Participated in the Information Services and Design symposium last week. Gave a short talk on intellectual property rights in context of economic development and the knowledge economy, as well as submitted a small paper that is now part of the UCB iSchool Report Series, 2007-011 (PDF).
In truth, I’m not terribly confident about the paper. The domain was too large to be effectively covered in either a 5000-word paper or a 15-minute talk. There are significant implications in IPR in development that falls more into international political economy. The problem is very multifaceted, and there are a number of IPE perspectives that can be used as a lens on this. I think my conclusions here derive from a realist position that national interest has trumped any pretenses to free market liberal economics in this case, but that would be a fairly gross simplification of the factors at work.
Eh, but it’s a tangible output that’s seen more publicity than anything else I’ve done lately.