Susan Crawford's Five Good Question

Susan Crawford, a law Professor at Cardozo and a Board Member of ICANN supportive of Net Neutrality, asks and answers five good questions about Network Neutrality. Chris Yoo, a law professor at Vanderbilt and opposed to Net Neutrality, gives his answers (along with Susan’s) here. Harold Feld, not a law professor anywhere, gives his answers below.

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The Ironies

For some time now I have been wanting to write that seminal piece explaining the essence of the philosophy of “technoskepticism” that motivated my desire to start up Wetmachine in the first place. My brilliant essay, in the line of the late Neil Postman’s Technopoloy and all of the grouchy, curmudgeonly works of the late, great Christopher Lasch (Culture of Narcissism, Revolt of the Elites, etc) would, in a playful yet dazzlingly serious manner, address the fundamental ironies of our time resultant from the fetishization of technology that has taken on the role of religion in “modern” societies that naively believe they’re past all that.

Perhaps I would address scary (but nevertheless ironic) phenomena like technology-boosted asymmetric warfare as carried out by midieaval fundamentalists — today’s blasts in London presumably the latest sad manifistation thereof. And perhaps I would digress to discuss internet pornography consumption among teenagers in the pro-capitalism Bible Belt of the USA, another region in which the “internal contradictions” of the fundamentalist-technopolist religion play out.

Alas I have no time to work on this essay today. Because I’m really behind the 8-ball at work, as a consequence of having dropped my Powerbook into a puddle of coffee some weeks ago. It’s still “in the shop” and I’ve been reduced to using the virus-infested, 4-year old Gateway(tm) that is our family computer. Let me tell you, this thing is slow. And, I don’t have all my favorite tools installed on it. And there’s nothing quite so frustrating as trying to write a powerful essay on the ironies of technology addiction on a crappy old Windoze machine, that much I’m sure of.

So perhaps some other time.

Tales From the Sausage Factory: Saddam and Howard Dean

I seem to be the only one in America who fails to see the link between the capture of Saddam Hussein this week and the 2004 Democratic Presidential Primary. Or so says an op ed in today’s Washington Post. On the other hand, I do see this as a classic example of media group think.

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