01 september 2018
I wonder if there's a taxonomy of horror movies, not to track descentt per se, but to categorize them by themes.
I wonder if there's a taxonomy of horror movies, not to track descentt per se, but to categorize them by themes.
This is an interesting take on recent events involving the collision of the issues of the privacy of personal information, monetization of that private information, and the monopolistic tendencies of tech companies. Doctorow sketches out a different way to address the issues that continually come up by regulating outcomes rather than methods. That is, give companies the opportunity remedy situations rather than dictate how they must remedy situations? It's not clear what Doctorow means by this...But he goes on to outline his motivation, that creating complex regulations for how facebook operates with personal information would only serve to preserve the monopoly that facebook enjoys on the social networking front by stifling competition, which may not be able to comply with new regulations. But this is merely the way things are done, isn't it? Think, for example, of food safety regulations, or of how biotechnological products are currently regulated...as of ten years ago, one could expect a biotech product to take several years and $30,000,000+ to go from conception to distribution and adoption. Doctorow is suggesting a different kind of approach that opens up the field for healthy competition by weakening the monopoly that has not been respected.