Dan Siemon

Tag: Society

  • Processing the U.S Election

    Like a lot of people, I’m still trying to process the U.S. presidential election results and understand what it means for the future. Writing this is part of that process. Before delving into the results and how they were achieved, I want to make it clear that I’m not a big fan of Hillary Clinton.…

  • Social network privacy settings

    From How to Lose Your Job on Your Own Time: Personal disclosure is the norm on social networking sites. But the Pew study included an unexpected finding: Teenagers have the most sophisticated understanding of privacy controls on these sites, and they are far less likely than adults to permit their profiles to be visible to…

  • Pinker on violence

    Yesterday Andrew posted an entry about a TED presentation called A brief history of violence by Steven Pinker. Take a look at his post and watch the video. The video is only 20 minutes long. In short, the presentation offers data that refutes the idea that the human race was more peaceful in the past.…

  • The right to attach

    Hooking up by Tim Wu presents an idea on how to increase the competition around wireless (cellular) devices. The firms already control what phones or devices reach Americans; 95% of cell phones are sold by the wireless carriers themselves. They strictly control phone design, blocking features that might threaten their revenue, like timers that keep…

  • Shaping the future

    Quick link. Shaping the future by Charles Stross. Found via Slashdot. Very interesting read.

  • A couple of books

    I recently finished reading a couple of books which I think are worth pointing out to others. The first is The World Is Flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century by Thomas L. Friedman. At 571 pages this a relatively long book. The first two hundred and thirty pages explain what the author means…

  • Starting at the top

    Hello, Young Workers: One Way to Reach the Top Is to Start There Lost in the argument over whether young people today know how to work, however, is the mounting evidence produced by labor economists of just how important it is for current graduates to ignore the old-school advice of trying to get ahead by…

  • Network neutrality: Where analogies fail

    I find it interesting that so much of the discussion surrounding net neutrality centers around analogies to other aspects of the modern world. A lot of these analogies are related to the transportation of goods. Courier companies such as UPS and Fedex as well as the highway network in general are the most common examples.…

  • Network neutrality: The cell network

    From Newsforge, Today’s cell phone system argues for retaining network neutrality. Consider the closed, anti-innovation system that is the cell phone network. Do you want the Internet to be like that? Is that best solution for the rest of the economy and society in general? James Glass (not his real name) is the owner of…

  • Rocketboom on net neutrality

    Today I decided to checkout Rocketboom for the first time. This site seems to get a lot of press so I figured I should at least take a look. Browsing the archives I found this piece on net neutrality. It is perhaps a bit over the top but it is interesting nonetheless.