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Jerry Brito

Articles by Jerry Brito

Jerry Brito is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and director of its Technology Policy Program. His research interests include telecom and spectrum policy, government transparency, and intellectual property.

Perry Chen on Kickstarter

by Jerry Brito on July 26, 2010 • View Comments

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 Episode 28: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Perry Chen, co-founder and CEO of Kickstarter, an online platform for funding creative projects, discusses the enterprise. Chen talks about the inspiration behind Kickstarter and its business model, how project creators convince backers (not investors) to fund them, funding success rates, and the most interesting projects funded so far.

Catherine White on the Noisy Idiot Dilemma

by Jerry Brito on July 12, 2010 • View Comments

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 Episode 27: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Catherine White, graduate student at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, where she is researching productive participatory discussion, talks about her thesis on the Noisy Idiot Dilemma. White explains the dilemma — how to foster productive online conversation when certain speakers exhibit noisy, unproductive, or unhelpful behavior — and discusses her research on various online forums, weblog comments, effects of humor, anonymity, and empathy online, and characteristics of elastic, oily conversation.

Eric Frank on Flat World Knowledge

by Jerry Brito on July 5, 2010 • View Comments

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 Episode 26: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Eric Frank, Co-Founder and President of Flat World Knowledge, the leading publisher of commercial, openly licensed college textbooks, discusses the company and its business model, which he compares to that of Red Hat. In the podcast Frank addresses moral hazards of the traditional college textbook publishing model, the company’s genesis, products and services it offers, how it makes money, and why it appeals to students, professors, and authors.

Tim Stevens on cyberwar

by Jerry Brito on June 28, 2010 • View Comments

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 Episode 25: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tim Stevens, PhD candidate in the Dept. of War Studies, King’s College London, where he researches the politics of cybersecurity and cyberwarfare, and regular contributor to The Guardian, Forbes’ cybersecurity blog The Firewall, and Current Intelligence discusses cyberwar. Stevens talks about the current cybersecurity climate; nuances between cyberespionage, cybercrime, and cyberwar; the balance between roles of government and private sector; and differences in cybersecurity attitudes in the U.K. and the U.S.

Adrian Johns on Piracy

by Jerry Brito on June 21, 2010 • View Comments

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 Episode 24: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Adrian Johns, professor in the Department of History at the University of Chicago, expert on the history of science and the history of the book, and author of the new book, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Guttenberg to Gates, discusses the history of intellectual property and piracy. He discusses origins of copyright law in London, the first pirates, and today’s digital piracy. He also addresses the future of books and potential tipping points that could prompt changes in copyright law, citing the Google Books project and pharmaceuticals in the developing world.

Clay Shirky on Cognitive Surplus

by Jerry Brito on June 14, 2010 • View Comments

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 Episode 23: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Clay Shirky, adjunct professor at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, discusses his new book, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. Shirky talks about social and economic effects of Internet technologies and interrelated effects of social and technological networks. In this podcast he discusses social production, open source software, Wikipedia, defaults, Facebook, and more.

Nicholas Carr on What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

by Jerry Brito on June 7, 2010 • View Comments

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 Episode 22: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Nicholas Carr, bestselling author who writes on the social, economic, and business implications of technology, discusses his new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Carr posits that the internet is changing not only they way we consume information but also the biological and neurological workings of our brains. He addresses the internet’s effect on attention span and the ability to think deeply, neuroplasticity, multitasking, reading books v. snippets, Google, commonplaces, and much more.

AT&T announces price cuts for most data customers

by Jerry Brito on June 2, 2010 • View Comments

AT&T’s data plan changes will actually be a price-cut for me and the majority of AT&T customers. Yup, real evil.

Gina Trapani and Anil Dash on Expert Labs and ThinkTank

by Jerry Brito on May 31, 2010 • View Comments

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 Episode 21: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Gina Trapani, blogger, author, software developer, and creator of ThinkTank, and Anil Dash, director of Expert Labs and blogging pioneer, talk about Expert Labs, an organization that seeks to improve government by letting policy makers tap into the collective wisdom of the public, and ThinkTank, an open source tool that the White House is using to crowdsource and sort policy ideas, insights, and recommendations offered through social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Facebook is not too big to fail

by Jerry Brito on May 26, 2010 • View Comments

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Government action is unnecessary to address the privacy trouble in which Facebook has recently found itself. But this means the market could kill Facebook.

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