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Larry Lessig?s book The Future of Ideas is an examination of the Internet?s influence on social discourse as well as an analysis of the forces shaping the net in the past and present. The message is both utopian and apocalyptic, and the analysis aspires to be technical, cultural, and legal. It?s an ambitious enterprise that [...]
Archive for October, 2003
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Etherbod
October 24th, 2003 
Richard Bennett Technology Review: Human Body Network Gets Fast
Researchers from NTT Docomo Multimedia Labs and NTT Microsystem Integration Labs in Japan have demonstrated a 10-megabits-per-second indoor network that uses human bodies as portable ethernet cables.
The network, dubbed ElectAura-Net, is wireless, but instead of using radio waves, infrared light, or microwaves to transmit information it uses a combination [...]
Advancing the Internet
October 22nd, 2003 Richard Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D, CO) is fighting the good fight against a distasteful coalition of Internet merchandisers who want to stifle innovation. She points out the irony of a collection of companies who’ve profited from the free and open network seeking to impose draconian regulations on cable companies:
Much of the commercial success of the Internet [...]
Sleight of blog
October 19th, 2003 Richard George Lakoff is a student of propaganda and influence who uses his learning to take shots at moderate and conservative Americans in the interest of his left wing values. His method is pretty transparent once you’ve seen it a couple of times. He ostensibly tosses out a theory of journalism that attempts to wring some [...]
You can learn so much on the Internet
October 14th, 2003 Richard Bennett Today I learned some cool stuff from my buddy Mitch Ratcliffe:
…the California state budget is larger than the combined budgets of other states, as it is the eighth largest economy in the world.
This explains a lot. California has roughly 15% of the American population, and according to Mitch, its state government spends more than all [...]
Bay Area Exceptionalism
October 14th, 2003 Richard Bennett The “we’re too smart to vote for a movie star” meme has entered a new phase, wherein Frisco Area residents proclaim their superior education as the reason for their voting to retain the Davis status quo. (See: Mark Simon via Dr. Frank).
Once again, let’s look at how education interacts with voting preferences. From the VNS [...]
Emergent Mythology
October 14th, 2003 Richard Emergent Democracy advocate Mitch Ratcliffe explains his objection to the Davis recall in an effort to deal with my claim that the recall was in fact a model of democratic action:
There’s nothing wrong with recalls or the initiative process in a widely informed society. When there are very few sources of news and they militate [...]
Suggestions for the Governator
October 13th, 2003 Richard Bennett Dan Gillmor offers a few suggestions for California’s next governor:
* Schwarzenegger should ask the Legislature to take all of the fiscally relevant propositions of the past several decades…and put every one on the table for an overall reform.
* Make California the showcase for wide-open, taxpayer-friendly e-government.
* Reform the state’s utility regulation.
* Make data [...]
Dire straits for US software business
October 10th, 2003 Richard Bennett Andy Grove predicts bad times ahead for America’s software and services industry:
He predicted that the software and services industry is about to travel the well-worn path of the steel and semiconductor industries. Steel’s market share dropped from about 50 percent to 10 percent in a few decades. U.S. chip companies saw theirs shrink from 90 [...]
Emergent Hypocrisy
October 9th, 2003 Richard Bennett While Lessig and Searls accept the legitimacy of the democratic recall, some of our Emergent Democracy advocates are having a hard time with the people’s judgment.
Ross Mayfield tries to convey an untenable distinction between Emergent Democracy as an exercise of the pure of heart in contrast to the Big Money pollution that envelopes government in [...]
