Baby Steps into the Blogosphere
A colleague sent me a link to a blog called ”TPM Cafe,” which apparently grew out of something called the “Talking Points Memo,” and a suggestion that I “try to hook up with these guys.”
More specifically, he linked me into Matt Yglesias‘s post called ”Infopolitics as Metaphor and Reality.” Yglesias apparently questions whether or not the “information age” is real, or simply a useful metaphor:
[I]n all these contexts, “the information age” almost always serves as a kind of metaphor for the notion that the public sector ought to become more flexible, more consumer-oriented, and so forth. . . . All that’s fine as far as it goes (except when, as in the case of Klein’s enthusiasm for privatization it’s not fine), but it leaves what I think is a pretty noteworthy blank spot—the literal politics and policy of the information age. There’s a broad set of issues related to intellectual property law, telecommunications policy, the dispensation of the radio spectrum, and so forth that are actually about the information age where the policies we have nowadays are unsatisfactory and where mainstream liberal figures have tended not to show much leadership.
As a devout believer in the reality of the information age, I felt compelled to comment. And so, today I made my first official blog posting (my previous significant contributions to on-line discourse all having occurred before blogs were blogs), under the title ”Towards Coherence in Infopolitics”:
The problem here is more than New Dems vs. Old Dems, because the Republicans aren’t any closer to coherence than are the Democrats. Technology policy simply does not map into political economy very well. Take the debate over P2P file sharing, for example. The divide runs cleanly between Hollywood and the Silicon Valley. Which constituency is the Democratic Party willing to alienate? Virtually any sensible position will spook one of them.
Coherence in issues related to communications, media convergence, and patent reform are just as tricky (though not as clean from a political economy standpoint). Positions that favor small businesses, entrepreneurship, and entry threaten to cripple incumbents. As a result, they will hurt selected big businesses and eliminate what have long been secure jobs. Positions that strengthen incumbents and secure those jobs will dampen entrepreneurial activity—probably risking more jobs overall, but fewer union jobs. Patent policies that favor generics may reduce drug prices, but also risk reducing medical research. Policies that favor branded drug manufacturers will have the opposite effect. Again, who do you want to alienate? Small business, labor, medical researchers, or the ill and infirm?
The bottom line is that no political faction in this country has taken a coherent position on information economy issues because they lack either the framework within which to consider those issues and the will to alienate potential constituents. I tried to provide such a framework in my new book, Digital Phoenix: Why the Information Economy Collapsed and How it Will Rise Again (MIT Press, 2005). Without getting into details, I believe that we are living through an epochal transformation, as the industrial age gives way to the information age. As a practical matter, the defining feature of the information age is that, for the first time in human existence, it is inexpensive and easy to collect and manipulate information. This single change will ripple through society to transform everything it touches.
As this transformation progresses, most of what it touches will follow a predictable, recurrent pattern. Consumers (or end users) will benefit immediately, as reduced information costs reduce transaction costs and drive prices downward. Clever producers will benefit next, as they devise new business models appropriate to the new information economics. Incumbent intermediaries will fight back, typically by attempting to use law, regulation, and legislation to lock us into a status quo that has served them well. Society will incur both costs and benefits as we develop the rules within which technology and incumbency battle.
Digital Phoenix explains the intellectual roots of these beliefs, and shows how they have already played themselves out in the software and music industries. It describes the relationship between the information economy stories that we have already seen unfold and the information society stories in our future. And it does provide a framework within which to consider technology policies.
If anyone gets a chance to look at the book, I’d be eager to hear your opinions—specifically about the politics.
The blogger known as The Informationist has crawled out of his shell to make his first appearance in the broader blogoshphere.
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