Michael Giberson I know the internet mantra “information wants to be free,” the bane of many copyright holders. Macy’s, among many others, is one retail Goliath fighting against the free flow of information online. The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse posted online a copy of Macy’s letter to bfads.net, the “David” in this David and Goliath story, …
Michael Giberson Cindy Skrzycki writes: It took a book called The Jungle, a grim assessment of work inside slaughterhouses, plus a campaign by labor unions, medical professionals and consumer groups, to pressure Congress to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act on the same day in 1906. The food industry …
Lynne Kiesling Many of you probably already know that Wyoming was the first state in the US to extend voting to women, which they did as a Territory to ensure sufficient votes for statehood. More along those lines from Wikipedia’s entry on Wyoming: In 1869, Wyoming extended much suffrage to women, at least partially in …
Michael Giberson Grant McCracken finds an Adam Smith passage in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that adroitly captures the dynamic between our gadgets, our worlds, and ourselves.
Lynne Kiesling John Moser has tagged me with the bibliophile meme (and he did so on a good day, as I am feeling contemplative): 1. How many books do I own? I estimate 1000, split between home and work pretty evenly and not counting the 500 or so additional books contributed by the KP Spouse. …
Lynne Kiesling Most people who like to observe human action and its inherent dynamism (in tension with some inherent stasism, too) seem to be fascinated by cities. I love cities ? their histories, their energy, their culture, their architecture (and yes, let?s admit it, their restaurants, and shopping). The various neighborhoods in east London are …
What a beautiful place … my husband flew to London and we sandwiched in a couple of days of hiking in the Peak District. And except for the vividly colored foliage, which is not in bloom in early March, it pretty much looks like that picture. We did 10 miles of hiking both days. The …
My dissertation advisor and long-time friend, Joel Mokyr, has written a new book that will be published in December. Titled Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy, it is an historical analysis of the relationship between economic growth and access to information on technological change and new ideas more broadly construed. From the …
Brad DeLong has an article in the November issue of Wired that puts our rates of technological change in historical perspective. An excerpt: Past industrial revolutions ? steel, for example, or the coming of mass production to the automobile ? had seen explosions of technology that drove the prices of key commodities (train rails, the …
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