In Search of Jefferson's Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace

I picked up this book because I couldn't resist the title. (Book titles are a really hard problem.) The subtitle is "Notes on the Nature of Cyberspace." I liked it and recommend it, but it's an odd tome, not for everyone. The key sentence is the first line of the Epilogue. "Though my editor pressed me mercilessly to do so, I never could figure out whether this was a book about Jefferson or a book about cyberspace." The author, David Post, is a law professor. The book is an entertaining and thoughtful discussion of the intellectual struggles at the founding of the American republic, and how they parallel dilemmas about the nature of the Internet. It's all personalized around Jefferson, and some of his contemporaries, Hamilton in particular. The first half of the book is just about Jefferson and events of the 18th century; the second half is about the Internet. Though it's full of fascinating stories, it's written in the form of a series of law review articles, that is, with many pages more than half footnotes, which are very much worth reading. It wound up taking me much longer to read than the page count or informal writing style would have led me to expect. Here is the metaphor of the title. Jefferson had an enormous moose stuffed and sent to Paris in pieces, where it was reassembled to the general amazement of the local population. It was a new, American thing that was unimaginable to people of the old world. Like Wikipedia from cyberspace, perhaps. All of the issues about freedom and control about which Jonathan Zittrain writes so compellingly are set here in the context of larger themes of American history. Plus there is a lot about Jefferson I didn't know. Excellent and admirable, -- if peculiar!

I was somewhat skeptical after reading the editorial blurbs but this book fully deserves the praise. The "State of Cyberspace" could be a dry subject but the author enlivens it with his unique approach of using Thomas Jefferson as a tour guide. The snapshots of Jefferson are fascinating and they do, indeed, cast light on the development of the internet. The book is extremely informative, but in addition, the author's personable style makes the book extremely enjoyable as well. Surprisingly, it is difficult to put down. Who woulda thought this would be a page turner? It most definitely is !!

Both informative and amusing, this book weaves its topics togeather in a way that is most intersting. A delightful read.

This is the most unusual piece of non-fiction I've read in a long while, and a dazzling one. Here's the concept: David Post makes the case that the Internet is today's great frontier, the modern era's great unmapped territory (and a universe that, as he explains, is expanding at a pace almost beyond human understanding.) So who better to help us think about that new frontier and how to govern it than the great philosopher/scientist//Renaissance Man of America's early days, Thomas Jefferson himself? The concept is improbable and eccentric and . . .the author totally pulls it off. In an almost cinematic style, the books moves seamlessly back and forth between the days of the Louisiana Purchase, when this vast and ungovernable wilderness lay to the West, and today's attempts by individuals and government to make sense of and manage the Internet. The book's style is chatty and enthusiastic and easily accessible to the lay reader even while the thinking behind it is deeply learned -- the writer is jumping around from law, to evolutionary theory, to the diplomatic history of the 19th Century to Jefferson's torrid love affair with a British noblewoman. And by the end, you're left with a feeling of awe. Awe for Jefferson's bold thinking for sure (and the book is a nice reminder of TJ's greatness, after all the well-deserved bashings he's been taking about slavery), but more, an awe and excitement about the present-day, the world we live in and the revolutionary transformations we are part of courtesy of the World Wide Web.

This unusual book takes as its central premise the idea that the freedom philosophy of Thomas Jefferson is relevant to the future of the internet. And Prof. Post makes his case dazzlingly, entertainingly, brilliantly and with much joy. He does a virtuoso job of explicating Jefferson's philosophy, the mechanics of the internet, and showing how Jefferson's philosophy of freedom and governance applies. But this makes it sound like some dry intellectual discussion. No, it is HUGELY entertaining. It's a page-turner, if you can believe it! It is exciting, interesting, fun, and brim-full of fascinating and revealing anecdotes about Jefferson. The pure joy that Post takes in the life of Jefferson practically leaps off the page. Loads of fun and enlightening at the same time.