About
In debates over technology and public policy, there is a large space for stronger voices that highlight the public interest in greater public accountability for the institutions currently dominating the so-called information economy and a greater commitment to equity in promoting access to the new technology. Having written regularly on technology issues over the last two decades, Nathan Newman will oversee Tech Progress as a new site to detail the challenges in promoting that equity and accountability in the information economy.
Nathan Newman has been writing about public policy and the Internet for over fifteen years and has a long history effectively using the Internet as a tool to move public debate. As early as 1994, a website he co-created was named one of twenty-nine “Highlights of the Internet” by PC Computing, while USA Today and The Nation in the following year highlighted his pioneering role in “electronic organizing.” An early report on the potential loss of tax revenue for local governments from exploding online retail gained national media coverage and led to a Newman-authored story in MIT’s Technology Review. From 1997-1999, Newman was Program Director at NetAction, a consumer watchdog group, where he was an early advocate for anti-trust scrutiny of Microsoft, writing regular e-newsletter updates and white papers that TheStreet.com described at that time as “probably the most comprehensive and well-researched anti-Microsoft studies.” Newman was quoted regularly in major online and print publications on Microsoft and related technology issues, including in the New York Times, Sacramento Bee, San Jose Mercury News, Baltimore Sun, Wired, Village Voice, ZDNet, CNet News, San Francisco Chronicle, TheStreet.com, Chronicle of Higher Education, and the American Prospect.
Most recently, as Policy Director and then Executive Director of Progressive States Network from 2005-2010, he oversaw the creation of a Broadband Buildout and Technology Investments policy program to promote state policy around broadband, including authoring a report on smart grids which was released on Capitol Hill in March 2010 in conjunction with a press conference with Rep. Ed Markey.
Newman backs up his popular writing with academic credentials, including a Ph.D. from UC-Berkeley and a J.D. from Yale Law School. His Ph.D. on Internet public policy and its relationship to local economic development was turned into a book, Net Loss: Internet Prophets, Private Profits and the Costs to Community, which the Harvard Business Review described as a “provocative case for business civic-mindedness” in the context of the information economy.
Newman has also been a long-time general blogger on economic and political issues, with a regular blog on his own site starting in 2002 and as a blogger at TPMCafe since 2004.
See an archive of some of Newman’s past writing on tech issues here.
Contact Nathan Newman at nathan@tech-progress.org