Showing posts with label social costs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social costs. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

Is A.I. the Death of I.P.?; The New Yorker, January 15, 2024

 Louis Menand, The New Yorker ; Is A.I. the Death of I.P.?

"Intellectual property accounts for some or all of the wealth of at least half of the world’s fifty richest people, and it has been estimated to account for fifty-two per cent of the value of U.S. merchandise exports. I.P. is the new oil. Nations sitting on a lot of it are making money selling it to nations that have relatively little. It’s therefore in a country’s interest to protect the intellectual property of its businesses.

But every right is also a prohibition. My right of ownership of some piece of intellectual property bars everyone else from using that property without my consent. I.P. rights have an economic value but a social cost. Is that cost too high?

I.P. ownership comes in several legal varieties: copyrights, patents, design rights, publicity rights, and trademarks."

Friday, August 12, 2016

Should Teachers Ask Students To Check Their Devices At The Classroom Door?; NPR, 8/5/16

Alva Noe, NPR; Should Teachers Ask Students To Check Their Devices At The Classroom Door? :
"In a post a few weeks back, Tania Lombrozo drew attention to research showing that students using laptops and other digital devices in the college classroom are less likely to perform as well as students not using them...
I can't bring myself to try to ban these new technologies in the classroom because to do so, it seems to me, would be to infringe on the personal liberty of my students.
So what are we to do?
Going forward, I will try to impress on my students that, quite above and beyond the cognitive costs, that is, the decrement in learning, there are social costs. It is rude, basically, to sit there and ignore what is going on around you. It is selfish to disrupt the joint work of the group.
Beyond that, our task, as teachers, must be to engage and capture the attention of these citizens as they are. The new technologies are part of what makes the new person."