludes:

To the observant tech enthusiast, all signs seem to indicate that Microsoft’s monopoly is on its way out. The Redmond giant is in no danger of annihilation, but it’s definitely not positioned to dictate terms to the rest of the industry anymore.

But what is perhaps most shocking about Mozilla’s call for intervention is the way that Mozilla Foundation chairperson Mitchell Baker minimizes the importance of not just Firefox, but the entire open source movement, when justifying EC intervention in this marketplace.

“The success of Mozilla and Firefox does not indicate a healthy marketplace for competitive products,” she wrote. “I am convinced that we could not have been, and will not be, successful except as a public benefit organization living outside the commercial motivations. And I certainly hope that neither the EU nor any other government expects to maintain a healthy Internet ecosystem based on nonprofits stepping in to correct market deficiencies.”

As Paul points out in his Ars story, “[Mozilla’s] position on this matter is highly questionable.” Indeed, I believe it’s more than just highly questionable, it’s a bit of insult to an entire community of developers. Paul is generally correct in his response that:

There are quite a few open source software enthusiasts who would argue that, for a broad range of software products, the emergence of a Mozilla-like model is actually desirable and highly advantageous for consumers. A point will eventually arrive for many kinds of software where there is simply no point in trying to derive value from shrink-wrapping it, and then efforts will converge around collaboratively-developed open source implementations that will displace and eliminate the need for proprietary commercial implementations. Why should that be viewed as unhealthy?

Indeed, but it actually goes beyond that. The message that Mozilla’s Baker seems to sending to the open source community is: You can’t change the world. Your voluntary, collaborative actions cannot correct market deficiencies or fulfill unmet needs.

Geez, isn’t that what the open source movement is all about?!  I’m hardly some sort of open source / free software fanatic — indeed, I envision a future full of plenty of open source AND proprietary types of software and service — but the beauty of the open source movement to me is the way it has so nicely filled unsatisfied niches of demand in the software universe.  And, here’s the really important point, as Paul points out in his Ars article:

The popularization of the open source development model arguably emerged as a response to Microsoft’s monopoly. Developers had to find innovative ways to compete with an entrenched product. If the government had intervened in the software industry at an early stage and those conditions hadn’t existed, the browser market could arguably be a lot less rich and competitive than it is today. If Internet Explorer had never gained the dominant marketshare to necessitate a change in the status quo, the only browser choices we would have today might be between an ad-encumbered Opera and a proprietary Netscape.

That is exactly right. I have been making the argument for many years that it is at a market’s supposedly darkest hour that we are likely seeing some of the most exciting innovation being spawned. People don’t innovate most when they are completely happy with the world around them. It’s when they are pissed-off that they get cracking!!  Mozilla’s Firefox is the perfect example of that. And so is just about everything that Google and Apple have developed in response to Microsoft over the past 10 years.

And yet, sadly, the folks at the Mozilla Foundation want to now become handmaidens to the state — and the European Commission, no less — in their pathetic effort to stick it to a competitor using the law instead of using more marketplace innovation and competition. SHAME ON YOU MOZILLA!  I would dump your browser today if I didn’t love it so much! And thank you to all the brilliant, dedicated people behind the scenes who do keep innovating and making Firefox even better. I sincerely hope that the Mozilla Foundation doesn’t speak for you on this matter.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2009/02/10/shame-on-mozilla/feed/ 11 16531 IE’s Browser Market Share Down by 8-10% in 2008 https://techliberation.com/2009/01/05/ies-browser-market-share-down-by-8-10-in-2008/ https://techliberation.com/2009/01/05/ies-browser-market-share-down-by-8-10-in-2008/#comments Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:30:17 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=15190

Microsoft’s share of the browser market across all versions of Internet Explorer has dropped, by one estimate, dropped from 78.58%  in December 2007 to 68.15% in December 2008 (or by just under 8% in another estimate).

[IE’s] share dropped from 69.77% in November to 68.15% in December. [During the same period,] Firefox gained more than half a point and ended up at 21.34%, Safari approaches the [10%] hurdle with 7.93% and Chrome came in at 1.04%, the first time Google was able to cross the 1% mark.

This is particularly interesting: 

Since IE6 is used primarily within corporations, its market share is much higher during the week than it is on weekends. As a result, all other browsers gain on weekends and especially during a holiday. Because of that circumstance, Net Applications noted that the December numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. However, it is worth the note that IE6 achieved … market share numbers of about 28% during the week and about 21% on weekends in early 2008. In December, these numbers were down to about 20% during the week and 15% on weekends.    

