About

TRAJECTORY

I’ve lived in Western Pennsylvania for a long time but still sometimes identify as a Californian. I was a lawyer in private practice for a long time, with law firms in San Francisco and in Palo Alto, representing all sorts of clients (large companies, small companies, individuals) in all sorts of matters (business and personal), some involving early computing technology, biotechnology, and venture capital, others involving less headline-worthy things like construction defects, toxic waste, leaky hot tubs, failed and failing financial institutions, ultralight aircraft, and aircraft parts. I left law practice and moved over to academia in the late 1990s, just as the Internet became publicly accessible and not long before it started to become a mass phenomenon.

I grew up in a quiet suburb that played an outsized role in the history of computing and information technology by virtue of its being home to the Homebrew Computer Club, SRI International, Sand Hill Road, and Meta, nee Facebook. That makes me one of a tiny number of academic researchers working on technology governance, policy, and law with a deep personal acquaintance with the origins of Silicon Valley.

My town also was an important part of the history of US music and culture. My contemporaries have written memoirs about life in the Santa Clara Valley (as it was then called) during the 1960s and 1970s. The best of those – for their portrayals of the pre-Silicon Valley Silicon Valley culture – are George Packer’s Blood of the Liberals and Jeff Goodell’s Sunnyvale. Fred Turner’s From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism is terrific, too.

COMMUNITIES

I co-founded the Workshop on Governing Knowledge Commons. I launched a virtual think tank about law-related institutions called Future Law Works. I co-hosted a podcast about the future of all things law-ish and legal, called The Future Law Podcast and now co-host Your Leadership Podcast, which is exactly what it says on the tin. In August 2024, I launched a newsletter on Substack called Everything in Between. At the University of Pittsburgh, I coordinate PASTA, which is the Pitt AI [Artificial Intelligence] Scholar Teacher Alliance, a cross-university conversation talking about the development and uses of Generative AI. I am an affiliate with the Center for Governance and Markets. My work is translated into the Future Law Project at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

I helped to found and am now Chair of the Board of a Pittsburgh-based “responsible tech” and “responsible AI” nonprofit called PART, which stands for “Partnership to Advance Responsible Technology.” As a pandemic project, in 2020 I created a Pittsburgh Intellectual Property Hall of Fame. Since 2004, on and off I’ve inserted myself into Pittsburgh’s “public” sphere via op-eds and social media.

PERSONAL

Continuing a lifetime of playing, coaching, and watching football (soccer), I follow Chelsea FC, FC Bayern Munich, AFC Ajax, and Grasshopper Club Zurich. My family were original season ticket holders of the NASL San Jose Earthquakes. At the old Spartan Stadium, I saw a lot of amazing players and got to meet Krazy George. My autograph collection from that era includes Pele, Beckenbauer, Cruyff, and Eusebio. I was present at the very first Major League Soccer game ever, in April 1996, and at the 1994 World Cup final and the 1984 Olympic Gold Medal match, both played at the Rose Bowl.

FORMAL BIOGRAPHY

A proper professional biography is available here.