The Internet and public discourse

First Monday

Volumn 3, Issue 3, 1998, Pages

  Agre, Phil ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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EID: 54649083517     PISSN: 13960466     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5210/fm.v3i2.581     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Schools, San Francisco. I wish to thank Jon Weinberg for organizing the panel on "Fitting Models to the Internet" of which the paper was a part. I also appreciate the comments of the anonymous referees and the bibliographic assistance of Paul Jonusaitis and Dave McArthur.
2. Joe Mitola, 1995. "The software radio architecture", IEEE Communications Magazine, Volume 33, number 5, pp. 26-38.
3. Andrew Feenberg, 1991. Critical Theory of Technology. New York: Oxford University Press.
4. On data models see Graeme C. Simsion, 1994. Data Modeling Essentials: Analysis, Design, and Innovation. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
5. On their significance for the present argument see Philip E. Agre, 1997. "Beyond the mirror world: Privacy and the representational practices of computing", In: Philip E. Agre and Marc Rotenberg (eds.), Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape, Cambridge: MIT Press.
6. For a more sophisticated approach to the ontology of computation, see Brian Smith, 1996. On the Origin of Objects. Cambridge: MIT Press.
7. Philip E. Agre, 1994. "Surveillance and capture: Two models of privacy", Information Society, Volume 10, number 2, pp. 101-127.
8. Geoffrey Bowker, 1994. "Information mythology: The world of/as information", In: Lisa Bud-Frierman (ed.), Information Acumen: The Understanding and Use of Knowledge in Modern Business, London: Routledge.
9. For one example of this pattern, see the analysis of the obsolescence of the common-law concept of negotiability in Raymond T. Nimmer and Patricia Krauthouse, 1995. "Electronic commerce: New paradigms in information law", Idaho Law Review, Volume 31, pp. 937-966.
10. Personal communication.
11. Larry Lessig, "What things regulate speech", available through Cyberspace Law Abstracts, at http://www.ssrn.com/update/lsn/cyberspace/ csl_papers.html
12. Michael L. Katz and Carl Shapiro, 1994. "Systems competition and network effects", Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 8, number 2, pp. 93-115.
13. Paul A. David, 1985. "Clio and the economics of QWERTY", American Economic Review, Volume 72, number 2, pp. 332-337.
14. See also W. Brian Arthur, 1989. "Competing technologies, increasing returns, and lock-in by historical events", Economic Journal, Volume 99, pp. 116-131.
15. On Internet standards in particular, see Mark A. Lemley, 1996. "Antitrust and the Internet standardization problem", Connecticut Law Review, Volume 28, pp. 1041-1094.
16. S. J. Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis, 1994. "Network externality: An uncommon tragedy", Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 8, number 2, pp. 113-150.
17. Timothy Schoechle, 1995. "The Emerging role of standards bodies in the formation of public policy", IEEE Standards Bearer, Volume 9, number 2, pp. 1,
18. See also Richard W. Hawkins, 1995. "Standards-making as technological diplomacy: Assessing objectives and methodologies in standards institutions", In: Richard Hawkins, Robin Mansell, and Jim Skea (eds.), Standards, Innovation and Competitiveness: The Politics and Economics of Standards in Natural and Technical Environments. Hants (England): Edward Elgar.
19. On the rule-setting function of Internet standards, see Joel Reidenberg, forthcoming. "Lex informatica: The formulation of information policy rules through technology", Texas Law Review, Volume 76.
20. Myhrvold's comments appeared in an interview in Wired Volume 3, number 9, pp. 152-155,198, and at http://www.wired.com/wired/3.09/features/myhrvold.html It should be noted that many products exhibit substantial economies of scale, for example because of large fixed costs of production. Information commodities such as software are distinctive in that their costs of production are almost all fixed.
21. For the vast consequences of this fact in the case of media content, see C. Edwin Baker, 1997. "Giving the audience what it wants", Ohio State Law Journal, Volume 58, number 2, pp. 311-417. Just as network effects are sometimes analyzed as demand-side economies of scale because they consist of the mutually reinforcing benefits enjoyed by the putatively homogenous consumers of a product or service, economies of generality might be understood as demand-side economies of scope: they depend on the possibility of applying the same software package to a large number of organizations despite their inevitable heterogeneity.
22. On the role of economies of scope in the development of the computer industry, see Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., 1997. "The computer industry: The first half-century", In: David B. Yoffie (Ed.), Competing in the Age of Digital Convergence. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, pp. 99-100;
23. and Kenneth Flamm, 1988. Creating the Computer: Government, Industry, and High Technology. Washington: Brookings Institution, pp. 210-214.
24. See, for example, the ambitious and detailed ontology of discourse that is being developed in the educational domain by the IEEE P1484.9 Task Ontology Working Group, http://www.manta.ieee.org/p1484.
25. More generally, see Educom's Instructional Management Systems Project, at http://www.imsproject.org/
26. Thomas Sowell, 1994. "Letting in the light", Forbes (12 September), p. 98.