To me, bikeshedding is a signal from politicians, judges, and other public servants, that they don't feel the problem is important enough for them to understand. Like us, they have limited cognitive resources (processing time, calories, actions-per-day, etc), so they have to be cautious about how they budget it.

How do we force technical information into the brains of our government employees?

OR

What incentives do we need to provide tech workers to be more politically active?

Eventually, it appears most jobs will be replaced either by computers or people who program them-- in the same way that most work from before the Industrial Revolution has been replaced by mechanical machines or literate-and-numerate-people.

"Non-technical people" will be replaced by ones who don't think of computers and programming as technology, any more than we do books and math. Programming magnifies individual task completion potential, allowing one person to accomplish through scripted automation what would otherwise require manual delegation. It's not software that's eating the world, it's programming. Software is computational state, but programming is a state of mind.

The "Computer Revolution" has happened, but programming illiteracy is still very high, programming fluency very low, and programming languages very primitive.

Around the French Revolution, over 200 years ago, when the modern printing press had already been around for almost 350 years, the literacy rate in France was just crossing 50%. [1] And world illiteracy has over halved since the Unix epoch, 43 years ago. [2]

The only solution I see is to help spread "programmacy".

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Illiteracy_france.png

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_illiteracy_1970-2010...

And as machine learning grows more popular, perhaps many programmers will be replaced as well.

As far as incentives for tech workers getting active, the recent spate of badly-written legislation (SOPA, CISPA, etc) has been acting as a great motivator. I literally do not personally know a single technology professional who isn't aware of these laws and their ramifications.

The great majority of them have informed their congresscritters and helped get the word out in some way as well.

Now if only there was a way to parlay that short term political interest into something more long term and substantial..

So before I was a lawyer I was an engineer, and most of my friends are still engineers. One of the things that I noticed then and still notice now is that tech people think they're special. They think that their problems are somehow qualitatively different from all the other problems that society has ever faced. They are simultaneously optimists (we can build anything!) and pessimists (we have no hope of influencing the system!). They are both self-centered (our things are the most important things!) and convinced of their own impotence (nobody cares about the things we do!). Indeed, this article exudes of "we're special!"

If tech people want a world with sensible tech laws, the first thing they have to do is internalize one simple fact: computer tech isn't special. It's no different, in the grand scheme of things, than petrochemical refining or agriculture. It's just one specialized problem domain within a larger society.

That realization is simultaneously humbling and empowering. If tech is the same as everything else, then that means the same social tools that work for everything else can be leveraged to work for tech! And that means (c), lots and lots of (c).

But not just (c), even though (c) is the starting step. Ultimately, through (c) you can do (b). For example, a judge isn't a domain expert in petro-chemical refining either, but they make rulings on petro-chemical refining all the time and it works more or less well. That's because the system is structured so as to not require judges to be experts in everything. It is structured so people versed in a specific problem domain, be it petro-chemical refining or code, can explain in plain terms the moving parts of his case, and the judge, generally a highly intelligent person, can make decisions based on those explanations. And ultimately, through (c) you get to (a). Ultimately, the burden is on tech people to convince the public at large to care about the things that they care about.

I've used this example elsewhere, but I think it's a really important one. The tech industry complains up and down about its inability to fight the "big money" of the media companies. Yet, the entire U.S. movies and music industry put together are about $50 billion in domestic revenue per year, or equivalent to just Apple's revenues in just one quarter. You're telling me that the tech industry can't fight the "big money" of an industry that's a fraction of its size? Please! Another example: Apple's revenues and profits are about the same as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JP Morgan Chase combined. Tech isn't the skinny schoolboy getting picked on by the big kids--it's the behemoth. The only sector that can compare is the petro-chemical sector.

We live in a democracy. In a democracy, you can't just sit around waiting for everyone else to realize how wonderful and special you are and legislate to further your interests. You have to integrate. You have to participate in the political process. You have to explain to policymakers the moving parts of your industry, and you have to convince the public to care about the things you care about. And you have to accept that the policy makers sometimes will not agree with you (because they're balancing a broader array of interests than just your own), and you'll have to accept that the public won't necessarily buy into your worldview. But when that happens it's not an excuse to take your marbles and go home.

