This poster reports on three new experiments concerning the effect of the choice procedure, or "half-range method," of probability assessment, which forces the subject to make a binary choice between propositions prior to expressing a probability. These studies show that shortening the time...

This report surveys literature and research in the field of distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) and provides an overview of computer architectures particularly suited to such research. It concentrates on work to date that has involved the construction of testbeds and development tools for...

Written remarks prepared for Grassroots Discussion Panel No. 3 on "Civil Society and Regulation" at the 2007 Conference of the International Communication Association. I review the history of my involvement on the Boards of Directors of two nonprofit organizations related to technology activism:...

This paper reports the efforts of the East Palo Alto Community Network (“Community Network” for short) and the success of its two programs over the past three years. The first program, Technology Access Points (TAPs), conveniently locates centers in East Palo Alto where residents may access...

Stanford students were shown hypothetical preference profiles involving 3 to 5 voters and 2 to 6 alternatives. Profiles were constructed to test subjects' adherence to two related social choice criteria implicated in Arrow's impossibility theorem: inter-menu consistency (IMC) – which is a...

A survey of comparable groups of undergraduates at Stanford University (USA) in 1996 and 1998, and at Koc University (Turkey) in 1998, reveals some interesting beliefs concerning the distribution of wealth and income. When asked to specify both ideal and real percentage distributions,...

Two procedures for eliciting probability judgments are compared. In the choice method, subject answers a yes/no question and then states a probability that his/her answer is correct. In the no-choice method, subject states his/her probability that a given proposition is true. Previous...

This paper argues that private property and rights assignment, especially as applied to communication infrastructure and information, should be informed by advances in both technology and our understanding of psychology. Current law in this area in the United States and many other jurisdictions...

The data of Henrich, J. et al., 'Economic Man' in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies', when combined with other research, suggest that sharing behavior probably varies systematically across cultures, situations, and individuals. Economic policies...

Although successive generations of digital technology have become increasingly powerful in the past 20 years, digital democracy has yet to realize its potential for deliberative transformation. The undemocratic exploitation of massive social media systems continued this trend, but it only...