Critique of Laughlin's "The Crime of Reason"

When I saw Robert Laughlin speak at Stanford, I was terribly disturbed by some of his ideas and intrigued by others. As someone who drinks the free software/culture kool-aid, I was always of the opinion that the free flow of information helped humanity, not hurt it. As a follow up on his talk, I decided to pick up a copy of Laughlin's book, The Crime of Reason, to investigate his ideas further. The book, like is talk, contains some very interesting and important ideas but is poorly put together and rather meandering. Writing style aside, the book discusses the following topics, which I will comment on in turn:

The Intellectual Property system is necessary for economic progress

Laughlin states that "Universal access to knowledge is fundamentally incompatible with market economics." (p.45) By this he mostly means that the patent system in the United States is necessary for economic development. He doesn't provide any convincing evidence to back this up, but merely provides a false analogy equating the economy with a game of poker in which everyone has incentives to hide and steal from each other. Perhaps these dynamics apply in certain sectors of the economy (particularly looking through the lens of a physicist who has spent his entire life inside the bowels of the military-industrial complex), but in other cases they do not. The open-source software industry immediately springs to mind as an example in which companies have an interest in freely sharing knowledge with each other.

In any event, the idea of the necessity of a patent system has been completely eviscerated by Boldrin and Levine in their book Against Intellectual Monopoly. Looking at history, the acquisition of a patent in a particular field coincided with a stall of progress in an industry until the patent expired and, not coincidentally, substantially increased patent lawsuits within that industry as the patent holder sought to restrict anyone else from innovating. Patents are a type of monopoly and, as any econ 101 student will tell you, monopolies are a Bad Thing because they deprive both consumers of a low cost for products and also prevent other potential producers from making money by entering the market. Awarding patents is hardly "necessary for living" (p.49) as Laughlin claims.

How and why technical knowledge becomes illegal

The main thrust of the book has to do with the troubling tendency of modern societies to effectively outlaw knowledge. Laughlin compiles a list of fields today whose study has been criminalized in some form or another:

- cryptography
- circumvention (DMCA)
- physics (nukes)
- genetics
- bioengineering (engineered diseases)
- biology (cloning, chimeras)
- national security related processes
- chemistry
- etc.

He asserts that learning about these fields has been criminalized either in the law itself (which is rarely challenged in open court because of the potential government 'secrets' a trial could leak) or by de facto means such as withdrawal of research funds or public ostracism. This development, of course, is quite at odds with the way that learning is supposed to work in our society, as Laughlin recognizes: "Modern civilization rests on two mutually exclusive kinds of thinking -- one embodied in the free speech guarantees in the First Amendment of the U.S. constitution, the other in the Atomic Energy Act." (p.82) His most effective case in point is that of nuclear physics, in which the U.S. government has led a campaign of a quasi-legal nature to suppress the spreading of knowledge on the subject. He reasons that this censorship "set a precedent that has now led, by small steps, to a significant and growing threat to our freedom to reason and learn." (p.84) This is the most convincing, and consequential, argument of the book, and deserves serious thought by all members of our government and society. Are we really willing to sacrifice our freedoms to pursue intellectually interesting scientific facts for the sake of purported security, morality and order?

The consequences for a society which deems scientific knowledge illegal

In the final chapter, Laughlin conducts a thought experiment: what will smart people do if and when we achieve this nightmare society in which the pursuit of any and all interesting technical knowledge is illegal? Laughlin's suggestion that "The sensible course of action would probably be to give up" (p.144) is deeply unsatisfying. He then postulates that the talented technical folk (that is, everyone that didn't become a doctor or a lawyer or a businessman) will either seek employment in the service of rogue dictatorships that allow science, become 'guerrilla warriors' of a sort within their own country or go somewhere else (in the interplanetary sense) to establish a new society where there is no crime of reason. It's very romantic to think of the creation of a new order by a disgruntled segment of society (a la the emigration of persecuted religious groups to America). If it is necessary, however, is another matter entirely. It's certainly way too early, in my opinion, to 'give up' on our present society. A more enlightened public debate on this topic, if not reform, is not out of reach.