For a contra-example, look at environmental legislation. Environmentalists have been incredibly successful considering there is very little money behind the movement, and that the people on the opposing side of the table are petro-chemical giants, each of which are 2-10x as large as the entire domestic media industry that tech people think are too monied to be overcome. Yet they have been remarkably successful given those odds! Why? Because they don't hole themselves up in ivory towers. They participate in the political process. They translate their value systems into things that perk up the ears of politicians (this environmental bill might cost a few jobs, but it will be more than made up for by the avoided health costs from the reduction in pollution!) Jobs, costs, etc. Those are things politicians care about, and indeed those are the things they're elected to care about! Sometimes, they even fight dirty. They participate in the war that is living in a democratic society with competing factions.

I'd argue that software and digital technology are different from everything that the legal system has legislated on in the past because this is the first time we've been able to make 100% accurate copies for zero cost. (Ok, maybe not zero with the cost of electricity and storage, but essentially zero.) I also feel that the legal protections of the patent system, while perhaps not completely broken, are certainly not tuned to the realities of software development. Software is different. It's sui generis and I believe our laws should be adjusted to reflect that.

That said, I agree completely with your point about integration. The worst thing we can do as a community is step aside and allow others to create legislation that is not in the interest of technology or the good of the people at large.

Edit: minor grammar.

We have had, for hundreds of years, technology that makes the cost of each marginal copy of a creative work some tiny percentage of what people are willing to pay for that work. Digital technology making that percentage even smaller doesn't fundamentally change anything. There is nothing magic about "essentially zero cost" copies versus "negligible cost" copies.

This is largely because our whole system of property is structured so that marginal cost is broadly irrelevant. We have a pervasive notion in our system that people are entitled to the "benefit of the bargain." That is to say, people are entitled to profit from the difference in price people are willing to pay for something, based on supply and demand, and the marginal cost of producing that something. That's why Apple can sell for $600 iPhones that cost only $207 to produce, or why Louis Vuitton can sell for thousands of dollars handbags that cost maybe $100 to produce. The marginal cost of production is irrelevant, from the buyers viewpoint, in anything we buy. So why should it be different for digital goods?

I have more issues with even the concept of software and design patents far more than copyright.. wrt copyright, I only feel the terms have gotten out of control.

With software patents, I firmly believe that if an implementation isn't either difficult or novel, it shouldn't be patented... Example, the apple page-flip animation. The effect is a simulation of a real-world behavior (non-novel), and the implementation details are very simple (given the hardware interfaces are mostly solved, as are the computational logistics as problems solved). The hardware involved could certainly be patentable, as could the original implementations (now older than patents). For the most part, anything that simulates a real-world activity on a generally available computing hardware should not be patentable, it's usually very obvious, and often trivial to implement.

I also feel that even if software patents were to be protected, it should be much more limited, perhaps 5 years. If you can't gain an advantage in software with a 5 year head start, you don't deserve to win. That's just how I feel about it.

You're right, the marginal cost argument is wrong, and yet there is something different going on here and I think I know what it is: The fundamental change here is that customers own the means of reproducing the product and reproduction costs are equal to the marginal cost. How much could Apple sell an iPhone for if the same was true? What would Apple do to remain in business?

I think that's worth repeating: "the ownership of the means of production has changed". Intentionally rephrased to allude to a certain economist.

It wasn't my intention to focus on economics or digital products. What I am really arguing is the more fundamental aspect of information and the ability to copy and transmit it with 100% accuracy at great speed. This, I think, separates digital technology from all others. It's what makes it revolutionary and desirable. I think the impacts on society are obvious.

Edit: typos

I would agree that software is different in this way, but the difference is quantitative, not qualitative. Other industries have had low costs of reproduction, but this was coupled to a high cost of initial investment. Software is unique because you can credibly design and build a globally successful product on your own, and not have to involve anyone in the production and distribution of it.

This quantitative difference has revealed that the IP emperor has no clothes. Before there was an illusion that copyright and patents were a benefit to society in their current form, but this illusion is now stripped away. With 3d printing and autonomous delivery vehicles we're at the dawn of the softwarization of the material world. If we can figure out the best IP laws for software, those will eventually be the best for most if not all industries.

I personally believe that means that patents have to go. They cause more harm than they benefit. This is obvious for software, and eventually it will become obvious in all industries.

