This year marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Ithiel de Sola Pool's final and seminal book, "Technologies of Freedom." It's opening words, as current today as then, are "Civil liberty functions today in a changing technological context."
Pool was forward thinking in his capacity for understanding how the forces and trends in information technologies evident in the early 1980s might play themselves out over the decades. To commemorate Pool's work and to introduce it to those who may have missed it, we will dedicate this session to an informal discussion with outstanding scholars who worked with Pool or who have been influenced by his work. They will pursue Pool's admonition that "the norms that govern information and communication will be even more crucial than in the past."