Informal Notes

Book synopsis: Technologies of Freedom, by Ithiel de Sola Pool

by Ben Rogers

September 22, 2001

 

Main Question: Can electronic resources for communications be as free of public regulation in the future as the printing press has been in the past?

 

Chap. 1:

--electronic media, unlike older media, are subject to technical regulations = free speech endangered

--delivery mechanisms raise new First Amendment question

--trifurcated communications system in U.S.: print (including public meetings), common carriage (phone, postal system, computer networks), broadcast (limited to slices of busy spectrum by government via licensing)

--First Amendment came out of a pluralistic world of small communicators, but shaped present treatment of national networks

--p. 7 READ

Chap. 2:

--developments in print publishing from Pi Sheng in 1041 (movable type) to 1977, when average Americans consumed 4x as many words electronically as they r>

--as U.S. postal service has monopoly now, what of its right to discriminate in what it will and will not carry

--among scientists and hobbyists electronic mail networks already exist on which the active discussion of ideas takes place

--with early forms of communication and news, government helped, subsidized, whereas electrical carriers are seen as a instruments of commerce, not of public debate

 

Chap. 6:

--broadcastings spectrum shortage, or number of available frequencies, necessitates regulation via licensing

--authorities also regulate and censor too

--Pool says FCC unconstitutional, though admits it is tough to reconcile free speech with spectrum shortage

--Options: common carrier (like postal model) or free market (auction off frequencies), but tough to imagine frequencies as property (scarce like land)

--cable TV breaking down the governments tyranny over broadcasting

 

Chap. 7:

--argues that spectrum is not more scarce a commodity than paper, wires, printing press, TV sets

--Options: delivery when convenient, tighter channel spacing (like reducing bandwidth of each radio station from 10 kHz to 9 kHz), localization, improvement of receivers, allocating new frequencies, compression (white dots on fax, unmoving pixels on TV screen), multiplexing, CABLE!!

 

Chap. 8:

--regulations are often set for technical reasons and only later seen as having implications to free speech

--single copies are cheap now, unlike in Guttenbergs day

--technology/science will lead the way, press and tech are inextricably intertwined