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Linkblog

A selection of my published work since 2001 is available here. Contact me with any specific requests.

Linkblog

We hear a lot about the “tragedy of the commons”: if a valuable asset (a grazing field, say) is held in common, each individual will try to exploit as much of it as possible. Villagers will send all their cows out to graze at the same time, and soon the field will be useless. When there’s no ownership, the pursuit of individual self-interest can make everyone worse off. But Heller shows that having too much ownership creates its own problems. If too many people own individual parts of a valuable asset, it’s easy to end up with gridlock, since any one person can simply veto the use of the asset. The commons leads to overuse and destruction; the anticommons leads to underuse and waste. In the cultural sphere, ever tighter restrictions on copyright and fair use limit artists’ abilities to sample and build on older works of art. In biotechnology, the explosion of patenting over the past twenty-five years—particularly efforts to patent things like gene fragments—may be retarding drug development, by making it hard to create a new drug without licensing myriad previous patents.

We hear a lot about the “tragedy of the commons”: if a valuable asset (a grazing field, say) is held in common, each individual will …

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Linkblog

A $1000 iPhone app that does absolutely nothing. While the application itself does nothing, the act of buying does a lot: Removes $1000 from your bank account, proves to the world you are an idiot, embarrasses your family, and much, much more. (via I Am Rich – Featured on BuzzFeed )

A $1000 iPhone app that does absolutely nothing. While the application itself does nothing, the act of buying does a lot: Removes $1000 from your …

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Linkblog

Geek Love: Google employee uses Google Street View to propose

Geek Love: Google employee uses Google Street View to propose…

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Linkblog

Careers: The Rehabilitation Of Bob Pittman

Careers: The Rehabilitation Of Bob Pittman…

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Linkblog

Through its complex orchestration of time and space no less than through the social division of labor, life in the city takes on the character of a symphony: specialized human aptitudes, specialized instruments, give rise to sonorous results which, neither in volume nor in quality, could be achieved by any single piece.” The above words, penned by Lewis Mumford in the introduction to his 1938 text “The Culture of Cities”, speak to the notion of the city as a nexus of social, creative and economic collaboration. In the 1990s, theorists such as William J. Mitchell began to describe a new urban fabric, the materiality of which included not only asphalt and concrete, but bandwidth, code and connectivity. The proliferation of information technology and augmentation of bodies with locative technology has led to new era of artistic engagement with the city.

Through its complex orchestration of time and space no less than through the social division of labor, life in the city takes on the character …

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Linkblog

Tina Brown To Release The Beast [Internet]

Tina Brown To Release The Beast [Internet]
15C25Tina Brown has worked in the US for more than two decades, since taking the helm of Vanity …

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Linkblog

Hamlet, the Facebook News Feed edition [Social Networks]

Hamlet, the Facebook News Feed edition [Social Networks]
We present you Act I of Hamlet, the Facebook News Feed Edition, in its entirety. Click …

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Linkblog

Neal Stephenson’s new novel makes me want to kill the Internet [I Hate It Here]

Neal Stephenson’s new novel makes me want to kill the Internet [I Hate It Here]
I’m a hundred pages into Anathem (accent on first syllable), …

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