From 2012: Keynote at the Library Technology Conference

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Wild, I just discovered that a video exists of a 2012 keynote talk I did at the Library Technology Conference, which ran annually from 2009-2019, at Macalester College. It was a fantastic event — one of the most joyfully nerdy crowds I’ve ever encountered (and I’ve been to numerous IETF meetings, competed in several MIT Mystery Hunts, and even attended one ValleyCon, the annual fan festival hosted by Fargo’s own Red River Science Fiction and Fantasy Club, when I was around 14).

The talk itself now reads as a snapshot of tempered-but-not-yet-cynical Internet optimism circa 2012 — non-delusional, but overly positive about the macro benefits of disintermediation, decentralization, and lightly-moderated speech platforms, and blind to the coming tsunami of rancor, distortion and radicalization powered by attention-monetizing social media. The camera didn’t capture my visuals as I spoke, but the Prezi is still online here.

Keynote by Andrew McLaughlin at 2012 Library Technology Conference, Macalester College.

HBD, C-Span

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In honor of the network’s 40th anniversary, here was my first appearance on C-Span, back in 2004. The obscurity and, um, specificity of this event shows the remarkable dedication of C-Span to bring anything and everything in and around Congress right into any American’s living room, no matter how boring. The event was, AFAIK, the very first time "net neutrality" was uttered in public in the US Capitol. Along with Tim Wu, Larry Lessig, Michael Copps, Mark Cooper, and others, we laid out the policy rationale for net neutrality, and argued for FCC action and Congressional legislation to protect the Internet from control by the big carriers. Happily, these ideas went from a handful of network policy nerds to national policy, thanks to an amazingly diverse and effective coalition of activists working hard for more than a decade. The Obama administration implemented a truly groundbreaking set of protections for net neutrality, and the next administration will certainly reinstate them, hopefully in partnership with Congress.

AI Superpowers: A Conversation with Kai-Fu Lee

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Thanks to the Asia Society for hosting a fantastic evening with Kai-Fu Lee, my former colleague and partner at Google. His new book, AI Superpowers, is genuinely terrific, both in explaining artificial intelligence, its possibilities, pitfalls, and implications for the future, and in laying out the relative strengths and weaknesses of China and the United States in technology and innovation.

New America: Who's Afraid of Online Speech?

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Characteristically awesome event at the New America Foundation today. I spoke on “How Can Platforms Fix Online Speech?”, which: not simple. Co-panelists were:

  • Caroline Sinders, @carolinesinders Product Analyst, Wikimedia Foundation

  • Whitney Phillips, @wphillips49 Assistant Professor of Literary Studies and Writing, Mercer University Author, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things Co-author, The Ambivalent Internet

  • Dipayan Ghosh, @ghoshd7 Public Interest Technology fellow, New America Joan Shorenstein Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School Former Technology & Economic Policy Advisor, The White House Former Privacy & Public Policy Advisor, Facebook

  • Moderator: April Glaser, @aprilaser Staff writer, Slate

Our part starts around 1’10'“. Other speakers at the event:

REGULATING POLITICAL SPEECH IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL DISINFORMATION

  • Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), @amyklobuchar Chair, Senate Democratic Steering Committee Ranking Member, Rules Committee

  • Dan Gillmor, @dangillmor Director and co-founder, News Co/Lab at Arizona State University Professor of Practice, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University Author, Mediactive and We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People

  • Moderator: Cecilia Kang, @ceciliakang National Technology Correspondent, The New York Times

DOES THE INTERNET REQUIRE US TO RETHINK FREE SPEECH?

  • Rep. Ted W. Lieu (D-Calif.), @reptedlieu Member, House Committees on the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs

  • Jennifer Daskal, @jendaskal Associate Professor of Law, Washington College of Law at American University

  • Kate Klonick, @klonick Future Tense fellow, New America PhD Candidate, Yale Law School Resident fellow, Information Society Project at Yale Law School

  • Moderator: Cecilia Kang, @ceciliakang National Technology Correspondent, The New York Times

Harvard Law: National Security, Privacy, and the Rule of Law

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Really fun session at the Harvard Law bicentennial celebration:

Moderated by Jonathan Zittrain, with fellow panelists Alex Abdo ‘06, senior staff attorney, Knight First Amendment Institute; Cindy Cohn, executive director, Electronic Frontier Foundation; Alexander MacGillivray ‘00, general counsel, Twitter; Matt Olsen ‘88, former director, National Counterterrorism Center; HLS Assistant Professor of Law Daphna Renan; David Sanger, national security correspondent for The New York Times; and Bruce Schneier, security technologist at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.

