Lately, technology and public policy has been like being trapped in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
The tech policy conversation has become rife with confusing jargon such as, as Wim Tigges wrote in An Anatomy of Literary Nonsense, “balance of meaning and lack of meaning, such as faulty cause and effect, portmanteau, neologism, reversals and inversions, imprecision (including gibberish), simultaneity, picture/text incongruity, arbitrariness, infinite repetition, negativity or mirroring, and misappropriation. Nonsense tautology, reduplication, and absurd precision…”.
Congress should be expected to do better, and perhaps be so bold as to lead by example instead of perpetuating nonsense. For example, some in Congress want to regulate Amazon by requiring terms of service that are more easily understood.
But does Congress do the same for citizens? Why not have an easily understandable, straightforward tax code that everyone can understand? Why doesn’t Congress provide easily searchable, real-time disclosure of all spending by the federal government? Isn’t it even more important that the people know how their hard-earned tax dollars are spent?
Many have asserted that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are a “public square.” They aren’t, but nothing is stopping governments from creating an “online government” with a real public forum where all opinions can be heard under First Amendment obligations.
The government is lavishing billions of dollars into the broadband space with little oversight and very little rationale, ignoring industry’s noteworthy programs to expand broadband access and blind to the problem of government competing directly with the private sector. Americans will gain little from these programs while government will have greater control over our broadband infrastructure.
Some assert that tech companies are too aggressive in minimizing their corporate taxes and thus want higher taxes on successful technology companies to make them “pay their fair share.” But how would the political class react to such an effort to increase their taxes? How quickly would they put their accountants to work minimizing their taxes? We already know that answer.
Even the use of “Big Tech” is a pejorative and reveals an inherent bias and lack of understanding of differing companies offering differing products and services. We are long past time when it is humorous for elected officials to admit they do not understand technology but then quickly move to regulate and tax it. For the sake of continued innovation, it is time for this nonsense to stop.
In a final irony, it was specifically innovation and the technology and communications sectors that helped Americans survive the economic harms of the mandated pandemic shutdowns. But instead of celebrating that success, politicians seem to want nothing more than to dismantle it. Go figure.