Techdirt Podcast Episode 211: Politicians (Usually) Don't Understand Technology

from the shocking,-I-know dept

The regulation of technology is an extremely important issue that impacts all our lives, but it tends to take a back seat in the world of mainstream politics, and when it does come to the fore, the lack of knowledge on display among elected representatives can be... disheartening, to say the least. In some ways that's starting to change as a generation of people who grew up with modern technology gets more and more involved in politics, but we're still a long, long way away from having a majority of tech-savvy (or even tech-literate) lawmakers. This week, we're joined by lawyer and pioneering law blogger Denise Howell to discuss the challenge of even determining whether a politician knows what they are talking about when it comes to tech.

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Filed Under: internet, podcast, politics, regulation, technology


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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 7 May 2019 @ 4:37pm

    I'm frequently distressed by people such as Michael Chertoff who make public statements about how no one cares about privacy anymore and that we need to have blockchain this or 5G that.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 7 May 2019 @ 7:56pm

    They understand technology perfectly

    Politicans understand perfectly how technology works. That is why they are trying to destroy the internet. They don't want us to have a free and open internet anymore. Governments around the world are just looking for perfect excuses to take it away from us with lies and deception. The EU chose terrorism and copyright as their reason. Time will tell what excuse the U.S will maliciously choose.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    Mason Wheeler (profile), 8 May 2019 @ 7:23am

    Mike, you seem to be missing the point rather thoroughly when you complain about all the people who responded to the question "do we want a better Facebook or a dead Facebook" with a flat, blunt "dead." It's not that we want new laws to punish Facebook for their misdeeds without regard for the collateral damage or broader implications; heck, creating a new law to punish past misdeeds is specifically forbidden by the Constitution, so that wouldn't work anyway!

    It's more like what Cory Doctorow was talking about in the last podcast: they've already done enough bad things that they ought to be killed off, ideally by antitrust law. (I don't agree with a lot of the stuff he said on there, but that one was right on the money!) And if we could find a way to specifically punish the bad actors for their bad actions, then the bad new laws would become unnecessary, so that's really the "best of both worlds" solution.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    Bamboo Harvester (profile), 8 May 2019 @ 8:00am

    Re:

    Most won't admit it, but the reason they want facebook dead is that it's embarrassing to them to admit that 99% of people are idiots...

    link to this | view in thread ]


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