Software and digital technology are different from everything that the legal system has legislated on in the past because reproduction and distribution (basically) are free, instantaneous, limitless, and available to everyone.

> computer tech isn't special. It's no different, in the grand scheme of things, than petrochemical refining or agriculture.

True, however I wonder if people think computer tech is simpler because they own some. Ask someone if they understand petro-chemical processing and they'll probably say no, but ask if they understand computers and they might think they know a lot because they use one all the time. They've even had to change some options in a password-protected preferences panel, or use a keyboard shortcut! They can get their phone to sync with their two computers, and it all just works.

Tech has (particularly recently) has become common and very simple, and we live now in a time when you can get your granny an iPad with Siri and she can use it. With driving the usability of everything up, we've also been pushing the idea that "it's simple, really! Don't be scared" and that's worked wonders. I get frustrated when a confirmation email takes more than a few seconds to show up in gmail, how ludicrous is that? I got annoyed when skype went blocky and the sound kinda crackled while talking to someone on the other side of the world for free, while on wifi. I caught myself thinking "But you just send the thing from here to there, it's so simple!" and thought about it more.

I think that was the point of this article, it's phenomenal complexity hidden behind a fantastically simple interface. A lot of people have poured a huge amount of money into making it feel simpler, Apple are a great example of that. You can talk to your phone and it'll sass you back.

I wonder which other fields have this same problem? I know there will be some, because I'll be one of the people thinking it's really simple when it isn't. Maybe medicine? People might think it's complicated for some things but there is a culture of 'Just make the right type of pill, duh'.

"Media companies" is the wrong word to use--I was talking about movies and music. I just don't see the music and movie industry really leveraging the airtime they have. What they do have is excellent lobbying. My wife (former lobbyist) explained it to me thus: Hollywood and the record labels have convinced politicians that they stand for three things: 1) America; 2) jobs; 3) American jobs. They portray music and movies as the uniquely American cultural export, one of the few industries where the U.S. is still globally dominant, and an industry that creates hundreds of thousands of jobs. They invested in this lobbying campaign early and have stuck to it adherently. And what's the opposition to these American Job Creators? A bunch of internet nerds who want to be able to play DVD's on Linux? There is no compelling counter-narrative from the tech side here, just a bunch of handwaving and bellyaching about how much Chris Dodd makes from the RIAA.

>"Media companies" is the wrong word to use--I was talking about movies and music.

They're mostly the same companies. NBCUniversal owns NBC/MSNBC and Universal Studios, News Corp. owns Fox News and 20th Century Fox, CBS owns Columbia records, TimeWarner owns CNN and HBO and New Line Cinema, etc.

>There is no compelling counter-narrative from the tech side here, just a bunch of handwaving and bellyaching about how much Chris Dodd makes from the RIAA.

Well, that's the irony, right? Hollywood puts together these commercials about how some union carpenter is going to starve to death if you don't pay $20/head to see American Pie 5, meanwhile the people who are actually working unsustainably long hours for weeks or months at a time to put together applications that help dissidents not get executed in oppressive countries are getting shut down and harassed because of the same laws. But the latter are actually instances of The Little Guy, so they don't have a huge organization that can pay to put ads on the television or lobby Congress. So even though the sum total of jobs and economic growth by small start ups is greater than it is from Hollywood, Hollywood is more organized.

What we get is lobbying efforts from the likes of Google, because they have the resources and the cohesiveness to make things happen. But that only works for the times when they're on our side. Things like DMCA 1201 cause the greatest harm to the smallest companies. They may harm the big guys too, but not as much, and often not enough to get them to push back hard enough to stop it.

It's basically a collective action problem. How do you get a million "internet nerds" to work together to make Congress understand the harm in the things they're doing to us?

Do we just need more lobbyists?

Define "lobbyist." The term carries a very negative connotation in the tech world, but fundamentally a lobbyist is just an advocate. As a student, I worked at our school's environmental advocacy clinic. We called up politicians, bureaucrats, the media, etc, to drum up support for our cause. That's lobbying! Chris Dodd aside, that's the bread and butter of what lobbyists do--explain to intelligent but not technically-specialized public officials the mechanics of how specific issues work and paint a narrative for them that convinces them to care about the issue.

