Saved by Behruz Davletov and
In this Article, I adopt a genealogical methodology to trace the evolution of digital platform regulation efforts and controversies. I connect current efforts to 1990s debates around the regulation of cyberspace: contestations on the meaning of freedom, law, power, and democracy in digital spaces. I isolate three paradigmatic views, or moments, in ... See more
Ethan Mollick • Article
At its inception between the 1960s and 1990s, the internet was imagined as a decentralized, horizontal and open space that would foster freedom and equality. Today, it is a collection of walled gardens, a hierarchical ecosystem ruled by a few gatekeepers who leverage access to data, attention and infrastructural capability to enclose users and comp... See more
Ethan Mollick • Article
The move from an Internet of networks to an Internet of platforms represents a significant shift: from a hybrid, decentralized environment where freedom seemed the norm, to a centralized space where the default is privatized enclosure. Still, 1990s and current understandings of digital freedom, power, and law are pervaded by similar market-liberal ... See more
Ethan Mollick • Article
In the digital economy, user data is typically treated as capital created by corporations observing willing individuals. This neglects users' roles in creating data, reducing incentives for users, distributing the gains from the data economy unequally, and stoking fears of automation. Instead, treating data (at least partially) as labor could help ... See more
Ethan Mollick • Article
Chatbots are able to produce high-quality, sophisticated text in natural language. The authors of this paper believe that AI can be used to overcome three barriers to learning in the classroom: improving transfer, breaking the illusion of explanatory depth, and training students to critically evaluate explanations. The paper provides background inf
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