The highlight for me of David Graeber’s 2015 book, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy, is his trenchant critique of the post office, which…
By Jim Harper | January 19, 2024
The latest dispute between the New York Times and OpenAI reinforces the distinction in understanding artificial intelligence (AI) between autonomy and automatons, which we have previously examined. The Gray Lady turned heads late…
By Michael M. Rosen | January 18, 2024
On January 17, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is scheduled to report on its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet. If it proceeds, broadband internet access…
By Bronwyn Howell | January 17, 2024
Chief Justice John Roberts’s annual year-end reports often examine timely issues facing the federal judiciary, connecting them with historical analogs. For instance, his 2022 report addressed escalating threats of violence directed at jurists––most prominently, one targeting…
By Clay Calvert | January 16, 2024
“What about the kids?” plays an outsized role in the short history of Internet law. From the Communications Decency Act to the Child Online Protection Act, California’s violent video game…
By Daniel Lyons | January 11, 2024
This two-part series examines the arguments in Murthy v. Missouri that Solicitor General Elizabeth Barchas Prelogar made on behalf of the federal government in her brief with the US Supreme Court. The first post provided background on Murthy (formerly Missouri v. Biden)…
By Clay Calvert | January 10, 2024
On October 24, 2023, AEI hosted a panel to discuss a case facing Meta’s Oversight Board, which concerns an altered video posted by a Facebook user of President Joe Biden. The video…
By Shane Tews | January 9, 2024
The US Supreme Court crept closer last month to resolving the jawboning case of Murthy v. Missouri when Solicitor General Elizabeth Barchas Prelogar filed her opening brief in this politically divisive battle over free speech and informal government censorship. She explained why…
By Clay Calvert | January 8, 2024
William McKinley won the presidency under the banner of the “Full Diner Pail” for workers allegedly underpinned by protection and high tariffs. Louis Brandeis, by contrast, was a free trader…
By Claude Barfield | January 5, 2024
Imagine two companies in the same business––generating and delivering information to consumers. One has done it for more than 170 years, the other––founded in 2015––for about 15 months. The older company…
By Clay Calvert | January 3, 2024
For a long time, advocates and policymakers in the higher education space were fixated on improving “access” to higher education. As a society, we recognized that higher education was a…
By Beth Akers | October 20, 2023