Technology & Democracy Project
Well, it had to happen. As the Internet emerges as the central nervous system of global capitalism, the Luddite left is bursting into “flames” against the microcosm and telecosm, against interlinked computers and the global radiance of electromagnetic communications. This rising resistance resonates with the press coverage that has long lavished attention on the excesses of the Net. Richard Shaffer Read More ›
NETIZENS — the community of Internet users — bear a strong resemblance to Americans of theWild West. They are fiercely independent, value their privacy and have a strong distrust of lawsmade in Washington, D.C. Nonetheless, even the Wild West was tamed as the rule of law replaced frontier Justice. The Internet already is home to some 40 million users and Read More ›
The idea for creating a legal analog to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) occured to Peter Harter while writing an essay criticising Senator Exon’s “Communications Decency Act of 1995” (S.314). Click here to see this unpublished essay.) The following is a brief idea outline for the Internet Law Task Force , written prior to the launch of the task force in October of Read More ›
Every now and then, timing is all. Take George Gilder’s Aug. 28 Forbes ASAP piece, “The Coming Software Shift.” Lucky Forbes readers got their copies in mid-August, smack between the year’s two biggest technology events — Netscape’s record-hot IPO and the release of Windows 95. Gilder used the timing to explain why creative energy and profits in desk-top software would Read More ›
U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska wants to know: With deregulation of telecommunications, who will bring connections to Unalakleet, to Aleknagik and to Sleetmute? Who will bring 500 channels up the Yukon with the salmon to the people in Beaver? What will happen to the Yupik, the Inupiat and the Inuit? Will we leave them stranded in the snow while Read More ›
It is all too true that Americans have become inarticulate, at least in some respects. Television, families without much parental interaction with children and schools more interested in socializing kids than instructing them have combined to reduce the expressive refinements of, say, 100 years ago. Then, young people were trained to write with a legible hand and high-school students studied Read More ›
It’s time to deregulate America’s telecom infrastructure. And let the creative destroyers go to work. MICHAEL MILKEN IS BACK! Back, so the story goes, from the orgies of ’80s greed, back from the best-selling den of thieves, back from his preening at the predators’ ball, back from soft time at Pleasanton pen, back from prostate cancer and plagues of litigation, Read More ›
Much hype and misinformation has been churned out about cyberspace and the information highway. While the mass media’s coverage of this new medium does not rival that of the O.J. trial, attention being paid to users and providers of computer networks and online services has grown intense during the past two years. Culminating this misinformation glut is legislation in Washington, Read More ›
Death and taxes are known as life’s certainties. Far less common, but much more enjoyable to contemplate, is the death of a tax. In fact, a little-known technology may be about to accomplish what generations of Americans have joked and dreamed about — and both the new Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer and his predecessor, Chairman Sam Gibbons, Read More ›
This article was first published in Forbes ASAP, February 27, 1995. The article contains letters from various correspondents commenting upon a wide variety of issues raised in the series of George Gilder’s “Telecosm” articles which will be published in 1996 by Simon & Schuster, as a sequel to Microcosm, published in 1989 and Life After Television published by Norton in Read More ›
Craig Mundie of Microsoft thinks that Tiger, his video-on-demand operating system, signals a fundamental shift in the computer industry. Ruling the new era will be bandwidth measured in billions of bits per second rather than in the millions of instructions per second of current computers. “We’ll have infinite bandwidth in a decade’s time.” Bill Gates, PC Magazine, Oct. 11, 1994. Read More ›