What’s New with Wu

I love the italian version of the book cover for “Who Controls the Internet” —

Nice news, named to the SciAm 50 this year — Scientific American’s list of people who have contributed to science and technology this year.

The award was given to many much more impressive contributors, including Warren Buffett, Elizabeth Goldring, Al Gore, and Paul Allen.

Award was for work on the value of network neutrality.

Some different ideas about the future of political technology, from Colin Delaney’s interesting site.

Matching campaign contributions and federal contracts is becoming easier and easier, and mapping applications may make the results more intuitive and digestible. Using affinity software to evaluate neighborhood political tendencies? Ignorant (political) armies clashing by night in a (virtually) bloody battle royale? We’ll see….

Did a segment on “Talk of the Nation” about the Washington Post “After Youtube” story — that was fun.

One caller asked whether new technologies will make campaigns cheaper or more expensive. The funny this is that better technology _should_ make campaigns cheaper, but it doesn’t seem to be doing so at all!

Why not is a good question for an economist. I suppose the issue is that campaigns are contests, but just issuance of a product, hence you cannot risk going cheap unless your opponent does.

There are plenty of other things that technology should make cheaper, but doesn’t. For example, e-books are no cheaper than real books, despite the fact that it costs basically nothing to make another e-book. Why that is so is a long story–

Zephyr and I’s article came out in the Washington Post today, with the title “YouTube: It’s so Yesterday.”

Of course we didn’t really mean that.

If you have any reactions email me and I’ll post good ones.

I have just finished a draft of a paper called “Network Neutrality in the Wireless World.”

The paper surveys the practices of Verizon Wireless, Cingular, Sprint-Nextel and T-Mobile, the 4 major wireless carriers, according to the principles of Carterfone, network neutrality, and open development practices.

The draft is too early to make public (contact me if you want a copy if you promise to keep it confidential).  However, I can say this much: Verizon Wireless certainly does not fare very well.

Zephyr Teachout and I are trying to write a story that guesses what the future of political technology will be.

It’s hard!  It is way easier to write about these things are fiction, because then you assert matters with confidence.  When its fiction, you can’t be wrong.

Story should be coming out on Sunday in the Washington Post, if all goes according to plan.