NOTE: I have been posting excerpts from my book World After Capital. Currently we are on the Informational Freedom section and the previous excerpt was on Internet Access. Today looks at the right to be represented by a bot (code that works on your behalf). Bots for All of UsOnce you have access to the Internet, you need software to connect to its many information sources and services. When Sir Tim Berners-Lee first invented the World Wide Web in 1989 to make information sharing on the Intern...

NOTE: I have been posting excerpts from my book World After Capital. Currently we are on the Informational Freedom section and the previous excerpt was on Internet Access. Today looks at the right to be represented by a bot (code that works on your behalf). Bots for All of UsOnce you have access to the Internet, you need software to connect to its many information sources and services. When Sir Tim Berners-Lee first invented the World Wide Web in 1989 to make information sharing on the Intern...

The European Union launched an Antitrust Complaint against Google over Android. It is a shame that we keep coming back to using antitrust legislation to try to deal with issues of concentration and market power in information industries. We need alternative regulatory tools that are more in line with how computation works and why the properties of information tend to lead to concentration. We want networks and network effects to exist because of their positive externalities. Imagine as a coun...

The European Union launched an Antitrust Complaint against Google over Android. It is a shame that we keep coming back to using antitrust legislation to try to deal with issues of concentration and market power in information industries. We need alternative regulatory tools that are more in line with how computation works and why the properties of information tend to lead to concentration. We want networks and network effects to exist because of their positive externalities. Imagine as a coun...

Here is the transcript of my talk about a Basic Income Guarantee and the Right to be Represented by a BOT from TEDxNewYork. All of our economic theory, all of our business practice, all of our public policy, they were all developed during an era of scarcity. Scarcity means that when you want more of something, there’s an additional cost to be paid. And that was always true for physical products but it’s no longer true for digital information. That extra view of the funny cat video on YouTube,...

Here is the transcript of my talk about a Basic Income Guarantee and the Right to be Represented by a BOT from TEDxNewYork. All of our economic theory, all of our business practice, all of our public policy, they were all developed during an era of scarcity. Scarcity means that when you want more of something, there’s an additional cost to be paid. And that was always true for physical products but it’s no longer true for digital information. That extra view of the funny cat video on YouTube,...

Natural language is the general purpose “API” for humans and it seems it may become the same for software. Bots are all the rage on several platforms including Telegram and now Slack. Facebook is experimenting with M. There are bots to schedule meetings. Bots to order lunch. And so much more. Our analyst Jonathan has wrote a great post about this development. Many of these bots are being built by new startups that are raising venture capital. This is fantastic news with regard to advancing hu...

Natural language is the general purpose “API” for humans and it seems it may become the same for software. Bots are all the rage on several platforms including Telegram and now Slack. Facebook is experimenting with M. There are bots to schedule meetings. Bots to order lunch. And so much more. Our analyst Jonathan has wrote a great post about this development. Many of these bots are being built by new startups that are raising venture capital. This is fantastic news with regard to advancing hu...

In my talk at Techconomy Detroit I proposed two policy measures for dealing with the transition to the information age: a basic income guarantee (universal basic income) and what I then called the right to an API Key. At the wonderful TEDxNewYork I was given an opportunity to expand on both of these ideas and I am now calling the second on “the right to be represented by a bot.” Here is the video:

In my talk at Techconomy Detroit I proposed two policy measures for dealing with the transition to the information age: a basic income guarantee (universal basic income) and what I then called the right to an API Key. At the wonderful TEDxNewYork I was given an opportunity to expand on both of these ideas and I am now calling the second on “the right to be represented by a bot.” Here is the video: