This is a book about the dynamics of the aspirational society. It explores the boundaries of permissible thought--deviations and transgressions that create constant innovations. When confronted with a problem, an innovative mind struggles and brings forth something distinctive--new ideas, new inventions, and new programs based on unconventional approaches to solve the problem. But this can be done only if the culture creates large breathing spaces by leaving people alone, not as a matter of state generosity but as something fundamental in being an American. Consequently, the Constitutional mandate of "Congress shall make no law..." has encouraged fearless speech, unrestrained thought, and endless experimentation leading to newer developments in science, technology, the arts, and not least socio-political relations. Most of all, the First Freedoms liberate the mind from irrational fears and encourage an environment of divergent thinking, non-conformity, and resistance to a collective mindset. The First Freedoms encourage Americans to be iconoclastic, to be creatively crazy, to be impure, thus, enabling them to mix and re-mix ideas to design new technologies and cultural forms and platforms, anything from experimental social relations and big data explorations to electing our first black president.

In Digital Freedom, N. D. Batra explores the tension between the boundlessness of the Internet and the boundaries of the marketplace, as well as the resulting impact on human expression, privacy, and social controls. Digital Freedom is an exploration of and meditation on the question: How much freedom does a person need? The question evokes Tolstoy's parable, 'How much land does a man need?' Is freedom an acquired taste, much like one's love for symphony orchestra? Or, is it a necessity? After all, civilizations in the past have produced monumental works in all fields of human endeavor without as much obsession with individual freedom as we have today. Digital Freedom explores these issues_including surveillance, intellectual property, and copyright_from the perspective of an evolutionary, self-organizing social system. This system both creates and assimilates innovations and, in the process, undergoes reorganization and renewal.

In Digital Freedom, N. D. Batra explores the tension between the boundlessness of the Internet and the boundaries of the marketplace, as well as the resulting impact on human expression, privacy, and social controls. Digital Freedom is an exploration of and meditation on the question: How much freedom does a person need? The question evokes Tolstoy's parable, "How much land does a man need?" Is freedom an acquired taste, much like one's love for symphony orchestra? Or, is it a necessity? After all, civilizations in the past have produced monumental works in all fields of human endeavor without as much obsession with individual freedom as we have today. Digital Freedom explores these issues-including surveillance, intellectual property, and copyright-from the perspective of an evolutionary, self-organizing social system. This system both creates and assimilates innovations and, in the process, undergoes reorganization and renewal.