Center for History and Economics Seminar: Angus Burgin, “The Information Superhighway, the Electronic Frontier, and the Political Economy of the Early Internet”

Joint Center for History and Economics Online Seminar

Angus Burgin
The Information Superhighway, the Electronic Frontier, and the Political Economy of the Early Internet

From the mid-1980s to the late 1990s two visions of the future of the American economy rose to influence. One saw new communication technologies as decentralizing, suggesting that the growth of the internet would dissolve bureaucracies, disable sovereign states, and inaugurate a new age of frontier individualism. Another called for ambitious investments in communications infrastructure, predicting that these outlays would supercharge economic growth and diminish economic inequality. By the end of the first decade of the new millennium, the internet had transformed everyday life, but both of these grand economic visions had run aground. What went wrong?

This seminar will take place on Wednesday 29 November 2023 at 12pm (EST)
Lee Gathering Room, CGIS S-030, 1730 Cambridge Street

Zoom link