So, Microsoft still has an established base among corporate users, where IT administrators  generally prevent employees from installing new applications (including browsers) and the sysadmins often don’t roll out alternative browsers across a corporate network for any one of several possible reasons, including:

  • They just don’t want to bother having to install, regularly upgrade and support another piece of software;
  • They may overestimate the security vulnerability of such alternative browsers compared to Internet Explorer;
  • The crustier sysadmins may not realize that today’s browsers are not only free for individual users, but also for corporate users–unlike the old Netscape Navigator; and
  • Corporate intranets may be designed for IE, in which case rolling out an alternative browser might cause confusion among less tech-savvy employees.

Microsoft may still have an advantage that could be considered “unfair,” but so what?  IE’s share of home browser usage may have fallen faster among home users than corporate users, but the overall trend line is clear:  increasing numbers of Americans are taking advantage of the rich browser options available to them, both at home and at work.  As Microsoft’s  share of the browser market falls further with each passing year–at an apparently accelerating rate–the concerns about Microsoft’s “dominance” of the browser market that drove the Justice Department’s antitrust jihad against the company a decade ago seem increasingly obsolete. 

If nothing else, the increasing competitiveness of the browser market should be a persistent reminder to those who advocate top-down regulatory “fixes” to perceived iniquities of online markets that competition and innovation may move faster than government regulators or the courts.  

My prediction for 2009:  IE’s overall share will fall even further than it did in 2008, with particularly strong growth in Google Chrome’s market share.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2009/01/05/ies-browser-market-share-down-by-8-10-in-2008/feed/ 9 15190 Honolulu Hapa https://techliberation.com/2008/12/19/honolulu-hapa/ https://techliberation.com/2008/12/19/honolulu-hapa/#comments Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:23:24 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=15080

“Damn their lies and trust your eyes. Dig every kind of fox!” I here sing one for the freedom to mix it up as you and your honey alone see fit:

http://www.youtube.com/v/JTcHzGbBoe0&hl=en&fs=1

“Hapa” means “mixed race” in Hawaiian. Skin-tone mash ups have profoundly enriched my life, first with the Honolulu Hapa herself and then with our own little hapas. Honolulu Hapa celebrates coloring across the lines, knocks racism, and gives a shout-out to Loving v. Virginia, 88 U.S. 1 (1967)—the case where the U.S. Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional restraints on personal liberty.

As with the prior four songs I’ve posted in this recent series (Take Up the Flame, Sensible Khakis, Nice to Be Wanted, and Hello, Jonah,), Honolulu Hapa comes with a Creative Commons license that allows pretty liberal use by all but commercial licensees, who have to pay a tithe to one of my favorite causes. Honolulu Hapa aims to help Creative Commons, an organization that helps all of us to mix—and remix—it up. Unlike those other songs, however, Honolulu Hapa adds a special ‘unrestricted use” term effective on June 12, Loving Day.

With Honolulu Hapa, I conclude my recent series of freedom-loving music videos. Like it or not, though, I’ve got more music-making plans. Next, I’ll record some good studio versions of those (and perhaps some other) songs. Eventually, I’d like to release a fundraising CD, one that might help out some good causes. Silly? Yeah, I guess so. But it does add another data point in support of my hypothesis: Freedom has more fun.

[Crossposted at Agoraphilia and Technology Liberation Front.]

]]> https://techliberation.com/2008/12/19/honolulu-hapa/feed/ 12 15080 Grouping Recent Net Books: Internet Optimists vs. Pessimists https://techliberation.com/2008/09/06/grouping-recent-net-books-internet-optimists-vs-pessimists/ https://techliberation.com/2008/09/06/grouping-recent-net-books-internet-optimists-vs-pessimists/#comments Sat, 06 Sep 2008 20:48:51 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=12489

[Note: I updated this discussion and chart in a subsequent essay. See: “Are You An Internet Optimist or Pessimist? The Great Debate over Technology’s Impact on Society.”]

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

Internet Optimists

Internet Pessimists

Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks

Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur

Chris Anderson, The Long Tail and “Free!”

