From Left to Right: Lessig Addressing Cato

Watch this video of Lawrence Lessig addressing Cato on the common problems facing the Left and Right. Lessig is no right-winger, but it's impressive how well he frames his message to reveal what causes they have in common.

Crowdsourcing Curation: The Social Graph as Gatekeeper

I've written before about the compromise we tacitly agree to when amateurs take over the roles formerly held by professionsals . The Internet promotes this takeover by lowering the cost of production and transmission to near zero for nearly every user, for everything from words (blogs) to pictures (Flickr) to video (YouTube). As Clay Shirky put it so well : As freedom to produce increases, average quality necessarily goes down. For example: Thanks to Flickr, we now have access to a mind-boggling array of beautiful pictures, but that's partly because we simply have access to a mind boggling array of pictures, period . Some of these, of course, are beautiful; but there are a lot more of Aunt Bettie's 43rd picture of a bundt cake than of an Annie Leibovitz Rolling Stone cover. It is at this point that many people interject: "This is the problem with the internet! It's full of crap!" Many would argue that without professional producers, editors, publishers, an...

Intellectual Property and Deflation of the Knowledge Economy

[Update: This accidentally became a series of posts on a theme. Does Intellectual Property Law Foster Innovation? Where I question the efficacy of patent and copyright in a socially networked world. Intellectual Property and the Deflation of the Knowledge Economy - (this post) Where I toy with the idea that the Knowledge Economy may not turn out to be much of an economy, especially when it comes to Intellectual Property The Economic Reset Button - Where Jeff Jarvis asks Eric Schmidt whether or not this is a fundamental shift in the economic base Innovative Deflation - Where I ask, "Is the knowledge economy ripe for growth, or is it the means by which traditional economies are shrunk?" ] Friday night I was discussing the future of intellectual property law with some friends. My argument, in a nutshell: Every business model relying on intellectual property law (patent and copyright) is heading for massive deflation in our lifetimes. We've seen it with the m...

You are going to get COVID-19. Now what?

In my best estimation, this is how we should address COVID-19 at this point: 1. You are going to get COVID-19. It's very likely endemic now. Breakthrough Delta infections carry the same viral load in the nasopharynx of the vaxxed and unvaxxed alike. Resign yourself to this fact. You are going to get COVID-19. If not Delta, then whatever variant comes next due to antigenic drift. 2. There is no herd immunity. There is no eradicating this virus. "Zero COVID" is a fantasy. It's too widespread, too mutable, and too contagious. Eventually, this will join the other common coronaviruses in circulation (229E, NL63, OC43, and HKU1). 3. The vaccines shouldn't be considered vaccines. Consider them similar to seasonal flu shots. They are here to make sure that when you get COVID-19 (And let me reiterate: You are going to get COVID-19), you are far less likely to be hospitalized or die. 4. When enough people, vaxxed and unvaxxed, get COVID-19 (And let me reiterate: You are...

Eric Reasons

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