HBR Insights Future of Business Boxed Set (8 Books)

 

6

HOW MORE REGULATION FOR U.S. TECH COULD BACKFIRE

by Larry Downes

Over the past few years, tech companies have become lightning rods for everything from dissatisfaction over the 2016 U.S. presidential election to the possibility of a smartphone-driven dystopia.

Innovation and its discontents are nothing new, of course, going back at least to the 18th century, when Luddites physically attacked industrial looms. Hostility to the internet appeared the moment the web became a commercial technology, threatening from the outset to upend traditional businesses and maybe even our deeply embedded beliefs about family, society, and government. George Mason University’s Adam Thierer, reviewing a resurgence of books about the “existential threat” ...