I have met young Earth creationists. At one time, I belonged to an Orthodox temple (I was living with my parents back then and membership was free because my parents were members). The rabbi would give speeches often decrying how scientists kept changing their minds about how the world worked but the bible was constant in its message. (I won't get into all the ways this sentence is wrong. That's a whole other post.) He was of the mindset that the world was formed around 6,000 - 10,000 years ago (I don't think he ever gave an exact figure but definitely believed it was around that long) and that any evidence to the contrary was just foolish scientists getting it wrong.

I didn't argue with him at the time. It would have been a losing proposition anyway. There's no way I could have changed his viewpoint. My eyes did plenty of rolling during my time there, though.

I wonder how Isaac Asimov would have regarded social media. His essay had the statement "For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display." In social media, people will post hundreds of statements of varying quality. Most will be ignored (or read and instantly forgotten in the flood of content). A few will rise to the top (being retweeted, reposted, shared, etc). I know using social media (and the Internet in general) has made me less reluctant to share my ideas. The ridicule of expressing something stupid is lessened if the person mocking you for said stupid idea is just a screen name versus a flesh and blood person in front of you. On the flip side, losing the "quality filter" and making sharing ideas easier might mean that you quickly express a mediocre idea instead of spending more time on it and honing it into a great idea.

Yes, but this essay was just found and published now - 22 years after his death.

I've heard that Asimov used to sit at a desk surrounded by three typewriters. He would begin typing one story on one, Swivel to the second and work on a second item, and then shift to the third and work on a third item. (This was obviously pre-computers and definitely before computers could easily multitask three documents.) By quickly going between the three typewriters, he could work on three projects at once.

It's no wonder he was so prolific.

To be fair, copyright originally was for 14 years (plus a one time 14 year extension). So if you took 28 year old A and added 29 year old B plus 14 year old (and not renewed) C, you could come up with something new. It might have been a delay, but it wasn't a horrendous one. Now, though, you'd need to wait for A, B, and C to be 120 years old before you could use them. (When Asimov wrote this article, copyright terms were 28 years with a one-time 67 year extension. Arguably, still too long.)

Never underestimate the powers of a manager who comes in and decides that the numbers should show X and that any numbers that don't need to be skewed until they do.

Some of their past tactics (such as the one taken against Futurama of moving the timeslot and then preempting the program until viewership numbers dropped) won't work in the new order of on-demand video, but they could take other actions. They could just not promote the show/new episodes. They could also delay releasing the new episodes until people lose interest.

I don't mind analytics in general, but don't assume that they will help rescue your favorite show by proving that there is a big following. Managers will just slice and dice the analytics until it "proves" that the show doesn't have a big enough viewership to continue.

One problem might be that enabling third party apps seems to be an all or nothing affair. Your average Android device comes enabled to load apps from the Google Play store, but suppose you want to take advantage of the Amazon App Store also. (They have free apps of the day some of which might be interesting to use.) So you enable third party apps to load the Amazon App Store. However, now you are opened up to ANY third party app. It would be better if you could white-list the Amazon App Store but not RANDOM_WEBSITE_APP_STORE.

I'd argue that we should find something that helps people, but isn't "sexy" enough for politicians to use it for political gain. Something like libraries. Make all crime-punishment-fines go directly to library coffers. However, said money shouldn't be budgeted at all to prevent politicians from saying "We're expecting $X in fines so we can reduce the library's budget by $X and move that money to CAUSE Y."

Third explanation: People are speeding just as much as before but are now slamming on their brakes when the light turns yellow potentially causing more rear-end collisions. There are a lot of explanation that don't involve "red light cameras worked as intended" so we shouldn't jump to that as the first and only explanation.

Where I live they are considering installing red light cameras. They specifically have said that the company will control how long the yellow light gets shown.

Of course, this could just be elected officials spreading misinformation so that they can get the red light cameras installed but deflect any criticism away from themselves.

While I disagree with the "you should never go through a yellow light" statement, I've got to question your example. Every section of road I've ever seen that has stop lights also has speed limits much less than 60 mph. Usually 40 mph max. If you're going 60 mph down a stretch of road with a 40mph speed limit, then your problem isn't the yellow light.

I think the lesson with BlackBerry isn't one of older companies vanishing from sight, but one of constant innovation being required to stay in the market. BlackBerry took a leading cell phone position (before the term "smartphone" was common) and was the top of the line. Then devices like the iPhone came out and BlackBerry scoffed at them. They were on the top of the heap, why should they react to something from Apple? Apple made computers, not phones! But customers liked the new features* and flocked to the new devices, leaving BlackBerry with a tiny market share. By the time BlackBerry decided they needed to try to compete, it was too late. Now they're regulated to a niche and don't have a path back to the mainstream**.

* I say this as an Android phone user who personally can't see ever getting an iPhone.
** Being a niche product isn't bad, per se, but it means being an overall smaller company and not being seen as one of the major players in the industry at large. BlackBerry would like to be back at the top of the heap like it was in its heyday, but the chances of this happening are slim to none.

Yes, but there is legal recourse for the creator when this happens. If you toss out copyright, then anyone can do this with impunity. And if you think this will hurt the big companies, think again. Who do you think will do this more than anyone if copyright is tossed out the window? If you make an indie film, you'll find it suddenly "re-released" by a dozen movie companies all hoping to make a buck off of it without giving anything back to you.

At the time, there was a very good reason for Copyright. I'd argue that the same reason still exists. If we didn't have copyright, what would stop someone from taking some big content item (be it a movie, book, song, etc), repackaging it (ripping the song and burning it to DVD, scanning the book and reprinting it, etc) and selling it without giving the creator any money? Creators could find that their hard work yields someone else getting rich while their copies don't sell.

The big problem with copyright isn't that it exists, but the length. When copyright was 14 years plus a one-time, optional 14 year renewal, it was fine. Under that system, an item released in 2014 would enter Public Domain in 2042 (assuming renewal took place). Under the current system, that same item would enter Public Domain in 2134 (assuming the author doesn't die before 2039 and that copyright terms aren't lengthened more). The former system means that I could enjoy something and live to see it enter Public Domain. The latter system ensures I won't live to see this happen. This effectively kills Public Domain and destroys the balance that we had with copyright: Limited monopoly granted over the work in return for giving it back to the Public Domain when the copyright expired.

If we put copyrights back to a 14 year + 14 year one-time renewal system, many of the problems with Copyright would go away.

Is it really so terrible that Google itself should be outright asked to prefer search results that are "better for society"?

Who gets to decide what is "better for society"? Also, do these decisions happen on a country-by-country basis without affecting other countries? Because I'm sure China would love to censor search results world-wide for "the good of society." I'm also sure that the RIAA would love to make sure that their member organizations get more Google ranking than Indie labels for "the better of society."