First, I’ll lay some cards on the table: I believe, as many do, that the contemporary view of the Second Amendment exceeds common sense — that like the Third Amendment, it was written in a time and for a purpose that has been outdated for more than a century. Yet, because it is etched into the Bill of Rights, the ...
Maybe not 2012, but how about 2030? I think it’s a safe bet the world will not end this Friday, never mind the fact that an anthropologist will tell you the Maya never actually said it would. But some not so ancient prognosticators will tell you that the end of world as we know it will happen sometime before the ...
We hear a lot about community and free expression when it comes to the Web. From tech bloggers to legal scholars, the boosters spare little praise for the social benefits of technologically connected groups. Some cyber gurus even go so far as to predict that these new communities are already spawning a new, populist dialogue that will ultimately change the ...
The overarching goal of this site is to question the often giddy, utopianism that accompanies our journey into this new, digital-age reality. I have proposed on a few occasions that battles over issues like copyright are really just proxy wars in a larger, ideological (even semi-religious) cold war between humanistic and techno-centric values. Behind the overt defenses of online piracy ...
“To keep up even a worthwhile tradition means vitiating the idea behind it which must necessarily be in a constant state of evolution: it is mad to try to express new feelings in a “mummified” form.” – Alfred Jarry – Legal expert and blogger Terry Hart and I had the chance to meet in DC this week, and we were ...
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
– Daniel J. Boorstin