Lewis D. Eigen Quotes
Technology can progress to an entire new generation in the time it takes one legislative committee to issue a report. Regulation of technology confronts us with two radically different time scales.
Lewis D. Eigen, Political Historical Editor, Associate Director, U. S. Job Corps (Democrat), Scholar & Educator, Businessperson, Scholar & Educator, Director, National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information, Member, Board of Directors, National Civil Service League, Pollster, Opinion Research Corporation, Speech, New York City, June 1999
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
“Margins” means edges. This quotation is very important for understanding the politics of telecommunications. In most subjects of political attention, it is important to observe what the majority of people should be doing and to look for national or regional trends. However, in technology in general and communications technology in particular, the important trends and occurrences almost always occur with a small group or a few people who first utilize, develop, and improve a technology. That technology then very rapidly diffuses into the society as a whole with all the regulatory and political problems that occur. So politically we must watch and regulate the margins because if not, technological progress occurs much faster than political progress. See {633622}.
There is an opposite school of thought which argues that because technology develops so fast, by the time you legislate about it of you understand it, it is too late to prevent major problems and abuses which can become institutionalized. Instead it is argued, legislate rapidly BEFORE you understand all the consequences and then repeal and revise very frequently as the technology develops. This school argues that Schmidt’s view is tantamount to not legislating at all as it will ALWAYS be too late if you wait till you understand the consequences.
Regulators, like any other group of people, with the exception of an inventor or innovator and his/her team, are ALWAYS way behind the innovators. However, typically the regulators are not even up on innovations after their creation for several years. They generally are not appointed or hired for their technical skills, and Congress rarely provides enough of a budget to hire enough staff to give them the time to keep up with the field. For a professor in a University, this alone requires about half of his time. No agency can allocate that kind of time. Worse, is the ultimate regulators are the legislators—Congress at the Federal level. They often do not invest enough time to read the regulatory legislation upon which they vote, much less keep up with the fields they regulate.
- Born: September 6, 1936
- Nationality: American
- Profession: Polymath
Lewis D. Eigen is the Senior Research Scientist & Chief Technology Officer at BEA Enterprises Inc. based in Potomac, Maryland, USA. He has worked as Mathematician, Psychologist, Technologist. Software Engineer, Government & Corporate Executive (Public & Private Corporations), Educator, Quotation Compiler & Editor. He is the author of 13 books, over 100 research articles and papers, over 500 multi-media training modules and more than a dozen computer products / systems. In government he has served as the First Associate Director of the U. S. Job Corps, the Director of the National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information, and as a member of the the Johnson Task Force for the War on Poverty, the MacNamara Commission on Military Transition to Civilian Life, and as a Senior Editor and Peer Reviewer for the National Institutes of Health.
