The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog

Very cool little video here by Jess3 documenting Internet growth and activity. Ironically, Berin sent it to me as Adam Marcus and I were updating the lengthy list of Net & online media stats you'll find down below. Many of the stats we were compiling are shown in the video. Enjoy!

1.73 billion Internet users worldwide as of Sept 2009; an 18% increase from the previous year.^{^[1]}

81.8 million .COM domain names at the end of 2009; 12.3 million .NET names & 7.8 million .ORG names.^{^[2]}

234 million websites as of Dec 2009; 47 million were added in 2009.^{^[3]} In 2006, Internet users in the United States viewed an average of 120.5 Web pages each day.^{^[4]}

There are roughly 26 million blogs on the Internet^{^[5]} and even back in 2007, there were over 1.5 million new blog posts every day (17 posts per second).^{^[6]}

Every Tuesday, Washington, DC's local NPR station (88.5 WAMU) carries a "Tech Tuesdays" program as a regular part of The Kojo Nnamdi Show. This week's show, which was guest hosted by Marc Fisher of the Washington Post, was on "Regulating the World Wide Web: A View from Abroad." It was a wide-ranging and very interesting discussion about the future of Internet governance and regulation, featuring:

Evgeny Morozov: Yahoo! Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University; Fellow, Open Society Institute; and author "Net Effect" blog on ForeignPolicy.com

John Morris: General Counsel, Director of the Internet Standards, Technology and Policy Project, Center for Democracy and Technology

Olivier Tesquet: Reporter, Slate.fr (France)

Listen here. It's worth your time.

Are you a tech policy geek? Do you have a strange infatuation with nerdy communications, media, and Internet policy matters? Then you probably need to get out more and get a life. Then you should be watching C-Span's outstanding program "The Communicators"! It's a half-hour weekly program featuring a different guest expert (or 2) discussing hot topics and developments in the fields of telecom regulation, media policy, and cyberlaw.

This week's show featured Kyle McSlarrow, President & CEO National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), as well as one of the nation's finest beat reporters in this arena, Kim Hart, who writes for The Hill and the excellent Hillicon Valley blog. Their "Communicators" discussion an interesting conversation about the FCC, the agency's national broadband plan, Net neutrality, universal service subsidies, Google's rising influence in Beltway debates, and more. Other recent "Communicator" guests, among many others, have included:

There is an essay in the February 8th edition of Newsweek by Dahlia Lithwick in which she lauds a Justice on South Africa's Constitutional Court for taking an openly personal approach to the judicial function, and castigates our own Supreme Court Justices for aspiring to "be machines" that just "call balls and strikes." ("The View From the Bench: Why Judges Should Get Personal") I stumbled upon this article just after hearing a local news reporter interview a Super Bowl official from my area who had recently returned. In the interview, the reporter wondered how NFL officials can possibly remain impartial -- "they must," the reporter opined, "have favorite teams after all."

I don't know if Ms. Lithwick is a football fan, but she ought to think about how the NFL would operate if my local news guy was right. If, on any given Sunday, the officials operated as adjuncts to one or the other of the teams on the field, chaos would ensue. No fan of the sport could have any confidence that superior skill on the field would necessarily translate into victories, teams would have an incentive to "invest" in officials, and players could have their careers negatively or positively affected as much or more by their personalities than their athletic ability. In short, the NFL (or any contest that we expect to be decided on the merits for that matter) could not function absent neutral rules applied impartially.

It is stunning that presumably educated people such as Ms. Lithwick can have this very basic concept to slip through their mental grasp. Our fundamental freedoms and the equal protection of the law depend upon 1) the establishment of rules that apply with equal force to all similarly situated people and 2) when disputes arise regarding their application, it is arbitrated by a disinterested party who in good faith aspires to decide the dispute on the merits rather than his or her own predilections. Indeed, the first principle (neutral rules) means nothing absent the second (a neutral judge of behavior pursuant to those rules).

It is for precisely these reasons that we demand that government officials (including judges and Justices) disclose any financial or other interests that they might have that would prejudice their conduct or decision-making, and that we ask those who may have a personal interest in a case or matter to recuse themselves. People are people, after all, but we hope that we can insulate their personal interests sufficient to allow them to "call balls and strikes" impartially.

The scariest aspect of Ms. Lithwick's essay is that she not only seems to reject that model, but that she does so in the belief that somehow it would help those less powerful (the proverbial "little guy") if judges took their cases more personally. The little guy's best hope is instead a level playing field. Those who control the levers of power, if allowed to operate consistent with their own biases and interests, will do nothing but cement that power. Ms. Lithwick's model is a recipe for ensuring that the little guy is forever on the outside looking in.

