Google's Gatekeeper: The Most Powerful Woman on the Net February 24, 2009

Favorite:

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/02/04/Looking_for_Jefferson_s_Moose_State_of_Cyberspace

Legal scholar Jeffrey Rosen reflects on his meeting with "Google's gatekeeper," deputy general counsel Nicole Wong -- a woman who, Rosen claims, has more control over free speech than practically anyone in the world.

-----

In 1787, Thomas Jefferson put a stuffed American moose in the lobby of his Paris residence. As the U.S. minister to France, Jefferson displayed the moose to powerfully symbolize the enormous possibilities of America.

The new world of the Internet has equally vast possibilities and, like North America in Jefferson's day, its landscape remains largely unexplored.

In his new book, In Search of Jefferson's Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace, David Post draws remarkable and entertaining parallels between the Internet and the natural and intellectual landscape that Thomas Jefferson explored, documented, and shaped.

Creatively drawing on Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, Post describes how the Internet functions technically and applies Jefferson's views on natural history, law, and governance to the unfolding complexities of cyberspace.

Jefferson's Moose is a book for both fans of Thomas Jefferson and for fans of the Internet, each of whom should know more about the other topic. -- Cato Institute

Jeffrey Rosen is a professor of law at George Washington University and the legal affairs editor of The New Republic. A widely read legal commentator, his most recent book is The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America, a companion book to the PBS series on the Supreme Court. He is also the author of The Most Democratic Branch, The Naked Crowd, and The Unwanted Gaze. A graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University, and Yale Law School, he has been a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, and his essays and commentaries have appeared in the New York Times Magazine and The Atlantic, as well as on National Public Radio.