Putting Technology to Good Use for Society

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.
~ Sigmund Freud



Come to the edge, He said.
They said: We are afraid.
Come to the edge, He said.
They came. He pushed them,
And they flew . . ."
— Guillaume Apollinaire French poet

‘Cryptocurrencies Are Like Lottery Tickets That Might Pay Off in Future’ Guardian. If this is the best case that can be made now, it’s desperate. Lotteries are a tax on people who are bad at math.

ATO eyes cryptocurrency activity in annual tax returns

Since launching an investigation into how our phones share our personal information, the most common question among many hundreds I've received has been: What can I do to stop all this online tracking and data collection?

This is a really complicated question to answer. In large part that's because the systems companies use to collect data about us are also very complicated.

How you can hide from online data trackers

What Happens When You Reply All to 22,000 State Workers The New York Times: “Reply All, the scourge that has afflicted office workers everywhere, has hit 22,000 government employees in Utah, demonstrating that decades into the invention of email, many of us still don’t understand its etiquette. This is a public advisory: PLEASE DO NOT REPLY ALL. For at least 20 years now, emailers everywhere have received those pesky group messages, and for at least 20 years, they have tried to resist the allure of the Reply All button. They have often failed, with the first messagers asking to be removed from a list, the second group pointing out that the first group should really stop emailing everyone, and the third group deciding now was just the right moment to show off their wit. Why don’t we stop? This is the grand era of social media. All of us, it seems, just want to be heard…”
 

New gangs 'Uberise' Europe's cocaine supply and bring more violence
 An increase in cocaine production from Latin America has lead to the ‘uberisation’ of the cocaine trade characterised by faster, anytime-anywhere delivery. There are dedicated call service centres in Spain & the Balkans in which sellers have to promote additional services beyond the product itself, such as fast delivery anywhere at any time.

Internet of Thinking: creating Intelligent Distributed System for Smart Infrastructure

Kosseff, Jeff, Cybersecurity of the Person (October 31, 2018). First Amendment Law Review, 2019. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3276218
“U.S. cybersecurity law is largely an outgrowth of the early-aughts concerns over identity theft and financial fraud. Cybersecurity laws focus on protecting identifiers such as driver’s licenses and social security numbers, and financial data such as credit card numbers.


 

John Armour, Luca Enriques, Ariel Ezrachi & John Vella (Oxford), Putting Technology to Good Use for Society: The Role of Corporate, Competition and Tax Law, ECGI Working Paper 427 (2018):

Innovation and its main output, technology, are changing the way we work, socialise, vote, and live. New technologies have improved our lives and made firms more productive, overall raising living standards across the world. Thanks to progress in information technology, the rate of change is accelerating. Disruption and disequilibrium are the new normal. In this essay, prepared as a chapter for the first phase of the British Academy ‘The Future of the Corporation’ initiative, we reflect upon the role that corporate, competition and tax law can play both to facilitate innovation and simultaneously assuage emergent societal risks arising from new technologies.