Description
Book SynopsisHal Abelson is Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT, and an IEEE Fellow. He has helped drive innovative educational technology initiatives such MIT OpenCourseWare, co-founded Creative Commons and Public Knowledge, and was founding director of the Free Software Foundation.
Ken Ledeen, Chairman/CEO of Nevo Technologies, is a serial entrepreneur who has served on the boards of numerous technology companies.
Harry Lewis, former Dean of Harvard College and of Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, is Gordon McKay Research Professor of Computer Science at Harvard and Faculty Associate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. He is author of
Excellence Without a Soul: Does Liberal Education Have a Future? and editor of
Ideas that Created the Future: Classic Papers of Computer Science.
Wendy Seltzer is Counsel and Strategy Lead at the World Wide Web C
Table of ContentsPreface xvii
Chapter 1 Digital Explosion Why Is It Happening, and What Is at Stake? 1
The Explosion of Bits, and Everything Else 4
The Koans of Bits 7
Good and Ill, Promise and Peril 17
Endnotes 19
Chapter 2 Naked in the Sunlight Privacy Lost, Privacy Abandoned 21
1984 Is Here, and We Like It 21
Location, Location, Location 27
Big Brother, Abroad and in the United States 32
The Internet of Things 42
Endnotes 48
Chapter 3 Who Owns Your Privacy? The Commercialization of Personal Data 51
What Kind of Vegetable Are You? 51
Footprints and Fingerprints 57
Fair Information Practice Principles 64
Always On 70
Endnotes 71
Chapter 4 Gatekeepers Who's in Charge Here? 75
Who Controls the Flow of Bits? 75
The Open Internet? 76
Connecting the Dots: Designed for Sharing and Survival 79
The Internet Has No Gatekeepers? 85
Links Gatekeepers: Getting Connected 86
Search Gatekeepers: If You Can't Find It, Does It Exist? 94
Social Gatekeepers: Known by the Company You Keep 104
Endnotes 112
Chapter 5 Secret Bits How Codes Became Unbreakable 117
Going Dark 117
Historical Cryptography 122
Lessons for the Internet Age 131
Secrecy Changes Forever 135
Cryptography Unsettled 147
Endnotes 148
Chapter 6 Balance Toppled Who Owns the Bits? 153
Stealing Music 153
Automated Crimes, Automated Justice 155
The Peer-to-Peer Upheaval 160
No Commercial Skipping 167
Authorized Use Only 168
Forbidden Technology 172
Copyright Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance 177
The Limits of Property 183
Endnotes 187
Chapter 7 You Can't Say That on the Internet Guarding the Frontiers of Digital Expression 193
Child Sex Trafficking Goes Digital 193
Publisher or Distributor? 198
Protecting Good Samaritans—and a Few Bad Ones 205
Digital Protection, Digital Censorship, and Self-Censorship 215
What About Social Media? 219
Takedowns 221
Endnotes 222
Chapter 8 Bits in the Air Old Metaphors, New Technologies, and Free Speech 227
Censoring the Candidate 227
How Broadcasting Became Regulated 228
The Path to Spectrum Deregulation 241
The Most Beautiful Inventor in the World 245
What Does the Future Hold for Radio? 255
Endnotes 261
Chapter 9 The Next Frontier AI and the Bits World of the Future 265
Thrown Under a Jaywalking Bus 266
What's Intelligent About Artificial Intelligence? 267
Machine Learning: I'll Figure It Out 268
Algorithmic Decisions: I Thought Only People Could Do That 273
What's Next 277
Bits Lighting Up the World 282
A Few Bits in Conclusion 287
Endnotes 288 Index 293
