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I’m coming to Southern California next week and I’ll be speaking at Claremont McKenna College’s Atheneum series. It’s next Wednesday, 30 March, at 1845h, and it’s free and open to the public. I’ll be reprising and expanding on the “Little Bit Pregnant” talk on technology regulation that I gave earlier this month at the University of Toronto iSchool conference — it’s a topic I’m developing, but one that I find really interesting. The idea is to look at all the different groups, interests and individuals who might call for restrictions on general-purpose computers and networks to prevent some real or imagined harm, ranging from printed weapons to malicious software to libel to copyright infringement, and what we might do to mitigate the real harms and tell them apart from the imaginary ones. I hope to see you!

A Little Bit Pregnant: Why it’s a Bad Idea to Regulate Computers the Way We Regulate Radios, Guns, Uranium and Other Special-purpose Tools