Interesting

Avoiding a Tech Train Wreck
By James V. DeLong

The temperature of business reporting these days is raised by numerous disputes that lie at the intersection of technology and politics. Arguments over Internet network management involving telecommunications companies preoccupy the Federal Communications Commission. The European Union is pressuring several U.S. technology companies, including Microsoft, on antitrust grounds. Firms such as Qualcomm, Broadcom, and Nokia are involved in disputes over the use of patented cell phone technologies. Business writer Nicholas Carr lists entertainment, news, software, and financial companies as all having reason to cast a fearful eye on Google.

These battles may seem novel, a result of the frictions of the technological revolution worked by Moore’s Law and its progeny. In fact, while the context is new, the underlying structure of the disputes is similar to the issues that roiled American politics a century and more ago, when the great infrastructures of transportation, utilities, telecommunications, and finance were laid down.

And therein lies a cautionary lesson. The battles of that time resulted in an armistice: the creation of regulatory structures that met immediate crises, but which also failed in many ways. These failures caused significant problems of stasis, rent-seeking, political manipulation, and corruption.