Lee Siegel, Against the Machine

Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody

Nick Carr, The Big Switch

Cass Sunstein, Infotopia

Cass Sunstein, Republic.com

Don Tapscott, Wikinomics

Todd Gitlin, Media Unlimited

Kevin Kelly & Wired mag in general

Alex Iskold, “The Danger of Free”

Mike Masnick & TechDirt blog

Mark Cuban

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

Internet Optimists

Internet Pessimists

Culture / Social

Net is Participatory

Net is Polarizing

Net yields Personalization

Net yields Fragmentation

a “Global village”

Balkanization

Heterogeneity / Diversity of Thought

Homogeneity / Close-mindedness

Net breeds pro-democratic tendencies

Net breeds anti-democratic tendencies

Tool of liberation & empowerment

Tool of frequent misuse & abuse

Economics / Business

Benefits of “free” (“Free” = future of media / business)

Costs of “free” (“Free” = end of media / business)

Increasing importance of “Gift economy”

Continuing importance of property rights, profits, firms

“Wiki” model = wisdom of crowds; power of collective intelligence

“Wiki” model = stupidity of crowds; errors of collective intelligence

Mass collaboration

Individual effort

So, what to make of this intellectual war? Who’s got the story right?

Although it will be easy for many in the blogosphere to side with the Internet optimists — and I would count myself as generally being in the optimist camp — I think the Net pessimists make many fair points about the disruptive nature of the Internet and how it forcing individuals and industries to completely reconsider the way they live their lives or organize their business affairs. Many Net optimists have a tendency to paint an excessively rosy picture of the transformative nature of the Net. In the extreme, the optimists seem to imply that the Net is somehow remaking man, altering human nature, and changing the economy only for the better. Among the Net optimists, there’s often a lot of romanticized talk of collective action / intelligence overcoming all barriers to knowledge or progress, and so on. (Sometimes I am guilty of a bit of that myself in my writing here). Net optimists need to be careful about overstating their case, especially on the economic front, and we would be wise to read the work of the Net pessimists with that criticism in mind.

The problem with the Internet pessimists, however, is that their skepticism often borders on Chicken Little-ism or outright Ludditism. I thought Andrew Keen’s Cult of the Amateur was about as over-the-top as things could get in this regard. (See my 2-part book review here and here), but then I worked my way through Lee Siegel’s tedious screed, Against the Machine. It made Keen seem downright reasonable and cheery by comparison! Keen and Siegel seem to be in heated competition for the title “High Prophet of Internet Doom,” but Siegel is currently a nose ahead in that race.

Nick Carr is probably the most reasonable and respected of the Net skeptics. He is an enormously gifted writer and I always enjoy reading his books, articles, and blog entries, even when I disagree with him. In The Big Switch, he makes many valid points about the downsides of the gut-wrenching changes that the Net is bringing about. Similarly, in his provocative recent Atlantic article, “Is Google Making us Stupid?”, he wonders how the Net is negatively affecting our minds and attention spans. Carr also argues that the Internet economy is increasingly built on a “sharecropper” model that essentially exploits the free labor of the multitudes to make just a handful of major Net operators rich. He makes some interesting points but, ultimately, I think he overstates the problem. Most of us feel we get a lot back as part of this value exchange. Sure, Google, Facebook, and a lot of other Net middlemen are getting big and rich based on all the user-generated content flowing over their sites and systems, but we extract enormous benefits from the existence of those (mostly free and constantly improving) platforms and services.

Nonetheless, the Net pessimists (especially Carr) raise some very legitimate questions about the limitations of the “free culture” mindset. They are on stronger ground when the highlight the problems associated with online piracy, however, than when they are critiquing Wikipedia and the occasional limitations or errors of collaborative endeavors like it. But Wikipedia in particular seems to be an obsession for many of the Net pessimists, especially Carr and Keen.

It is also true, however, that Net optimists like Tapscott and Benkler sometimes make too much out of “wiki” / collective intelligence models, seemingly implying that proprietary business models, private firms, and potentially capitalism itself are passé notions. I disagree. While I think wiki / collective intelligence approaches have their place and play a vitally important role in our new digital economy, the old ways of doing things are still alive and well and producing some wonderful results. For example, “The Dark Knight” wasn’t the product of spontaneous collective action, and I still don’t see any truly compelling open source video games to compete with the likes of “Madden 2009” or “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.” I think some of the Net optimists get a bit carried away at times when the place too much faith in the “Wikipedia-ization” of everything, or the idea that the Long Tail is somehow “The Future of Business,” as the subtitle of Chris Anderson’s book suggest. I think that goes much too far. On the other hand, I am huge fan of Wiki & Long Tail models and, like most others, understand their limitations. Those models will play an increasingly important role in the Net economy moving forward whether the Net pessimists like it or not. Bottom line: each model or mode of production has its place and purpose and they will continue to co-exist going forward, albeit in serious tension at times.