So yes, the tech industry needs more advocates. People who can engage in the political process and translate from the value systems of the tech industry to the language politicians understand: jobs, growth, votes. That doesn't have to mean huge campaign donations and a senator or two on the payroll (though those things help). It does mean developing a real base that cares about tech issues (and keeps caring about them!) and having dedicated, politically-saavy people willing to champion them.

Again, a comparison to the environmental movement is relevant. There are probably 100x as many (number I pulled out of a hat) people championing environmental causes as there are people championing tech causes. I know a number of very qualified people who opted out of private practice to work at environmental non-profits. Nearly every law school has an environmental law center where students participate in addressing local issues at the grass-roots level (things as mundane as nagging the City of Chicago to do better lead testing for its municipal water). Meanwhile out of all the lawyers I know with technical backgrounds (which is actually quite a few), approximately zero went to a non-profit to champion tech issues. There are some organizations that do great work on tech issues, like the EFF, but I'm not even joking when I say there are probably more environmental issues organizations in Chicago than there are tech issues organizations in the whole country.

I think the solutions simple: where traditional government oversight and legislation is ill equipped to understand the problems about which they're legislating, they need to create a technocratic branch to further handle legislation where it seems a fit. A sort of technocratic release valve.

As far as how to appoint leaders or czars for the new technocratic branch, I'm stuck, but I'm sure someone could figure out a good way to incentivize nonpartisan experts to get involved. Maybe simply wikitize legislation, allowing a very decentralized passing of legislation.

>I think the solutions simple: where traditional government oversight and legislation is ill equipped to understand the problems about which they're legislating, they need to create a technocratic branch to further handle legislation where it seems a fit.

You have to be careful with things like this because of regulatory capture. And also because setting up a group of people whose stated purpose is to regulate something causes them to try to slowly regulate every part of it, even in cases where private ordering would lead to better outcomes. A huge part of the existing problem is instances where Congress doesn't need to act but does anyway.

If you had to have your patent reviewed by a team of engineers before it is approved, then we will have less patents.(we don't need a patent for a slick button) And to file for a law suit, you will also have to have a team of engineers to review it.

This could be a very good thing.

Patents are generally reviewed by degree holders in the same field. Submit a machine, it'll be reviewed by someone trained as a mechanical engineer. Submit a new formula for flubber, a chemist will be assigned to look at it.

I don't know how it is now, but when I graduated my understanding was that as long as your degree was in the general field, you were qualified to review the patent application. So a machine could be reviewed by someone with any engineering degree - industrial, chemical,civil, etc. And my brother's friend - a civil engineer - used to periodically call me to ask me about some coding-related patent. And I - definitely a non-hacker - would always respond "that's just a best practice. anyone who's had a few undergrad programming classes knows that. how can that be patentable". Hopefully, it's changed, but I wouldn't count on it.

I dunno. What I know about patents is what my lawyer has been telling me.

There's basically about a zillion ways for a patent to fail, examination is only one. For example, when I lodge in national offices, my application will become public. Anybody will be able to lodge objections and I will be on the hook for the lot, basically.

Most patents are reviewed by people with corresponding qualifications within the broad categories: mechanical, chemical, biological, electrical. Software tends to fall into the electrical camp.

a) b) and c) are all education problems, and I think for every other instance of unwashed masses catching up on technical knowledge, the only "solution" has been to wait decades for a generation shift with knowledgeable people becoming teachers and parents.

People didn't understand cars, or electricity, or electronics either, but now everyone has a basic knowledge about the working of these, and they can get what the repair guy is saying.

IMHO for any new technology there is a minimum time measured in years or decades depending on the complexity to have it properly assimilated. Mainstream internet is 20 years old ? Congress people should all be knowledgeable about it in 10 or 20 years.

> what is the best way to approach the bikeshedding issue?

Required background reading for anyone who hasn't seen it: bikeshed.com

Regarding (a): Give people lots of choices, and they'll learn to pick the right ones. There is a reason the two main smartphone platforms have completely won out over the older stuff. It's just really sad there there aren't more to choose from, since iOS and Android both have major areas of suckage.

Regarding (b): Public servants should not be making crucial decisions about technology. The government could never build the massively complex system described by OP, and regulation would have killed it quickly (probably by cementing an AT&T/IBM duopoly in technology).