Dave Farber's Year In Washington

Tim O'Reilly writes "Dave Farber is not only a great technologist (one of the founding fathers of the Internet) but also one of the people most concerned with technology and society (co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for example). This brief report on Dave's year as Chief Technologist of the FCC gives a few impressions of the policy makers in Washington D.C. Well worth a read, and immensely credible to those of us who know Dave." (Read More.)

"One highlight:

Washington is a town with very, very few technical people advising the top levels of decision-makers. In an era where technology has such an impact on our economy, that is dangerous. Most of the senior people are lawyers and economists with little knowledge of science and technology. They get their information largely from the few technical people on their staffs and from hordes of lobbyists.

For those who don't know it, Dave's IP (Interesting People) email list is a previous generation of the same spirit that led to slashdot. The interesting people on the list send interesting tidbits to Dave, who forwards them on (or not) depending on whether he finds them interesting. Dave does no reformatting or cleanup of submissions, so the stuff is sometimes a bit hard to read, depending on how many times it's been forwarded, but the content is almost always worthwhile. And Dave's own pieces are almost always worth a read. They range from what's new and hot in Akihabra (Dave's a gadget guy) to what Dave had to eat on that same trip to Tokyo. There's a leaning towards stories that hit the intersection between technology and policy, but lots of other goodies come by here too.

For web archives going back to mid-1993, see http://www.interesting-people.org/."

Comments

Re:The Problem With Washington...

[charvolant]

The existence of strong encryption technologies, software that defeates copyright-protection ... Technical problems can only be solved technical solutions

These two examples are social problems.

Strong encryption technologies are -- until quantum computing arrives, at least -- pretty much a solved technological problem. The problems it poses are ones like: "Does society, as a whole, want to allow anyone to hide the evidence of their activities? Including that guy collecting protection money? Including those kidnappers? Including that serial killer?" or "Does society, as a whole, want to allow a government that can erase all records of their activities simply by forgetting a few passwords?&quot Human-rights trials for nasties like the Khmer Rouge or the Stazi often have to use the records that they, themselves, have gathered. Nice of us to give them an "instant erase" button on a plate.

Similarly, the copyright-breaking software is, pretty much, a solved technical problem. But the question remains as to how much reward a creator should be given and how that reward is gathered and distributed. Nobody wants copyright-breaking software in and of itself; what they want is the stuff that is copyrighted -- the creative work. If copyright-breaking software helps dry up the source of readily available of creative work, then it's a net loss. Looks like a social problem to me.

And technical problems can be solved by non-technical solutions. A way of solving a problem is to make the root of the problem go away. If you reduce the burglary problem to insignificance, all those technical problems to do with the control of laser-cannon in home security also vanish.

This touches on a larger question. How much responsibility do the creators of software owe to the rest of society? Most software has unforseen consequences. (As do grandiose political programs, but I'm talking about the software domain, here.) Technologies such as strong encryption can have quite large societal consequences, not all of them begnin. When does everybody else get a say? Is releasing them without the general agreement of society an abuse of power?

I'm just not that impressed with arrogant, power-hungry techheads, as well.