Perhaps when I have more time I will return to this discussion and fill it out more with some passages and quotes from each book. I just don’t have the time right now but I will try to do so at some point in the future. Anyway, these are important books that deserve your attention if you are following the debate over the impact the Net is having — for better or worse — on our culture and economy.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2008/09/06/grouping-recent-net-books-internet-optimists-vs-pessimists/feed/ 47 12489 Not One, Not Two, but THREE Competing Open Source Mobile Operating Systems https://techliberation.com/2008/06/25/not-one-not-two-but-three-competing-open-source-mobile-operating-systems/ https://techliberation.com/2008/06/25/not-one-not-two-but-three-competing-open-source-mobile-operating-systems/#comments Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:42:22 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=10994

Global handset manufacturing giant Nokia has purchased the shares they didn’t already own in Symbian, Ltd., the company formed in 1998 as a partnership among Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola and Psion and the developer of the Symbian mobile operating system, by far the world’s leading OS for “smart mobile” phones with 67% of the market, followed by Microsoft on 13%, with RIM on 10% (source).

But wait, there’s more (per Engadget)!

Here’s where it gets interesting, though: rather than taking Symbian’s intellectual private for Nokia’s own benefit, the goods will be turned over to the Symbian Foundation, a nonprofit whose sole goal will be the advancement of the Symbian platform in its many flavors. Motorola and Sony Ericsson have signed up to contribute UIQ assets, while NTT DoCoMo (which uses Symbian-based wares in a number of its phones) will be donating code as well. Other Symbian Foundation members include Texas Instruments, Vodafone, Samsung, LG, and AT&T (yep, the same AT&T that currently sells precisely one Symbian-based phone), so things could get interesting. The move clearly seems to be a preemptive strike against Google’s Open Handset Alliance, LiMo, and other collaborative efforts forming around the globe with the goal of standardizing smartphone operating systems; the writing was on the wall, and Symbian didn’t want to miss the train. Total cash outlay for the move will run Nokia roughly €264 million — about $410 million in yankee currency.

Other reports note that the Symbian Foundation will eventually take Symbian open source, and that this move is as much as response to Apple’s closed iPhone platform as it is to Gogole’s open Android and LiMo platforms.  (Although it is intriguing to note that AT&T, Apple’s exclusive U.S. partner for the iPhone, is among the backers of the new Symbian Foundation, perhaps indicating that even AT&T is hedging its bets.)

The fact that we will soon see three open source platforms (counting Google’s Android and LiMo) competing for market share provides yet another measure of the exceptionally high degree of competition in the wireless industry.  Even FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, hardly a “regulatory skeptic,” has recognized the significance of this aspect of wireless competition and widespread availability of wireless carrier choice in his recent statements indicating his intent to dismiss Skype’s Petition to impose open access requirements a la the FCC’s 1968 Carterfone decision, calling “wireless … the poster child for competition” and noting that “95 percent of the people in the U.S. can choose form at least three wireless operators competing to offer them service.”

Cumulatively, the increased competitiveness–and openness-of the wireless industry mitigates strongly against recent proposals for Carterfone-style requirements (see Tim Wu’s June 2007 piece); banning exclusive relationships between handset manufacturers and wireless carriers, as my colleague Barabara Esbin and I noted in our recent paper (PDF); heavy-handed regulation of early termination fees, as dicussed by Barbara (PDF) and other attempts to impose unnecessary regulations on an industry that is already the most competitive within the FCC’s purview and one in which open standards should facilitate continued innovation.

Nokia’s move is, in some respects, reminiscent of AOL’s 2003 decision to create the Mozilla Foundation.  If Symbian achieves even a fraction of Mozilla’s success with Firefox in growing a developer community that can build a strong product, the pace of wireless innovation could increase still further.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2008/06/25/not-one-not-two-but-three-competing-open-source-mobile-operating-systems/feed/ 20 10994