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67 Antitrust Bull. 3 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/antibull67 and id is 1 raw text is: Article

The Antitrust Bulletin
2022, Vol. 67(1) 3-1I
The     Internet of Change: Foreword                         to                ©TheAuthor(s)2022
Article reuse guidelines:
the    Sym     posium       on the      Google        and               sagepub.com/iournals-permissions
DOI: 10.1 177/0003603X21 1070122
Facebook Cases                                                           journals.sagepub.com/home/abx
OSAGE
Harry First*
Abstract
In this Essay, which serves as a Foreword to the Antitrust Bulletin Symposium issue on the Google
and Facebook cases, I argue that the Internet is now in the process of disrupting antitrust, as it
has disrupted so many other areas of business and political life. This should not be surprising. The
basic architecture of the Internet-decentralization and content agnosticism-enabled disruption;
disruption is a feature not a bug. There is no reason to think that this disruption is now over and
good reason to recognize its effect on antitrust. The Essay thus sketches out some of the ways in
which the Internet of Change is now disrupting antitrust, including basic legal concepts (markets
monopoly), economic models (reduced output is not the problem), and theories of harm. The
Essay then provides short descriptions of the articles in the Symposium and concludes that although
the Internet of Change has increased our impatience, we may have no choice but to await the slow
and uncertain progress of the current litigation.
Keywords
Big tech platforms, monopolization, google, facebook, internet
We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.
-Marshall McLuhan
In 1962, J.C.R. Licklider, a psychologist and engineer, came to Washington, D.C., to head the Advanced
Research Projects Agency (known as ARPA or DARPA), a new office at the U.S. Department
of Defense. He conceived of the idea of netting together several different computer centers using
an agreed-upon language. Other scientists subsequently joined ARPA and saw the possibility of
1. Maybe it was McLuhan, or maybe not. See http://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/06/26/shape/ (pointing out that the quote
probably originated with Winston Churchill, using buildings not tools; McLuhan's change was popularized by John
Culkin writing about McLuhan's thought in 1967, but McLuhan himself may never have written it down).
*Charles L. Denison Professor of Law, New York University School of Law, New York City, NY, USA
Corresponding Author:
Harry First, Charles L. Denison Professor of Law, New York University School of Law, 40 Washington Sq. South, New York,
NY 10012, USA.
Email: harry.first@nyu.edu