The Secret Circuit: Coming “Soon”
The Secret Circuit: The Little-Known Court where the Rules of the Information Age Unfold is now in the hands of its publisher, Rowman & Littlefield. I hope to see it in print before 2007 is out.
The Secret Circuit is the second entry in my ongoing inquiry into the nature of the global transition from industrial age to information age. My first entry, Digital Phoenix, explored the “front page stories” of the commercial transformations of software and entertainment. The Secret Circuit is an institutional study of the appellate court granted exclusive jurisdiction over the rules governing innovation and globalization. I plan to continue this inquiry with at least two more books: one describing the ways to leverage the lessons of the early information economy into successful new information-based technologies; and one showing how the patterns that have buffeted the information economy are beginning to play themselves out in broader sociopolitical context as we become a fully information society. Stay tuned! (And I mean “stay tuned for the long run.").
In the meantime, Rowman & Littlefield asked me to prepare a 75-word blurb for the book. Here’s what I’ve got:
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was born in the early 1980s as part of the drive to liberalize and reinvigorate the American economy. Its docket covers the rules guiding patents, innovation, globalization, and much of government. Are these rules impelling the economy forward or holding it back? Are the policies that we have the policies that we want? The Secret Circuit demystifies this Court’s work and answers these questions.
Intrigued? Curious? Want more? The book’s draft prologue is below; you’ll have to wait for the rest (unless you ask me very nicely for a sneak peek).
Prologue
When Worlds Collide
We are at the dawn of the global information age, but industrial age infrastructures and institutions still dominate our world. We entered the Twenty-First Century with ingrained notions of education, society, community, business, family, government, politics, law, faith, religion, and life in general that rest upon structures developed to accommodate industrialization. Vacations, school years, suburbs, and nation states are but a few of the concepts so basic to our existence that we can hardly imagine a world without them. Yet, none existed in anything like their current form more than a few centuries ago. All are relatively recent innovations in the long history of our species. And some may soon wither away or undergo radical transformation.
A single sentence both defines the information age and reveals how it differs from all earlier epochs: Information is abundant, easy to collect and manipulate, and inexpensive to share. Never before has any individual, no matter how erudite, had as ready access to as much information about as many topics as does the least-connected member of the information age. We, a thinking species mired from time immemorial in a world of information scarcity, have suddenly found ourselves thrust into a world of information abundance. That simple twist changes everything. Every aspect of life that involves the collection, combination, or communication of information—in short, every aspect of life—must change to accommodate our new reality. Few can question the inevitability of this conclusion. The critical questions concern how things will change and how we will manage the transition.
The scope of such questions is staggering—and intimidating. How can we study such an epochal transformation? Big pictures tend to blur, small ones to induce myopia. Nevertheless, there are places where the critical issues rise to the fore, institutions perched precariously upon transformational fault lines where industrial age sensibilities collide daily with information age needs. From an economic perspective, three seismic regions are likely to dominate the transition: technological advancement, the role of the government as an economic actor, and international economic relations. A single little-known institution, The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, sits atop the fault lines running through all three of those regions. An exploration of the relationship between the policy objectives of intelligent transition planning and the Federal Circuit’s practical rulings can illuminate the progress of our transition.
This institutional perspective provides a rare glimpse of the transition’s greatest challenges: disputes between people trying to apply the rules governing innovation and globalization as the information age transforms their environments. From the perspective of public policy, the proper resolution of these disputes lies in the overall goal of orienting the American economy in a direction appropriate for the information age. From a narrow legal perspective, the proper resolution of these disputes lies in a legal scheme deemed appropriate for an advanced industrial economy. When the two goals are in tension, they demonstrate the pain of transformation—a pain that all other aspects of life will encounter, though likely in less transparent settings.
The transition to the information age will necessarily begin with the institutions and the rules that guided us through the industrial age. As circumstances change, institutions and rules will adapt, though not necessarily evenly. At times, legacy rules will impede appropriate progress. Some players who fared particularly well under the old system will encourage us to keep these legacies in place; after all, new rules could lead to an uncertain and unsettling future. At other times, we will devise new rules to impel ourselves forward. But forward motion always risks leaving some folks behind, motivating them to fight progress, and motivating society at large to consider assisting them as they adjust to change. The wisdom that American society applies to these inherent conflicts will determine how successfully we adapt to the future. The Federal Circuit stands at the epicenter of this conflict. An analysis of its rulings will elucidate these conflicts, their resolutions, and the implications to the success of our transition.
These implications define the raison d’être of our inquiry. The nature of the challenge is hard to miss. Most people understand that our institutions and rules will have to keep pace with the changing world around us. Most people can see parts of the world changing and intuit that other parts will either accommodate the changes or fade into irrelevance. Most people see the growing importance of information, of technology, of innovation and invention, of international trade, and of reinvented government. And most people think that they understand what our institutions are trying to accomplish in each of these arenas: to promote the innovations necessary for scientific progress; to devise trade policies that improve the American economy; and to push government towards becoming an increasingly responsible—and less paternalistic—economic actor.
Are “most people” right? These goals certainly sound like the policies we espouse. Those of differing political orientation may disagree bitterly about the best ways to implement them, but who today disagrees with these goals themselves? Who does not wish to see science progress, trade improve the economy, and government behave responsibly? These policy objectives seem to be matters of consensus across the American political spectrum. They are certainly the policies that we want to have.
But are they the policies that we do have? That question is harder to answer. To determine the policies that we do have, we must investigate the resolutions of tough disputes, where different parties would push the law in different directions. To conduct this investigation, we must examine the rulings and opinions of the courts charged with resolving these disputes. For “most people,” however, that examination poses an insurmountable hurdle. Court rulings tend to appear in arcane legalese—a situation exacerbated in the esoteric areas of law dealing with patentable technologies, trade disputes, and government economic responsibility. In these areas, the legal rulings are so specialized that Congress chose to sequester them within the chambers of a single, specialized appeals court—the Federal Circuit.
Fortunately, though specialized skills may be necessary to follow the court’s highly technical jurisprudence, none are needed to grasp the import of its work. This court sits at the forefront of the information economy. Its rulings help us understand precisely what policies we actually have governing technological development, international trade, and government reinvention. The Federal Circuit is where the rules of the information age unfold. If you want to know how prepared we are to navigate the transition to the information age, you must examine Federal Circuit jurisprudence.
The Federal Circuit today remains a Washington rarity—non-partisan, high impact, and low profile. We the people deserve to understand how the issues that this institution addresses reveal the challenges of transitioning to an information age, and how the court itself is shaping the emerging information economy. The Secret Circuit will provide that understanding.
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