I very much enjoyed Dennis Baron’s new book, A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution, and highly recommend you pick it up. Baron does a wonderful job exploring the history of techno-pessimism and the endless battles about the impact of new technologies on life and learning, something I have written about here before in my essays on “Internet optimists vs. pessimists” (See: 1, 2, 3).
I have a complete review of Baron’s
A Better Pencil now up on the City Journal‘s website here. I’ve also pasted it down below.
Plato Wrote it Down
by Adam Thierer
a review of A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution, by Dennis Baron (Oxford University Press, 280 pp., $24.95)
In the beginning, Dennis Baron reminds us in his new book,
A Better Pencil, there was the word—the spoken word, that is. Oral tradition, the passing of knowledge through stories and lectures, was the primary method of instruction and learning throughout early human civilization. But then a few innovative souls decided to start writing everything down on stones and clay. Almost as soon as they did, a great debate began on the impact of new communications technology on culture and education. And it rages on today, with a new generation of optimists and skeptics battling over the impact that computing, the Internet, and digital technologies have on our lives and on how we learn about the world.
Continue reading →
Today I was invited to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to testify at one of the agency’s Broadband Working Group workshops. This particular workshop was on “Broadband Consumer Context,” which focused on “a range of challenges and opportunities as the internet becomes a focal point for commercial transactions, social networking, and a host of activities pertaining to information gathering and exchange.”
I was asked to address the issue of whether there is a relationship between online safety concerns and broadband uptake. In my testimony, I noted that, in my 15 years of research in this area, I have never unearthed any substantive empirical evidence suggesting a correlation between parental concerns about online activity and overall household broadband uptake. I have seen occasional anecdotal news stories discussing the concerns some parents have had about their kids online that led them to reject online connectivity, but these stories have been exceedingly rare (and I haven’t seen any in recent memory).
I also argued that I did not think it at all surprising that such anecdotes are harder to find, or that empirical evidence on this front seems non-existent. I argued that there were four logical explanations for why parental concerns about online safety haven’t “moved the broadband needle” much in the negative direction:
- Not every home has children present
- Parents use a variety of household media rules to control media & Internet usage
- A vibrant marketplace of parental control technologies exists
- Likely that most parents believe that the benefits of broadband outweigh the potential downsides
For all the details on each of those, read my entire testimony or check out the presentation embedded below that I made to the FCC today. Continue reading →
What Unites Advocates of Speech Controls & Privacy Regulation? [pdf]
by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka
The Progress & Freedom Foundation,
Progress on Point No. 16.19
Anyone who has spent time following debates about speech and privacy regulation comes to recognize the striking parallels between these two policy arenas. In this paper we will highlight the common rhetoric, proposals, and tactics that unite these regulatory movements. Moreover, we will argue that, at root, what often animates calls for regulation of both speech and privacy are two remarkably elitist beliefs:
- People are too ignorant (or simply too busy) to be trusted to make wise decisions for themselves (or their children); and/or,
- All or most people share essentially the same values or concerns and, therefore, “community standards” should trump household (or individual) standards.
While our use of the term “elitism” may unduly offend some understandably sensitive to populist demagoguery, our aim here is not to launch a broadside against elitism as
Time magazine culture critic William H. Henry once defined it: “The willingness to assert unyieldingly that one idea, contribution or attainment is better than another.”[1] Rather, our aim here is to critique that elitism which rises to the level of political condescension and legal sanction. We attack not so much the beliefs of some leaders, activists, or intellectuals that they have a better idea of what it in the public’s best interest than the public itself does, but rather the imposition of those beliefs through coercive, top-down mandates.
That sort of elitism—elitism enforced by law—is often the objective of speech and privacy regulatory advocates. Our goal is to identify the common themes that unite these regulatory movements, explain why such political elitism is unwarranted, and make it clear how it threatens individual liberty as well as the future of free and open Internet. As an alternative to this elitist vision, we advocate an empowerment agenda: fostering an environment in which users have the tools and information they need to make decisions for themselves and their families. Continue reading →
Over at the Verizon Policy Blog, Link Hoewing has a sharp piece up entitled, “Of Business Models and Innovation.” He makes a point that I have often stressed in my debates with Zittrain and Lessig, namely, that the whole “open vs. closed” debate is typically greatly overstated or misunderstood. Hoewing correctly argues that:
The point is not that open or managed models are always better or worse. The point is that there is no one “right” model for promoting innovation. There are examples of managed and open business models that have been both good for innovation and bad for it. There are also examples of managed and open models that have both succeeded and failed. The point is in a competitive market to let companies develop business models they believe will serve consumers best and see how things play out.
Exactly right. Moreover, the really important point here is that there exists a diverse spectrum of innovative digital alternatives from which to choose. Along the “open vs. closed” spectrum, the range of digital technologies and business models continues to grow and grow
in both directions. Do you want wide-open, tinker-friendly devices, sites, or software? You got it. Do you want a more closed, simple, and safe online experience? You can have that, too. And there are plenty of choices in between.
This is called progress!
As I am getting ready to watch the Super Bowl tonight on my amazing 100-inch screen via a Sanyo high-def projector that only cost me $1,600 bucks on eBay, I started thinking back about how much things have evolved (technologically-speaking) over just the past decade. I thought to myself, what sort of technology did I have at my disposal exactly 10 years ago today, on February 1st, 1999? Here’s the miserable snapshot I came up with:
- 10 years ago today, I did not own a high-definition television set, as they were too expensive (I bought my first one from Sears on an installment plan a few months later. It was a boxy 42-inch, 4×3 monstrosity that rolled around on the floor on casters and it took up half the room). Moreover, only a few HDTV signals could be picked up locally and none were yet available from my cable or satellite provider.
- 10 years ago today, the biggest television in my house was a 32-inch 4×3 ProScan analog set, which I thought was massive. (Of course, it was in terms of weight. It was over 125 lbs).
- 10 years ago today, I was still using a dial-up, 56k narrowband Internet connection even though I lived in downtown Washington, DC just 6 blocks from our nation’s Capitol.
- 10 years ago today, my computer was a Compaq laptop that weighed more than my dog, had barely any storage or RAM, and had a screen that was only slightly brighter than an Etch-A-Sketch.
- 10 years ago today, I was still occasionally using an old CompuServe e-mail address that had nine digits in it. (But at least I wasn’t one of the 20 million or so people paying $20 bucks per month to graze around inside AOL’s walled garden!)
- 10 years ago today, I was still backing up files on 3 1/2 inch floppy disks. I had boxes full of those things. (And, sadly, I still had 5 1/4 inch floppies in my possession that I was saving “just in case” I ever needed those old files. Pathetic!)
Continue reading →
In a new
PFF
essay, my colleague Barbara Esbin and I address a recent petition filed by the Rural Cellular Association (RCA) asking the FCC to prohibit exclusive arrangements between wireless handset producers and carriers. The RCA petition claims that large wireless companies have an unfair market advantage by giving their customers exclusive access to certain advanced smart phones, such as the Apple/AT&T iPhone—and that this anticompetitive practice is harmful to rural consumers served by RCA members.
In the piece, we debunk RCA’s arguments premised on a supposed lack of competition in wireless markets. RCA will likely now redouble these arguments by pointing to Verizon’s planned acquisition of Alltel (by far the smallest of the “Big 5” carriers), which was announced the day our piece was published. But even with four large carriers instead of five, the wireless market remains vibrantly competitive—especially as compared to 1992, when the FCC decided that even the two-carrier market was “extremely competitive,” and rejecting arguments that it ban exclusive handset arrangements. Continue reading →
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