Month: February 2024

Larry Lessig – Why Can’t We Regulate the Internet Like We Regulate Real Space?

Wikipedia

I’ve known Larry Lessig for more than 25 years, and throughout that time, I’ve looked to him for wisdom – and a bit of pique – when it comes to understanding the complex interplay of law, technology, and the future of the Internet. Lessig is currently the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School. He also taught at Stanford Law School, where he founded the Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He is the author of more than half a dozen books, most of which have deeply impacted my own thinking and writing.

As part of an ongoing speaker series “The Internet We Deserve,” a collaboration with Northeastern’s Burnes Center For Social Change, I had a chance to sit down with Lessig and conduct a wide-ranging discussion covering his views on the impact of money in government’s role as a regulator of last resort. Lessig is particularly concerned about today’s AI-driven information environment, which he says has polluted public discourse and threatens our ability to conduct democratic processes like elections. Below is a transcript of our conversation, which, caveat emptor, is an edited version of AI-assisted output. The video can be found here, and embedded at the bottom of this article.

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Vint Cerf: Maybe We Need an Internet Driver’s License

Vint Cerf is one of the most recognizable figures in the pantheon of Internet stardom – and as he enters his ninth decade of a remarkable life, one of its most accomplished. I had the honor of interviewing Dr. Cerf last month as part of the “Rebooting Democracy in the Age of AI” lecture series hosted by the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University. The conversation also served as the kick-off to my own Burnes Center lecture series, “The Internet We Deserve” where I’ll talk with notable business, policy, technology and academic leaders central to the creation of the Internet as we know it today (last week I spoke with Larry Lessig). 

Universally recognized as one of “the fathers of the Internet,” Cerf’s many awards include the National Medal of Technology, the Turing Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Marconi Prize, and membership in the National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Cerf received his PhD from UCLA, where he worked in the famous lab that built the first nodes of what later became known as the Internet. He has worked at IBM, DARPA, MCI, JPL, and is now Chief Internet Evangelist at Google. Cerf has chaired, formed, and participated in countless working groups, governing bodies, and scientific, technological, and academic organizations. 

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Google’s On The Field Now. Is It Being Too Cautious?

Google’s Gemini launch.

As hype escalated around the debut of ChatGPT more than a year ago, I predicted that OpenAI and Microsoft would rapidly develop consumer subscription service models for their nascent businesses. Later that year I wrote a piece speculating that Google would inevitably follow suit. If Google was smart, and careful, it had a chance to become “the world’s largest subscription service.” From that piece:

Google can’t afford to fall behind as its closest competitors throw massive resources at AI-driven products and services. But beyond keeping up, Google finds itself in an even higher-stakes transition: Its core business, search, may be shifting into an entirely new consumer model that threatens the very foundation of the company’s cash flow spigot: Advertising. 

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The Messenger Deserved Its Demise. Its Staff? Not So Much

Well that didn’t go well.

I predicted the death of Jimmy Finkelstein’s The Messenger as soon as I read about its impending launch back in March of last year. At the time I had just soft-landed The Recount and was licking three decades of wounds related to launching, running, selling and shuttering digital media startups. And lo! Here was a guy claiming he was going to solve all of digital media’s woes with…what exactly? “Polyperspectivity”?! (No, really, that’s what they called their approach to news coverage.) And a business model ripped from the pages of Business Insider, circa 2012? I was already shaking my head, but then I read this:

“Richard Beckman, a former president of The Hill and Condé Nast who will be The Messenger’s president, said in an interview that the company planned to generate more than $100 million in revenue next year, primarily through advertising and events, with profitability expected that year.”

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