Ten years after its last compilation, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation has assembled a 2024 summer reading list that reflects the breadth of current debates in technology policy. The selection spans topics from the myths surrounding artificial intelligence to the geopolitics of emerging technologies, offering both endorsements and pointed critiques.
Robert D. Atkinson and David Moschella’s *Technology Fears and Scapegoats: 40 Myths About Privacy, Jobs, AI, and Today’s Innovation Economy* takes direct aim at what they see as misplaced anxieties about big tech, automation, and data. The authors, both with deep policy experience, argue that “technology’s impact on society… is overwhelmingly positive,” while dismantling narratives that frame innovation as a threat rather than a driver of progress.
Eric Berger’s *Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX* provides a granular account of SpaceX’s formative years. It traces the engineering hurdles, launch failures, and eventual breakthroughs that established the company’s reusable rocket technology. Berger also addresses the strategic implications of Starlink’s satellite communications network and the long-term potential for Mars exploration, situating these within the broader transformation of the commercial space sector.
Andrew Blum’s *Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet* shifts focus from space to the terrestrial infrastructure of the digital world. By following undersea cables, data centers, and Internet exchanges, Blum reveals the physical systems that sustain global connectivity. His reporting underscores the complexity and resilience of the network’s backbone, a perspective often lost in discussions dominated by software and platforms.
In *Digital Empires*, Anu Bradford contrasts the regulatory approaches of the United States, European Union, and China. She situates China’s state-driven innovation model alongside the EU’s “Brussels Effect,” where European regulatory standards exert global influence, and the U.S.’s market-led digitalization. The comparative framework illuminates how governance shapes technological trajectories and competitive dynamics.
Jeffrey Ding’s *Technology and the Rise of Great Powers* revisits the link between technological capability and national power. Ding emphasizes the role of general purpose technologies—steel, electricity, internal combustion, computing, the Internet—not only in defense but in broad economic productivity through diffusion. His analysis of artificial intelligence within the U.S.–China context brings fresh attention to how adoption rates and integration, not just invention, can tilt the balance of influence.
Thomas Hazlett’s *The Political Spectrum* chronicles a century of spectrum regulation in the United States, from Herbert Hoover’s era to the smartphone age. Hazlett, a former FCC chief economist, contends that regulatory missteps delayed innovations such as FM radio and constrained wireless development. His account links policy decisions directly to the pace of technological change in communications.
Herbert Hovenkamp’s *Tech Monopoly* offers a clear-eyed examination of antitrust law in the digital platform economy. By unpacking the economics of network effects and market concentration, Hovenkamp assesses both the reach and the limits of current competition policy in addressing the dominance of major technology firms.
Walter Isaacson’s *The Innovators* takes a historical sweep, tracing the digital revolution from Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage to Tim Berners-Lee and Larry Page. Isaacson highlights the collaborative nature of breakthroughs in computing and networking, showing how cross-disciplinary teams and shared vision catalyzed technological leaps.
Jeff Kosseff’s *Liar in a Crowded Theater* addresses the tension between free speech and misinformation in the wake of COVID-19, recent U.S. elections, and January 6. Known for his work on Section 230, Kosseff examines how legal frameworks and policy debates intersect with the realities of online discourse.
The list also includes titles the foundation advises against. Jonathan Haidt’s *The Anxious Generation* attributes rising adolescent mental health issues to diminished free play and increased screen time, but the compilers note the lack of scientific consensus linking social media use to these outcomes. Yanis Varoufakis’s *Technofeudalism* is criticized for extrapolating the relatively small Internet economy into a sweeping, and in their view unfounded, economic diagnosis.