What the GDP Gets Wrong (Why Managers Should Care)

We see the influence of the information age ever ywhere, except in the GDP statistics. More people than ever are using Wikipedia, Facebook, Craigslist, Pandora, Hulu and Google. Thousands of new information goods and services are introduced each year. Yet, according to the official GDP statistics, the information sector (software, publishing, motion picture and sound recording, broadcasting, telecom, and information and data processing services) is about the same share of the economy as it was 25 years ago - about 4%. How is this possible? Don’t we have access to more information than ever before? The answer isn’t about quantity, it’s about price. The bits that comprise today’s information goods are supplanting the atoms that formed yesterday’s encyclopedias, movie theaters, music CDs and newspapers. Online information may be updated every minute of the day and accessible almost anywhere in the world, but its price is usually radically lower than that of its physical counterpart, if there even is a price

Don’t Confuse Your Conceptualists: Text, Humour and Conceptualism

This essay considers humour and contemporary art practice as cultural forces, through which the expression of the intangible is possible. These ideas are examined through my recent works: Everything I Know About History…, an installation in advertising space; Don’t Confuse Your Conceptualists and My Roommate Recalls a Text Work, large vinyl wall text installations; and the artist books Synopses, Missed Connections, and Excerpt. Related to imagination, humour and art practices have the ability to access something vital that is beyond the reach of language alone. I consider French philosopher Henri Bergson’s theories of humour, determining the function of humour to be human and social, while looking to the contemporary poet Kenneth Goldsmith to further my understanding of conceptual writing practices. Early conceptualism is defined as a precedent for my practice. Mirroring and reframing existing content, repetition, humour, and self-reflexivity are strategies I use to make artwork in a post-conceptual trajectory.TextIronyWritingHumourLanguag

Online Sex Trafficking Hysteria: Flawed Policies, Ignored Human Rights, and Censorship

On April 11, 2018, President Donald Trump signed the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) into law. The law, passed with bipartisan support, created a new federal offense that prohibits the use or operation of websites with the intent to promote or facilitate prostitution, expanded existing liability for federal sex trafficking offenses, and amended Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Touted as the most important law protecting Internet speech, section 230 provides broad protection for online intermediaries that host or republish speech. It immunizes online intermediaries from liability for the things that third-party users post and say. With overbroad language and no clear parameters, FOSTA has led, and will continue to lead, to online intermediaries that host sexual content to shutter their sites and to censor certain speech. This Note argues that laws such as FOSTA, ones that go after sex trafficking, perpetuate stigmatization of those in the sex work industry and are more harmful than they are helpful. Sex trafficking is an easy concept to look at in only black-and-white. However, it is a nuanced topic and, as such, deserves a nuanced analysis before policy makers promulgate laws such as FOSTA

Legal Education Unbundled (and Rebundled)

This essay calls for an unbundling of legal education, much like the kind of unbundling we have seen in the cable, music, and print news media. It suggests that the standard legal education bundle -the generalized JD-is just one of many forms of legal education that can be packaged appropriately for today\u27s legal education market needs

Sex, Money, and Free Speech: The Many Harms of FOSTA/SESTA

This thesis tracks the development of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act/Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or FOSTA/SESTA, which became federal law in 2018. The law\u27s passage followed as a natural consequence of popular concerns about human trafficking. Congress passed the legislation by large margins in both houses given bipartisan opposition to sex trafficking. This thesis identifies plausible reasons for the only two Senate votes against the bill: those of Senators Rand Paul and Ron Wyden. Though these senators came from opposite sides of the aisle, they shared concerns about the future of free speech online and the potential failure of FOSTA/SESTA to combat sex trafficking. Many harms have befallen consensual sex workers as a result of FOSTA/SESTA\u27s enactment. The closure of online platforms formerly used for sex work advertising and communication between sex workers has forced sex workers back onto the streets and into greater danger. Furthermore, there are current and potential future constitutional challenges to FOSTA/SESTA on the grounds of the First, Fourth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. FOSTA/SESTA has had a significant chilling effect on online free speech, leading to opposition from groups like the Wikimedia Foundation. This thesis takes account of the reasonable and justified concerns that sex trafficking is a tremendous evil when it occurs. However, after considering alternative models of legalizing or decriminalizing sex work, this thesis concludes that FOSTA/SESTA continues harmful anti-prostitution policy in the United States and should be repealed to reduce these harms and respect the rights protected by the Constitution

Performance and Technology for the 58th Century

This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/DRAM_a_00103#.U8bUlrHDuts“You know who else is Jewish?” is a question with a long history in American popular culture. How have contemporary forms of media distribution such as Web 2.0 changed the way American Jews ask and answer it? What does this mean for the performance of Jewish American identity