Digital publishing is much on the minds of publishers, authors, and readers these days, since Yale law professor Yochai Benkler came out with his new book The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. In this comprehensive social theory of the Internet, Benkler describes how patterns of
On Thursday last week, after a trial stretching four months and jury deliberations spanning six days, former Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted of fraud and conspiracy, crimes for which they could face life sentences in prison. “The jury sent an unmistakable message,” prosecutor Sean Berkowitz said.
New technologies have brought us to a critical moment of transition. Will markets, social relationships, and democracy ever be the same again? Yale University Press author Yochai Benkler will be giving a free public talk about the ideas in his new book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms
“If anyone still harbors the fantasy that the business scandals of the past few years were the handiwork of just a few bad apples, they should read John C. Bogle’s Battle for the Soul of Capitalism,” writes Jeff Madrick in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. Madrick’s review comes out
Ben Bernanke will take over next week as Chairman of the Federal Reserve for Alan Greenspan, who is stepping down on Tuesday after more than 18 years on the job. “An extraordinary act to follow,” says Princeton Professor Alan Blinder, the Fed’s Vice Chairman under Greenspan in the mid-1990s, on
In an Op-Ed piece for the Washington Post, Harold Meyerson writes about “the pervasive insecurity that is inextricably part of today’s capitalism.” Invoking Richard Sennett’s new book The Culture of the New Capitalism, Myerson writes: “In the absence of a more structured work life, what Sennett sees is a more
Earlier this month newspaper tycoon Conrad Black, the recently ousted CEO of Hollinger International Inc., was indicted by a federal court on charges of cheating the company’s U.S. and Canadian shareholders and evading Canadian tax authorities. The eleven-count indictment alleges, among other abuses, that Black and his associates fraudulently diverted
By the slimmest of margins, the House of Representatives approved a budget plan today that will cut $50 billion dollars in spending for poverty, education, and farm programs over the next five years. Included are broad cuts to Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, food stamps, and student