A British insurance company called Motaquote has teamed up with TomTom, the GPS manufacturer to offer insurance prices based on data gathered by GPS. Fair Pay Insurance, Motaquote’s new program, is an opt-in insurance pricing scheme where drivers will get a free GPS unit in return for potentially lower (but possibly higher) premiums. The GPS [...] Read more »
GPS-based Insurance Rates: The Devil is in the (Data) Details
A British insurance company called Motaquote has teamed up with TomTom, the GPS manufacturer to offer insurance prices based on data gathered by GPS. Fair Pay Insurance, Motaquote’s new program, is an opt-in insurance pricing scheme where drivers will get a free GPS unit in return for potentially lower (but possibly higher) premiums. The GPS [...] Read more »
Controlling Cyberspace
This semester, we’re starting an exciting new class, aimed not at lawyers, but undergraduate CS students here at Harvard. It’s called CS42: Controlling Cyberspace – and we’re sharing the syllabus online. Anything big we’re missing? Description: Why does the Internet environment exist in the form it does today? What does its future, and the future [...] Read more »
Computers Going Wild?
Computers Gone Wild: Impact and Implications of Developments in Artificial Intelligence on Society was an informal discussion that took place at Harvard Law School on December 8th, 2011. Hosted by Jonathan Zittrain, Marin Soljačić and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, we brought together eighteen mostly local guests to discuss the ways that AI is changing [...] Read more »
Microsoft Echoes Apple App Store Requirements
Here at Future of the Internet, we’ve already talked a little bit about Apple’s content requirements for both the iOS and Mac App Stores in JZ’s The PC is Dead post. As JZ said, “Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Mark Fiore found his iPhone app rejected because it contained “content that ridicules public figures.” Fiore was well-known enough [...] Read more »
A SOPA compromise is floated
Last week several members of Congress — Senators Wyden, Cantwell, Moran, and Paul, and Reps. Issa, Lofgren and Chaffetz — floated a proposal to substitute for the contentious proposed Stop Online Piracy Act, previously discussed here. Sen. Wyden’s office has commented on the compromise, and TechDirt has a writeup and a copy of the document [...] Read more »
A close look at SOPA
A Close Look at SOPA Jonathan Zittrain, Kendra Albert and Alicia Solow-Niederman This document is a guide to the Stop Online Piracy Act as proposed in the United States House of Representatives. Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), H.R. 3261, 112th Cong. (2011). It represents our notes as we sought to understand exactly what it does and [...] Read more »
The PC is dead. Why no angry nerds?
From Technology Review: The Personal Computer Is Dead Power is fast shifting from end users and software developers to operating system vendors. By Jonathan Zittrain The PC is dead. Rising numbers of mobile, lightweight, cloud-centric devices don’t merely represent a change in form factor. Rather, we’re seeing an unprecedented shift of power from end users [...] Read more »
The Sandbox and the Playground: Changing Rules for Software and Developers
During the 1990s, PCs ran whatever software was installed on them. Users bought software (not yet called apps) from physical stores or got a copy from their friends. They stuck the CD in the drive, and went through the installation process, or dragged the application to their application folder. The code was “signed” by the [...] Read more »
An interview with John Batelle on The Future of the Internet
John Battelle asked me a few Qs about my thinking on the themes in The Future of the Internet in the three years since the book came out (four since it was drafted!). John’s review is available on his blog, and I’ve reproduce the core of it here: JBAT: - You wrote the Future of [...] Read more »
