Technology

Technology & Democracy Project

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Rethinking Deep Blue

The recent hysteria over the defeat of world chess champion Gary Kasparov by IBM computer Deep Blue has provided fresh fuel for the debate over whether computers can be intelligent and, yes, even exhibit the other qualities of mind — consciousness, sensation, emotion and the like. Read More ›

Will Java Break Windows?

THE CROAK ON THE END OF THE LINE came from a fitness center. Huffing and puffing away on his cellular phone and exercycle was Jim Rogers, famous Alabama hick centi-millionaire motorbiker, Columbia professor of finance, and dreadnought plunger into the world’s most porcupinous stockmarkets and briar-patch bourses. From Botswana to Sri Lanka, Rogers waits till there is blood in the Read More ›

Inventing the Internet again

In the early 1960s, working on America’s second-strike capability, Paul Baran conceived the Internet. Now he wants to save the Net itself. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HIS LIFE as an engineer, Paul Baran was “scared stiff.” That can happen to people who stumble too close to the abyss of 20th-century history and look over the edge. Born in 1926 Read More ›

Fiber Keeps its Promise

Editor’s note: Four years ago, Forbes ASAP published its first issue with a stunning prophecy by contributing editor George Gilder. Fiber optics, said George, had the potential to carry 25 trillion bits per second down a single strand. This represented a ten-thousandfold leap in carrying capacity over the 2.5 billion bits “barrier” long assumed by most experts in the field. Read More ›

Feasting on the Giant Peach

WILL THE INTERNET COLLAPSE? NO WAY! What is all this commotion in Massachusetts? The very source of the Arpanet at Bolt, Beranek & Newman — the cradle of the Internet — Massachusetts is falling to the forces of Auntie Spiker and Aunt Sponge. These are the mingy ladies in the Roald Dahl story who rejoiced in James’s Giant Peach as Read More ›

Proprietary Rights: Privilege and Confidentiality In Cyberspace Proprietary Rights

At the recent Internet Law Symposium 95, sponsored by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, noted technology author and pundit George Gilder stated that “[i]n the twenty-first century, all law will be Internet law.” The proof of this statement is the debate already taking place among lawyers, scholars, technologists, and Netizens about security, privilege, and confidentiality in cyberspace. It is common currency Read More ›

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Goliath at Bay

GOLIATH IN THE VALE of Elah roared his contempt at the weapons and zeal of David: “Do you think me a dog that you contest me with sticks and stones?” Bill Gates, the Goliath of software, sees himself similarly beset by zealous rivals with risible weapons. Entering his modest second-floor office on the edge of the Microsoft campus on a Read More ›

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Angst and Awe on the Internet

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 ›

A Magna Carta for the Information Age

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 ›

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Individuals, not Governments, Should Shape Internet’s Future

The Internet is no longer a government network tying computer users together, but a worldwide network of many networks, free and open to all, and increasingly easy to access. There is no monopoly potential to it, so government's excuse to regulate it is almost nil.  Read More ›