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The telegraph and the domestic home
“American District Telegraph Company was originally conceptualized as a business service, but it quickly began to sell itself as a service for the home as well.”
October 2017 / 2 min.
Justice Scalia on the Constitution, privacy, and criminality
Justice Scalia once noted that “the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.”
April 2016 / 1 min.
No privacy in city life: what modern methods are bringing us to (1902)
“Is it possible,” asked the Chicago Tribune in 1902, “to be a private citizen in Chicago?”
March 2016 / 3 min.
The National Anti-Monopoly League
There are times when certain conflicts of the 1880s and 1890s seem eerily similar to debates today – we are, it seems, both separated and united with our equivalents of a century and a quarter ago.
April 2015 / 2 min.
Preserving Jeffersonian ideals through government regulation
In the contentious years of Gilded Age America – 1870-1900 – the general consensus has been than the United States, laissez-faire capitalism and “liberty of contract.” Reality, unsurprisingly, was more complex.
November 2014 / 5 min.
The “third-party problem”: one reason telegrams were not constitutionally protected
Unlike postal mail or, later, the telephone, telegrams never received constitutional protection. Yet they were the quintessential nineteenth-century technology of communication, used extensively for business, government, and personal communication, much of which both senders and receivers would have wished to keep to themselves.
January 2014 / 2 min.
Jurgen Habermas on the public sphere, the state, and the private sphere
Jurgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher. He is perhaps most well known for the concept of the “public sphere.” Contrasted against this sphere are the state and the private sphere.
December 2012 / 4 min.
Kara Swanson on blood banks, commodification, and “de-propertization”
Kara Swanson’s presentation on blood banks highlighted the move to commodify blood first, and then – at least partly in reaction to product liability concerns – to de-commodify it and move to a service-provider, gift-based system.
November 2012 / 4 min.
Facebook’s core problem: customers vs. users
Facebook’s massive growth came because they gave users what they wanted: connect with your friends, see what their doing, conveniently share with them, and so on – and do it for free. But now they’re publicly traded, and satisfying users has become secondary to profit growth.
October 2012 / 3 min.
History and its purpose: the case of the government and the Internet
The purpose of history is to provide a mildly depressing, reality-based narrative that helps guide future decisions.
July 2012 / 6 min.