Finished The Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig a couple days ago. Reviews of this book are too numerous to count, one might say that they number like the sand on the seashore, so the following notes are more for my benefit than yours.
On politicians: “The vast majority are decent and extraordinarily hardworking people who live in a system that simply doesn’t give them time to reflect. They spend more time each week raising money than they spend in a year reading about what’s new. This system produces leaders who can’t begin to lead, because they are leaders who haven’t had time to look ahead. (preface, pg 18)
Machiavelli in The Prince: “Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new. Their support is indifferent partly from fear and partly because they are generally incredulous, never really trusting new things until they have tested them by experience.”
A succinct description of the premise of the book: “The argument of this book is that always and everywhere, free resources have been crucial to innovation and creativity; that without them, creativity is crippled. Thus, and especially in the digital age, the central question becomes not whether government or the market should control a resource, but whether a resource should be controlled at all. Just because control is possible, it doesn’t follow that it is justified.” (pg 14)
The Tragedy of the Commons: ” Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit — in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.”
On the end to end design of the internet: “End-to-end says to keep intelligence in a network at the ends, or in the applications, leaving the network itself to be relatively simple.” (pg 14)
which then has 3 important consequences for innovation: “First, because applications run on computers at the edge of the network, innovators with new applications need only connect their computers to the network to let their applications run. No change to the computers within the network is required. If you are a developer, for example, who wants to use the internet to make telephone calls, yo uneed only develop that application and get users to adopt it for the Internet to be capable of making ‘telephone’ calls. You can write the application and send it to the person on the other end of the network. Both of you install it and start talking. That’s it. Second, because the design is not optimized for any particular existing application, the network is open to innovation not originally imagined. All the Internet protocol does it figure a way to package and route data; it doesn’t route or process certain kinds of data better than others. That creates a problem for some applications, but it creates an opportunity for a wide range of other applications too. It means that the network is open to adopting applications not originally foreseen by the designers. Third, because the design effects a neutral platform — neutral in the sense that the network owner can’t discriminate against some packets while favoring others — the network can’t discriminate against some new innovator’s design. If a new application threatens a dominant application, there’s nothing the network can do about that. The network will remain neutral regardless of the application.” (pg 16-17)
On open code: “… But there is a challenge with open code projects tha many believe is insurmountable. This is the challenge to assure that there are sufficient incentives to build open code. Open code creates a commons; but the problem with this sort of commons is not the problem of overgrazing. (Indeed, as accidential revolutionary Eric Raymond puts it, open code creates an inverse commons.) ‘Grazing’ does not reduce a code that is available. Instead, in this ‘inverse commons, the grass grows taller when it’s grazed upon.'” (pg 68)
On when resources should be governed or controlled: “Where a resource has a clear use, then, from a social perspective, our objective is simply to assure that the resource is available for this highest and best use. We can use property systems to achieve this end. By assigning a strong property right to the owners of such resources, we can then rely upon them to maximize their own return from the this resource by seeking out those who can best use the resource at issue. But if there is no clear option for using the resource — if we can’t tell up front how best to use it — there there is more reason to leave it in the common, so that many can experiment with different uses. Not knowing how a resource will be used is a good reason for keeping it open.” (pg 89)
The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
Todd Dickinson, Trademark Office Commissioner: “Some days I wish I was the professor and only had to think about these things and not do the work. But I got an office to run. And I’ve got 1,500 applications coming in this year and I have to figure out what to do with them. I don’t have the luxury to wait for five years for Congress to figure out whether they will change the law or not.” (pg 210)