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Participants: Pam Samuelson, Jamie Love, Rinalia Abdul Rahim, Ronaldo Lemos, Anriette Esterhuysen, William Drake
Moderator: Peter Yu
As the world economy increasingly centers on "memes, genes, and bits," new technologies permit new production models that threaten entrenched interests. As a consequence, we face a looming political battle that could reshape the information society. There are three main barriers to democratic participation in setting the rules of the information economy that bias the playing field in favor of entrenched interests and old models. The first is that the harms of bad A2K policy often take a long time to manifest themselves, making it difficult to instill a sense of urgency in the body politic and among policy elites. The current experience of "information overload" obscures increasing regulation of the use of knowledge. The second is that information policy issues tend to be highly technical and esoteric to the uninitiated, and difficult even for the initiated to analyze effectively. The third is that the promises of a world where knowledge is free as the air we breathe seems ephemeral in the face of the concrete harms claimed by those who would fence off the information commons. There are countervailing forces. The steady internationalization of lawmaking has presented new opportunities for actors all along the political spectrum. The increasing marketshare of technologies that rely on access to knowledge, and the existence proofs of commons based models of production are creating larger constituencies. Finally, the network itself is making it easier to share information about what works and to overcome collective action problems. What will be the role of NGOs, corporations, and governments in this political battle? How will North and South reconcile their differences and recognize their overlapping interests? Will there be an environmentalism of the knowledge economy?
See the A2K conference wikipage for notes from Jason Pielemeier, with the Powerpoint slides coming soon.
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