reading – Technology Liberation Front

Symposium: Hirschman’s “Exit, Voice & Loyalty” at 50

Adam Thierer — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 15:28:01 +0000

This month’s Cato Unbound symposium features a conversation about the continuing relevance of Albert Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States, fifty years after its publication. It was a slender by important book that has influenced scholars in many different fields over the past five decades. The Cato symposium features a discussion between me and three other scholars who have attempted to use Hirschman’s framework when thinking about modern social, political, and technological developments.

My lead essay considers how we might use Hirschman’s insights to consider how entrepreneurialism and innovative activities might be reconceptualized as types of voice and exit. Response essays by Mikayla Novak, Ilya Somin, and Max Borders broaden the discussion to highlight how to think about Hirschman’s framework in various contexts. And then I returned to the discussion this week with a response essay of my own attempting to tie those essays together and extend the discussion about how technological innovation might provide us with greater voice and exit options going forward. Each contributor offers important insights and illustrates the continuing importance of Hirschman’s book.

I encourage you to jump over to Cato Unbound to read the essays and join the conversations in the comments.

Wayne Brough Reviews “Evasive Entrepreneurs”

Adam Thierer — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 11:48:32 +0000

My thanks to Dr. Wayne Brough, President at Innovation Defense Foundation, for reviewing my new book, Evasive Entrepreneurs and the Future of Governance, over at the AIER website. Brough says of the book:

Adam Thierer has created a thoughtful and surprisingly timely book examining the interplay between entrepreneurs, innovation, and regulators. Thoughtful because he tackles tough questions of innovation and governance in a dynamic market. Timely because the coronavirus pandemic has forced policymakers to seriously reconsider the cumulative regulatory burden and how it may impede the economic recovery. Whether it’s V-shaped or a slower, longer recovery, decades worth of regulatory underbrush has taken its toll on economic activity while providing few, if any, benefits.

He also does a nice job summarizing the key theme of both this latest book and my previous one on Permissionless Innovation:

Thierer takes to task the anti-growth mentality and the political movements against innovation and growth, highlighting the long tradition of hostility toward innovation, from the early 19th-century Luddites up through today’s technophobes advocating restrictions on new technologies such as artificial intelligence. Much of this is driven by the precautionary principle, which Thierer views as an inappropriate guide for regulators. The precautionary principle is a highly risk-averse standard that provides regulators an excuse to stifle innovation for the slightest perceived hazard.

But Dr. Brough rightly takes me to task for not addressing intellectual property issues in either book. He’s right. I did indeed chicken out of bringing IP policy into these books for a variety of reasons. After I co-edited a big book on IP wars in 2002 (Copy Fights), I made so many enemies for trying to walk the moderate middle path that I largely abandoned the field forevermore. I just got tired of the Holy Wars fought over the topic, and every time I tried to play the role of peacemaker in those wars, I just got shot at by both sides in the intellectual crossfire. I was simultaneously being accused of being an “IP anarchist” and “a whore for Big Content,” by people on either side of those wars. At one point, a board member of the Cato Institute suggested I should be removed from my job for not being enough of an IP opponent while, at the exact same time, a Cato adjunct fellow was suggesting I was already far too radical of an IP opponent. I certainly couldn’t be both! It was comical, but also exhausting and incredibly frustrating. And so I raised the white flag of surrender and walked off the IP battlefield around 2005.

But I also did not bring IP policy into either of my latest books simply because I needed to pick my battles and focus on the issues I know best. When you go down the IP rabbit hole, there’s no escaping that endless descent. Both books would have needed to be significantly longer to incorporate nuanced discussions of how copyright and patents affect innovation outcomes.

Regardless, I very much understand the concerns that Dr. Brough raises in his review about how, “the efficacy of intellectual property laws is inextricably tied to innovation, for better or worse,” and how, “[s]ome of the most disruptive innovation has occurred in the shadow of intellectual property laws that still struggle to keep pace with the rate of technological change.” He’s correct, and entire books have been written on the topic… including my old one!