Stanford: Digital Platforms and Democratic Responsibility

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Excellent event to mark the launch of Stanford’s new Global Digital Policy Incubator, led by the incredible digital human rights leader Eileen Donahoe.

Co-panelists:

  • Moderator: Larry Kramer, President of the Hewlett Foundation

  • Juniper Downs, Global Head of Public Policy and Government Relations, Youtube

  • Daphne Keller, Director of Intermediary Liability, Center for Internet & Society, Stanford Law School

  • Nick Pickles, Senior Public Policy Manager, Twitter

  • Mike Posner, Director, NYU Stern Center for Business & Human Rights, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

Stanford Law: Law, Borders, and Speech Conference - Big Picture Panel

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Really fun conference, excellent and diverse participants, provocative policy brawls. Hosted by Stanford Law’s Center for Internet & Society.

The panel set-up: “Which countries’ laws and values will govern Internet users’ online behavior, including their free expression rights? In 1996, David G. Post and David R. Johnson wrote that “The rise of the global computer network is destroying the link between geographical location and: (1) the power of local governments to assert control over online behavior; (2) the effects of online behavior on individuals or things; (3) the legitimacy of the efforts of a local sovereign to enforce rules applicable to global phenomena; and (4) the ability of physical location to give notice of which sets of rules apply.” They proposed that national law must be reconciled with self-regulatory processes emerging from the network itself. Twenty years on, what have we learned? How are we reconciling differences in national laws governing speech, and how should we be reconciling them? What are the responsibilities of Internet speakers and platforms when faced with diverging rules about what online content is legal? And do users have relevant legal rights when their speech, or the information they are seeking, is legal in their own country?”

Speakers:

  • Bertrand de la Chapelle - Co-Founder and Director, Internet & Jurisdiction Project

  • David Johnson - CEO, argumentz.com; Producer, themoosical.com

  • David Post - Professor of Law (ret.), Temple University Law School; Contributor, Volokh Conspiracy

  • Paul Sieminski - General Counsel, Automattic

  • Nicole Wong - Ex-Obama White House, Twitter, Google

  • Me

SxSW: How Silicon Valley Looks From Inside the White House, and Vice Versa

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A conversation the most marvelous Nicole Wong, from whom I have learned more than I can measure. We were colleagues in the trenches at Google; and then Nicole succeeded me as Deputy CTO of the US. She is the greatest, and here we were both at SxSW.

The Fight for the Future: The Internet, Censorship, Surveillance, and You

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Here's the keynote talk I did at the Portland Digital eXperience (PDX) event, in which I talk about the North African revolutions, the onslaught of Syria's pro-Assad hacker army, the new dynamics created by China's Weibo platforms, and the success of the anti-SOPA/PIPA movement in the United States, what ties those things together, how they reveal much about the world we are now actively building, and what all that counsels for policymakers and entrepreneurs alike.  Thanks to Mark Zusman and Rick Turoczy for the invite and the warm Portland hospitality, and to the Rich Report for recording & posting the video!

Best fringe benefit of the excursion, besides hanging out with my awesome sister Meg, was seeing Beirut play "Santa Fe" as the sun set over Portland.

A Conversation with Slate's Jacob Weisberg, Part 4

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In which Jacob and I discuss Tumblr vs. Pinterest, Facebook vs. privacy, the case for baseline rules to protect consumer Internet privacy in the US, the horrible implications of the French push to create a "right to be forgotten", and why it would nevertheless be a catastrophe if the Internet comes to serve as an inescapable Permanent Record.

A conversation with Slate's Jacob Weisberg, Part 1

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Here's the first part of a recent conversation with Slate’s Jacob Weisberg. This bit is on Tumblr’s founder, the ethos and juju of the platform he created, and how Tumblr’s approach to identity translates into positivity, creativity, and anti-trollery.

Fight for the Future: Libraries, Tech Policy, and the Fate of Human Knowledge

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Librarians + technology = a personal nirvana.  There is no more awesome set of people doing more important work than the librarians and their nerd allies at the bleeding edge of library tech -- they are engaged in an underappreciated struggle to work out how mankind is going to preserve, extend, share, and democratize the sum of human knowledge in our increasingly digital age.  So I was really psyched to go a do a talk at the 2012 Library Technology Conference about the technological forces driving the great policy issues of our age, along with an argument about why and where the library community should be engaged.  Bonus for me: The event was at Macalester College, where I spent my high school summers taking Russian while trying to look like something other than the huge dork I was.

Here's my keynote, "Fight for the Future: Libraries, Tech Policy, and the Fate of Human Knowledge."

Andrew McLaughlin @ Library Technology Conference 2012 from Library Technology Conference on Vimeo.

 The Prezi is here.