You can read other peoples' opinions on the book on Amazon

Critique of Zittrain's "The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It"

One book that the technorati have been talking about recently (ok, not so recently... it took me a while to write this article) is Jonathan Zittrain's The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. For a book written by a co-founder of the Berkman Center and someone who is a remarkably good speaker, I found the work to be disappointing. The book's argument is not convincing and the writing seems to lack discipline, often wandering from one loosely related subject to another.

Zittrain's main point is that the security failings of generative technologies will push consumers to buy more restrictive, and supposedly safer, devices. This claim has a number of problems with it. The first is that tethered devices are not safer or more secure than generative ones -- in fact, normally the opposite is true. Compare the number of vulnerabilities in the Windows operating systems vs the number in Linux or BSD operating systems. Or bugs in Internet Explorer vs bugs in Firefox. This claim is even more dubious the more control the manufacturer has over the device: Richard Stallman points out in his response to Zittran that the iPhone's remote kill-switch makes the iPhone "designed for remote attack by Apple."

The second problem with Zittrain's principal claim is that a consumer has no incentive to prefer a non-generative device. Since non-generative devices are less secure than generative ones, any purported advantage that the non-generative device manufacturer could claim is lost. There is empirical evidence to support the belief that consumers prefer generative devices --Stallman cites the number of jailbroken iPhones as an example. Roger Grimes adds in his response: "It’s hard to say that closed systems are taking a more prominent role when open examples abound. Even the 'closed' systems he mentions are becoming more open thanks to competition and customer demand."

Even if, for the sake of argument, locked-down devices were somehow more secure than generative devices, consumers wouldn't necessarily migrate to non-generative appliances because users rarely make purchasing decisions based on security. Most computers are purchased because the user is comfortable with the platform or because he thinks that the computer is pretty or because that particular computer is necessary to run some type of software. Rarely will a run-of-the-mill consumer take into account a record of operating system vulnerabilities or the pros and cons of different systems architectures when deciding between OSX and Windows.

There are other shortcomings of the book besides the weakness of the main argument. For one, Zittrain mistakes generativity as being a zero-sum game: something is either generative or it isn't. There is a continuum of generativity: for instance, Linux is more generative than Windows XP, but Windows XP is more generative than Windows Vista. It is a fallacy to simply assume that all products fall into one non-generative bucket or the other generative one.

For a book whose title suggests solutions to the problems with the Internet, Zittran's ideas underdeliver. Virtual machines, extra-legal incentives, data portability and network neutrality are all things that are familiar, and have been, to policymakers and programmers for a while. In a book such as this which only worries about theoretical overtures and not about the detailed technical implementation, more out-of-the-box, grander thinking and proposals would have been welcome.

The book has a couple of chapters that feel decidedly out of place. The final chapter regarding privacy and the chapter exploring Wikipedia both don't seem to fit in to the framework of the book. That being said, both are certainly worthy of scholarship on their own merits. I particularly found the chapter on privacy engaging, if not particularly relevant to the rest of the book.

Zittrain's book is still worth a read: it addresses areas of concern in today's Internet and references much interesting material. The end result, however, is unconvincing and disappointing -- keep a few grains of salt handy when reading.

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REFERENCES / FURTHER READING

Jonathan Zittrain
http://bostonreview.net/BR33.2/zittrain.php
"Protecting the Internet Without Wrecking It"

Richard Stallman
http://bostonreview.net/BR33.2/stallman.php
"The root of this problem is software controlled by its developer"

Bruce M Owen
http://bostonreview.net/BR33.2/owen.php
"As long as flexibility has value to users, suppliers will have incentives to offer it"

Roger A Grimes
http://bostonreview.net/BR33.2/grimes.php
"Fixing Web insecurity requires more than a caring community"

Hal Varian
http://bostonreview.net/BR33.2/varian.php
"Ultimately, the best protection is an informed buyer who demands openness"

Susan Crawford
http://bostonreview.net/BR33.2/crawford.php
"In the eyes of many exiting institutions, security isn't a problem -- it's an opportunity"

David D. Clark
http://bostonreview.net/BR33.2/clark.php
"We need to develop a socially embedded online experience"

Jonathan Zittrain
http://bostonreview.net/BR33.2/zittrainresponse.php
"The best solutions don't assume a zero-sum tradeoff between security and generativity"

Coverage on BoingBoing

Ars Technica review and interview