Ryan Calo, a scholar at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society, discusses his new article in the Maryland Law Review entitled “Open Robotics.” Robots are frequently used in war, manufacturing, warehouse management, and even in surgery. Now, personal robots are poised to be the new explosive technology, and Calo anticipates their social effect to be on par with that of the personal computer. He discusses why he believes personal robots are more likely to thrive if they are built on an open model–rather than closed or proprietary framework–even though robots open to third-party tinkering may be subject to greater legal liability than closed, discrete-function robots. To protect open-model innovation, Calo recommends immunity for manufacturers of open robotic platforms for what end users do with these platforms, akin to the immunity enjoyed under federal law by firearms manufacturers and websites.

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Related Links

• Open Robotics, by Calo
• willowgarage.com
• Robotics and the Law, Stanford Law School’s Blog

Gavin Andresen, project lead of the open source, decentralized, and anonymous virtual currency project Bitcoin, talks about the project. Andresen explains how the peer-to-peer currency functions and talks about what allows Bitcoin to operate without a central bank, why it doesn’t have to rely on intermediaries, and how it overcomes the double-spending problem. He also discusses the project’s implications for government regulation, what attracted him to the project, and Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakomoto’s motivation for creating the currency.


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Related Links

• “Online Cash Bitcoin Could Challenge Governments, Banks,” by Jerry Brito
• Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System (pdf), by Satoshi Nakomoto
• ClearCoin, Andresen’s startup Bitcoin escrow service
• “How to Start Your Own Private Currency,” The Atlantic

Joseph Reagle, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, discusses his recent book, Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia. Reagle talks about early attempts to create online encyclopedias, the happy accident that preceded Wikipedia, and challenges that the venture has overcome. He also discusses the average Wikipedian, minority and gender gaps in contributors, Wikipedia’s three norms that allow for its success, and co-founder Jimmy Wales’ role with the organization.


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Related Links

• “Good Faith Collaboration: How Wikipedia works”, Boing Boing
• “Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia’s Contributor List”, The New York Times
• “In Rancorous Times, Can Wikipedia Show Us How to All Get Along?”, The Atlantic
• Wikipedia article on Good Faith Collaboration

Joseph Isenbergh, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, discusses his new essay about open versus closed operating systems, their respective marketing strategies, and their influence on the smartphone market. Isenbergh talks about early competition between Macintosh, with its closed operating system integrated with its PC hardware, and Microsoft, with its openly-licensed operating system that could be installed on any PC. He discusses the trade-off between open platforms that offer lots of consumer choice and the ostensible enhanced user experience created by bundling software with hardware. Isenbergh speculates about the future of the smartphone market, Apple’s iOS, and Google’s Android. He also comments on VHS versus Sony Betamax recording systems, tie-in strategies in wine-selling, and Blu-ray versus HD-DVD formats.


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Related Links

• “Last Apps Standing”, by Isenbergh
• “Letter From Silicon Valley: Doing the Math on Android vs. Apple”, Wired
• “Android as a Bottom-Up Platform”, by Tim Lee
• “Why Android will smash Apple’s iOS”, Digital Trends

Don Tapscott, writer, consultant, and speaker on business strategy and organizational transformation, and co-author of the bestseller Wikinomics, discusses his new book, Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World. In the book, Tapscott and his co-author, Anthony Williams, document how businesses, governments, nonprofits, and individuals are using mass collaboration to change how we work, live, learn, create, and govern. On the podcast, he discusses an Iraq veteran whose start-up car company is “staffed” by over 45,000 competing designers and supplied by microfactories around the country. He also talks about how companies are using competitions for R&D, and how mass collaboration can improve government regulation and universities.


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Related Links

• Macrowikinomics: The Choice Between Atrophy or Renaissance, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams
• The wiki way: Two cyber-gurus take a second look at how the internet is changing the world, The Economist

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.


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Related Links

• Building a Better Model: Eric Frank on Flat World Knowledge (.pdf)
• “Flat World schools textbook publishers with free Web editions”, at Ars Technica
• “Textbook case”, Westchester County Business Journal
• “Flat World Knowledge: The Textbook Case for Disruption”, at bNET

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.


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Related Links

• “Does the Internet Make You Smarter?” Shirky at WSJ.com
• Here Comes Everybody, Shirky’s first book about organizing without organizations
• Clay Shirky’s Writings About the Internet
• Shirky talk from Web 2.0 Expo NY on information overload versus filter failure

Edmund J. Walsh, shareholder in the electrical and computer technologies group at Wolf Greenfield, and Andrew J. Tibbetts, patent agent assisting the electrical and computer technologies group at Wolf Greenfield, discuss the benefits and costs faced by businesses when they incorporate Open Source software into their products.


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Related Readings

• Open Source at Wikipedia
• Free Software Foundation
• GNU Public Licence (GPL) at Wikipedia
• Patent Pools at Wikipedia
• Open Invention Network
• Linux Defenders
• Jacobsen v. Katzer at Wikipedia
• Free Software Foundation v. Cisco at Wikipedia
• Red Hat v. Firestar at Groklaw
• Microsoft v. TomTom at Wikipedia