New APPS

Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science. Mostly Philosophy.

recent posts

about

    Category: Gordon Hull

    • Charlotte/Mecklenburg votes against 287(g)

      Yesterday was a big news day.  The biggest story was probably our Tinpot Dictator’s decision to unilaterally violate the Iranian nuclear deal.  In addition to alienating almost everyone not named Bibi Netanyahu or John Bolton, and making the world less safe, the main thing this proves is that Trump can’t see more than ten minutes…

    • Are Patents Property? Depends on what you mean…

      By Gordon Hull The Supreme Court issued a landmark patent ruling yesterday in Oil States v. Greene.  The most recent major revision to the Patent statute specifies that the validity of patents – in terms of whether they meet conditions of patentability (utility, non-obviousness and novelty – the opinion does not directly specify whether questions…

    • Facebook and the Dispossession of Preferences

      By Gordon Hull A little more than a year ago, I floated a version of the thesis that Big Data functions as a form of capitalist accumulation by dispossession.  “Accumulation by Dispossession” is David Harvey’s term for what Marx called “primitive accumulation,” and the basic idea is that capital has to extract value from individuals…

    • Hostile Information Architecture

      By Gordon Hull Surprise! Facebook is back in the news and the doghouse, this time for allowing vast amounts of user data to find its way to Cambridge Analytica, which then used it to try to elect Donald Trump.  The only surprise is that anyone is surprised.  I’ll review why that is first, then offer…

    • Property as Juridical and Biopower (part 3, with a little bit about subjectification)

      By Gordon Hull In the two previous posts, I first suggested that Thomas Merrill’s logical argument for why the right to exclude was the sine qua non of any conception of property was inconclusive.  I then offered a brief reading of the Foucauldian distinction between juridical and biopower, applying it to Locke to suggest that…

    • Property as Juridical and Biopower (part 2)

      By Gordon Hull Last time, I suggested that Thomas Merrill’s logical argument for why the right to exclude was the sine qua non of any conception of property was inconclusive.  With that space cleared, I want to focus on what I think a focus on the right to exclude does emphasize.  Merrill is right that…

    • Property as Juridical and Biopower (part 1)

      By Gordon Hull In a 1998 paper, Thomas W. Merrill argues that the presence of the right to exclude others is the necessary and sufficient condition for the presence of a property right.  In this, he views himself as arguing against a “nominalist” interpretation of the right.  This nominalist interpretation, associated with legal realism and…

    • The NRA went down to Georgia

      I live in North Carolina, the state legislature for which has been basically bought by Art Pope, a smaller-scale Koch brother (the Koch brothers themselves, meanwhile, have been successfully buying the federal government).  The NC legislature has done some truly staggering things, so I’m pretty jaded on the topic of what state legislatures can do. …

    • John Perry Barlow (1947-2018)

      John Perry Barlow, Grateful Dead lyricist and one of the early advocates for a libertarian cyberspace free of governmental regulation, as well as founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), died yesterday.  The EFF notice is here.  Barlow is perhaps best known for his "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace."  As we look at  a…

    • Healthcare and the Nature of the Firm

      By Gordon Hull Yesterday, a group of very rich and influential corporations – Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase – announced that they would be teaming up to form an independent healthcare company for their employees.  From the NYT: “The alliance was a sign of just how frustrated American businesses are with the state of…