The PBS documentary series Frontline aired a new program last night called "Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier." [You can watch it online at that link.] Produced by Rachel Dretzin and Douglas Rushkoff, the 90-minute special touched on several themes we have debated here through the years including:

concerns about information overload and multitasking;

the role of computers and digital technology in education & learning; and,

the nature and impact of virtual reality and virtual worlds on real-world life and culture.

As a student of information history, I'm particularly interested in these subjects because I've written frequently about the lively debates between techno-optimists and techno-pessimists throughout history. (See my latest essay: "Are You An Internet Optimist or Pessimist? The Great Debate over Technology's Impact on Society.") I thought Dretzin and Rushkoff did a nice job covering a lot of ground in a very short amount of time and providing balance from folks on both sides of the optimist/pessimist spectrum. Below I'll just summarize a few notes I took while watching "Digital Nation" and offer a few thoughts on these controversial topics. Mostly, I'll just discuss the first two, interrelated issues. (My thoughts on the third issue -- virtual worlds and virtual reality, can be found in these videos from my recent speech in Second Life).

Two weeks ago, I mentioned here that John Stuart Mill's On Liberty celebrated its 150th anniversary this year. This year also marks the anniversary of another classic text: Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which turns 250 this year. Although Smith will always be most closely associated with The Wealth of Nations, some Smith fans (like me) consider The Theory of Moral Sentiments to be his real masterpiece. First published in 1759, the book is a far more robust theory of life, ethics, human relations, and justice. Indeed, as Dan Klein and Russ Roberts of George Mason University note in this excellent podcast, The Wealth of Nations is best viewed as an installment in, or an extension of, a much larger project that Smith really brought together more holistically in Theory of Moral Sentiments. [Note: Klein and Roberts have an amazing 6-part podcast series celebrating the 250th anniversary of the book, all of which can be found here].

Rarely has any moral philosopher gotten to his point quicker -- namely in the very first line of the first page of the text -- than Smith did in Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith wanted to show that man is both self-regarding and other-regarding, and that these seemingly contradictory notions were actually quite complementary. In other words, "self-interest" (properly understood) and empathy for others could be reconciled:

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrows of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous or the humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it. [Book I, Chap. 1]

These opening lines make it clear why those who have criticized Smith's theories as based on nothing more that greed or selfishness simply don't know what they are talking about.

As fallout from the Iranian presidential election wanes, it is important to reflect on the debated role of social media tool such as Twitter in the post-election events. On one side, some argue that Twitter provides a powerful tool for organizing a grass-roots movement. Others insist both that Twitter is playing a small role within Iran due the government's censorship and that most information about Iran posted on Twitter originated from more traditional media. I conducted a detailed analysis of approximately 500,000 posts on Twitter pertaining to the Iran election and it is clear that many observers miss the most important point: the technology, information, and news revolution that began with the advent of blogging came to full fruition in Iran's current uprising.

Via Kevin Kelly I see that at some point Forbes magazine produced this chart measuring technology diffusion rates for various media and communications technologies since their year of inception.

I found this of great interest because, since the mid-90s, I have been putting together various charts and tables illustrating technological diffusion [most recently I did this in my "Media Metrics" report] and this particular chart is quite challenging since you are forced to pick a "Year 1" date to begin each of the "S curves." For example, what is "Year 1" for electricity or telephony on one hand, or the PC or the Internet on the other? That's not always easy to determine since it is unclear when certain technologies were "born."

Regardless, no matter how you cut it, the more modern and the less regulated the technologies, the quicker they get to market. Here's a couple of my recent charts illustrating that fact. The first shows how long it took before various technologies reached 50% household penetration. The second illustrates the extent of household diffusion over time.

However, as Kevin Kelly notes, we usually never see any technology hit 100% household penetration (although the boob tube got close!):

This afternoon at the New America Foundation, Jonathan Zittrain and I engaged in a spirited debate about his provocative new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. As always, Jonathan gave an us an interesting and highly entertaining show, and it was a great honor for me to be given the opportunity to provide some feedback about his book. I've been quite critical of the thesis that Jonathan sets forth in his book, and I have discussed my reservations in a lengthy book review and a series of follow-up essays here and elsewhere. (Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

Jonathan opens with about 45 minutes of remarks and I come into the conversation around the 49 mark of the video. Michael Calabrese of NAF also has some comments about Jonathan's book after I speak and then there is some interaction with the audience.

Adam Thierer will be a guest on C-SPAN's "The Communicators" this weekend, where he will share his opinions on tech policy happenings so far this year and what can be expected in next administration.
If you happen to be out Saturday at 6:30pm (C-SPAN) or Monday at 8:00am and 8:00pm (C-SPAN 2), it should be posted online here.
They also have a fancy you tube channel here.