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The Misdirection of Recent Copyright Laws

The introduction of new copyright protection laws in the past few years has put a bad mark on our country’s strong tradition of balancing the interests of inventors with the greater good of progressing the arts and sciences. While doing very little to protect inventors and in many cases reducing their incentive to innovate, these laws are calculated only to protect the outdated business model of large corporations in the recording and movie industries. Many roles, careers, and organizations in society have been suffered to pass away and be replaced as new technologies remodel the world’s cultural and business landscape, but few have had the money, resources, and political clout of these corporations, and few have fought against extinction so fiercely. This battle, and the damage it is causing to society, mostly clearly reveals itself in the current struggles between the music and electronics industries. New innovative products that bring us information faster and more conveniently are literally being held back from store shelves until the copyright legal wars are resolved. It is time for us to recognize the tactics of these self-serving industries for what they are and begin to shift our legislative focus towards creating laws that restore the balance between creator and consumer in the context of the changing technological world.

Why (Not) Read “The World is Flat?”

In his book, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman very enthusiastically sets forth his analysis of the globalization trend of the past decade, its present and projected effect on our lives, and how best to adapt to it. Right now I am going to tell you what I didn’t like about it. I do this in spite of the fact that the book is a valuable read with plenty of praise-worthy, thought-provoking content to satisfy the intellectual cravings of any modern thinker. For instance, anyone could tell you that computers and the Internet transformed society in unimaginable ways, but few of them describe in such thorough, specific, and accurate detail just how people used these technologies to bring to pass the world’s flattening. With that said, here is what I don’t like about the book.

Where’s the Hard Evidence?

While Friedman introduces to the reader’s mind a host of new ideas and propositions about globalization, very often I found myself asking him mentally to “prove it,” because there is almost no quantitative evidence to support most of his points. This desire manifested itself strongest in a chapter Friedman dedicated to convincing his readers of the value of an open market. By the end of the chapter, however, he proved most effective in convincing me that economics is a branch of philosophy instead of a science. Can anyone imagine any organization, private or institutional, making a far-reaching decision, one that everyone agrees will have a profound impact on the organization’s future, based solely on someone’s opinion on the subject? The choice to maintain or constrain an open market in the U.S. is one such decision, one that demands at least some supporting quantitative information.

To Adapt to Globalization, Be Better…. At Everything!

Friedman spends a significant number of words informing the reader what individuals, companies, and educational systems must do to adapt to the modern world. To summarize, we need to train our students more extensively in math and sciences, and we also need to round them out with an improved liberal arts education. Our companies need to outsource commoditized services and at the same time insource their own services to other companies. Big companies need to act small, and small companies need to act big. People need to be more creative, passionate, and curious, and learn how to love to learn. They need to improve their right brains, and also need to improve their left brains. In short, everyone needs to be better at everything!
At first I was caught by a feeling of raw enthusiasm infused in Friedman’s calls for national self-improvement in response to an increasingly competitive world. Unfortunately, after a while I began to view his general, all-encompassing, and often times repetitive assertions as an overly long motivational speech. While I sincerely enjoyed the book’s energy and positive thinking about our current era, I would not shed a tear if much of the above material were simply sliced from the book.

Conclusions

To end on a positive note, anyone who wants to understand how the world has changed in the last decade with respect to business processes will stand to gain much from reading The World is Flat. There are simply a few imperfections of the book, and hopefully pointing them out will help others to observe the book’s content in a different light

The Rights of Software Makers and Consumers

Imagine if with the purchase of a brand new television set came attached an EULA specifying that only channels and movies authorized by the product's maker could be legally viewed on the T.V. Or imagine if a car dealer forced you to sign an agreement on purchase of a new car requiring the purchaser to only buy gas and replacement parts at locations authorized by the dealer. These ideas are absolutely ludicrous, yet software companies continue to attempt to enforce similarly ridiculous constraints on their products. For example, Apple has recently placed severe restrictions on the iPhone that disallow installment of a number of software packages that compete with products of Apple or its affiliates. Skype, a direct competitor to services provided by AT&T, who has an exclusive contract with Apple, cannot be installed because of VoIP restrictions on the phone. Neither can Firefox, an alternative to Apple's Safari, be installed because of other software restrictions. While some acts such as software piracy have direct illegal analogs in the concrete world, restrictions like those above serve no one's interests but the companies making them, and we are fortunate that modern government agencies like the EU are taking an interest in protecting the rights of consumers and competing companies. Much work remains to be done in defining the rights of a software IP holder versus the rights of a software purchaser.

Looking Before Leaping to Solve Gender Equality in Computing

Amid the varying opinions about how best to handle gender inequality in science and engineering a common theme repeatedly reveals itself; we don’t yet understand the full nature of the problem or how to solve it. This theme materializes from contradictions such as Senator Wyden’s statement that math is a male-dominated field being contrasted with Paul Palma’s assertion that nearly half of math graduates are women. It also shows itself when both of these independently admit that the reasons women avoid hard sciences, including, but not limited to, gender discrimination, are currently only supported by anecdotal evidence. If a profound change in our current education system to cause a many-fold increase in the number of practicing female scientists and engineers is desired, as some suggest it is, then much research and formal analysis of both the nature of this problem and the effectiveness of proposed solutions needs to be conducted first. If not, we may find our changes profoundly damaging both our educational system and the progress of our country instead of helping them.