Technology and Below-the-Line Labor in the Copyfight over Intellectual Property | JSTOR

Book publishers sue Google for copyright infringement over Gemini AI training

Group of major publishers accuses the tech giant of ‘one of the most prolific infringements of copyrighted materials in history’

Pluralistic: Process knowledge (08 Apr 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

"Intellectual property" was once an obscure legal backwater. Today, it is the dominant area of political economy, the organizing regime for almost all of our tech regulation, and the most valuable – and most controversial – aspect of global trade policy:

"I was forced to use AI until the day I was laid off." Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry

Copywriters were one of the first to have their jobs targeted by AI firms. These are their stories, three years into the AI era.

Becoming the Product - Set Margins'

€24.00 In stock Becoming the Product quantity Add to cart Category: Books Tags: #designwriting, #institutionalcritique, #internetcritique Description Additional information Description In Becoming the Product: The Critical Internet Researcher as a Virtual Intellectual, the evolution of critical internet research takes center stage. By examining the pioneering work of early net critic Geert Lovink and the influencer-style […]

Laws of Tech: Commoditize Your Complement

A classic pattern in technology economics, identified by Joel Spolsky, is layers of the stack attempting to become monopolies while turning other layers into perfectly-competitive markets which are commoditized, in order to harvest most of the consumer surplus; discussion and examples.

Technological parables and iconic illustrations: American technocracy and the rhetoric of the technological fix

This paper traces the role of American technocrats in popularizing the notion later dubbed the ‘technological fix’. Channeled by their long-term ‘chief’, Howard Scott, their claim was that technolo...

Technological Disruption in the US Labor Market • The Aspen Institute Economic Strategy Group

DAVID DEMING, CHRISTOPHER ONG, LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS This paper explores past episodes of technological disruption in the US labor market, with the goal of learning lessons about the likely future impact of artificial intelligence (AI). The authors measure changes in the structure of the US labor market going back over a century in two ways.&nbsp...

Bringing experiments down to earth - Jack Stilgoe, 2026

A commentary on Thao Phan’s ‘Testing-in-the-wild: innovation nationalism and the colonial dynamics of new technology testbeds’.

Project MUSE - Technology and Below-the-Line Labor in the Copyfight over Intellectual Property

Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves.

Eaten by the Internet

This book makes internet infrastructure visible as a force of political power, which is transforming the social world, from the bottom up—through fifteen chapters contributed by a global set of researchers, activists, and techies. We are living a unique moment: internet technologies are the default infrastructure for society, not just how we communicate but also how we organise our social life, politics, and economy, all the way down to our material environments, like cities. Our world is eaten by the internet. This means that those who control the internet control the bounds of public speech, economic production, social cohesion, and politics, making its infrastructure a core political terrain in the networked age. The book’s chapters cover a wide set of topics, spanning from the global politics of content moderation by internet infrastructure to the colonialism inherent in the race to plug the moon, from the harms wrought by blockchain companies in rural America to the particularities of online censorship across Asia. The chapters take on thorny topics, discussing power consolidation in the advertisement and cloud industry, the role of internet infrastructure in the war in Ukraine, and tech’s environmental impact—amongst others. In doing so, this book roots contemporary technology debates in the politics of internet infrastructure and urges us to ask how can we ensure our infrastructures sustain us, rather than consume us?

Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

Theories of scientific and technological change view discovery and invention as endogenous processes1,2, wherein previous accumulated knowledge enables future progress by allowing researchers to, in Newton’s words, ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’3–7. Recent decades have witnessed exponential growth in the volume of new scientific and technological knowledge, thereby creating conditions that should be ripe for major advances8,9. Yet contrary to this view, studies suggest that progress is slowing in several major fields10,11. Here, we analyse these claims at scale across six decades, using data on 45 million papers and 3.9 million patents from six large-scale datasets, together with a new quantitative metric—the CD index12—that characterizes how papers and patents change networks of citations in science and technology. We find that papers and patents are increasingly less likely to break with the past in ways that push science and technology in new directions. This pattern holds universally across fields and is robust across multiple different citation- and text-based metrics1,13–17. Subsequently, we link this decline in disruptiveness to a narrowing in the use of previous knowledge, allowing us to reconcile the patterns we observe with the ‘shoulders of giants’ view. We find that the observed declines are unlikely to be driven by changes in the quality of published science, citation practices or field-specific factors. Overall, our results suggest that slowing rates of disruption may reflect a fundamental shift in the nature of science and technology.

The Risks of Industry Influence in Tech Research

Emerging information technologies like social media, search engines, and AI can have a broad impact on public health, political institutions, social dynamics, and the natural world. It is critical to develop a scientific understanding of these impacts to inform evidence-based technology policy that minimizes harm and maximizes benefits. Unlike most other global-scale scientific challenges, however, the data necessary for scientific progress are generated and controlled by the same industry that might be subject to evidence-based regulation. Moreover, technology companies historically have been, and continue to be, a major source of funding for this field. These asymmetries in information and funding raise significant concerns about the potential for undue industry influence on the scientific record. In this Perspective, we explore how technology companies can influence our scientific understanding of their products. We argue that science faces unique challenges in the context of technology research that will require strengthening existing safeguards and constructing wholly new ones.

Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive

Why that is, is a mystery

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

A witty, often terrifying that chronicles our transform…

The Technological Republic: The Sunday Times bestseller from the great minds behind Palantir

The Sunday Times and #1 New York Times Bestseller‘The Technological Republic is far too important to ignore’ Times Literary SupplementSilicon Valley’s brightest minds once collaborated with governments to advance technologies, securing the West’s dominance on the global stage. But that relationship has corroded – with perilous repercussions for us all.Lifting the veil on tech giant Palantir and its broader political project, visionary co-founder and CEO Alexander C. Karp and his long-time deputy Nicholas W. Zamiska offer a searing critique of our collective culture of complacency. To regain geopolitical power and preserve our freedoms, we must tackle the world’s most pressing challenges – including the artificial intelligence arms race – together and head-on. Now is the time for the West to wake up.‘Bold and ambitious ... Essential reading’ Eric Schmidt‘Fascinating’ Financial Times‘A stirring manifesto’ Niall Ferguson‘Provocative and insightful’ Jamie Dimon