Anyway, you can read the opening chapter of my new book here, or buy the entire thing here. And my thanks again to Wayne Brough for taking the time to read and review it.

Some Recent Essays on the Importance of Innovation & the Fight over Technological Progress

Adam Thierer — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 15:35:34 +0000

[Updated: March 2022]

I was speaking at a conference recently and discussing my life’s work, which for 30 years has been focused on the importance of innovation and intellectual battles over what we mean progress. I put together up a short list of some things I have written over the last few years on this topic and thought I would just re-post them here. I will try to keep this regularly updated, at least for a few years.

UNDERSTANDING THE CHALLENGE WE FACE:

Defending Innovation Against Attacks from All Sides (November 2021)
How to Get the Future We Were Promised (January 2022)
The Radicalization of Modern Tech Criticism (April 2019)
Is It ‘Techno-Chauvinist’ & ‘Anti-Humanist’ to Believe in the Transformative Potential of Technology? (September 2018)

HOW WE MUST RESPOND = “Rational Optimism” / Right to Earn a Living / Permissionless Innovation

A Case for Innovation and Optimism (A conversation with Jason Crawford, March 2022)
How To Defend a Culture of Innovation During the Technopanic (April 2019)
Is This the End of Permissionless Innovation? (January 2021)
How Technology Expands the Horizons of Our Humanity (November 2018)
Deep Technologies & Moonshots: Should We Dare to Dream? (September 2018)
The Right to Pursue Happiness, Earn a Living, and Innovate (September 2018)
Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom (2016)

ADDITIONAL READING:

Is There a Science of Progress? (August 2019)
Technological Innovation and Economic Growth: A Brief Report on the Evidence (March 2019)
5 Books that Shaped My Thinking on Innovation (April 2020)
Innovation and the Trouble with the Precautionary Principle (April 2020)

NEW BOOK (tying together all the essays and papers listed above):

Evasive Entrepreneurs and the Future of Governance: How Innovation Improves Economies and Governments (2020)

The Digital Decade’s Definitive Reading List: Internet & Info-Tech Policy Books of the 2000s

Adam Thierer — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:08:08 +0000

So, did the decade just end or do we have another year to go? Honestly, I’ve never understood when the cut-off is from one decade to the next. (My friend Larry Magid struggles with the same question in his recent column on “The Decade in Technology.”) Nonetheless, I’ve seen a lot of best-of-decade lists published recently, so I thought I would throw my own out there even though it is still a work in progress.

I have been attempting to compile the definitive bibliography for our digital decade—the definitive list of Internet policy books, that is. I started throwing this together two years ago when I was penning my list of “The Most Important Internet Policy Books of 2008” and continued to work on it as I was finishing up my 2009 installment as well. I grabbed every book off my shelf that dealt with the future of the Internet and the impact the Digital Revolution is having on our lives, culture, and economy and threw the title and a link onto this list. (I’m also using the list to help structure my thoughts for a forthcoming book of my own on Internet Optimists vs. Pessimists, something I’ve been writing a lot about here in recent years.)

Below you will find what I’ve got so far. There are around 80 90 books on the list. I’ve divided the list by year, but you may be wondering what determined the order the books appear in. In essence, I’ve listed what I feel are the 1 or 2 most important titles first and then just added others randomly. Eventually, I plan to post a “Most Important Internet Policy Books of the Decade” list outlining which titles I believe have been the most influential. I suspect I’ll name Benkler’s Wealth of Networks to the top slot followed closely by Zittrain’s The Future of the Internet, Lessig’s Free Culture, and Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail. Anyway, that’s for another day.

For now, I would just like to ask for reader suggestions regarding what other titles that should appear on this list. I will add titles as they come in. I want to stress, however, that I am trying to keep this list limited to books that have something to say about Internet policy (cyber-law, digital economics, information technology politics, etc).

I hope others find this useful. And yes, I have read all most of the books on this list! As I’ve noted here before, I’m a bit of book nerd. (Now that I’ve received so many helpful additions to the list, there are some titles on the list I have not had a chance to read through yet).