A Child's Coat

Second of two on democracy's prospects in the digital age

In 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to Virginia lawyer Samuel Kercheval that included a passage now inscribed on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial, warning eloquently of the dangers of fossilized thinking, invoking a metaphor of a man still wearing the coat that fit when he was a boy.

Tuesday’s post focused on a big problem, how our nation’s laws and policies have not kept pace with technological change, resulting in an internet that is not revolutionizing democracy as once predicted but undermining it instead. Today, let’s talk solutions. First, what won’t work. Then, what might.

The U.S. Department of Justice is actively considering using federal antitrust laws to break up Google after a judge ruled the tech giant illegally monopolized the online search market. Nearly three years ago, the Federal Trade Commission tried what the DOJ is now contemplating, suing Facebook under those same antitrust laws in hopes of breaking up what the FTC alleges is an illegal social networking mon…