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Sam Nunn Talks Nuclear Weapons and Terror Prevention

September 27, 2016

Sam Nunn, distinguished professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, was interviewed in "Sam Nunn Talks Nuclear Weapons and Terror Prevention" by WABE.

Excerpt:

Former Georgia Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn is a co-founder of the NTI. Georgia Tech named its Sam Nunn School of International Affairs after him. Last week, it hosted a policy forum on addressing the underlying causes of international extremism.

One point the military and academic experts brought up: the causes of extremism are at the grass roots, in things like education systems in many countries. So, many solutions must be at the grass roots, too.

In a conversation on "Morning Edition," host Denis O’Hayer began by asking Nunn whether people-to-people terror prevention efforts could be jeopardized by the war against ISIS — if the war makes it easier for terrorists to radicalize young people in the region.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: WABE
Why a Silicon Valley Founder is Funding a Factory for Trump Memes

September 23, 2016

Ian Bogost, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, wrote "Why a Silicon Valley Founder is Funding a Factory for Trump Memes" for The Atlantic.

Excerpt:

The classic battle between nerds and brutes is one of brains versus brawn. In the geek films of the 1980s that introduced and immortalized this conflict—Revenge of the Nerds, Weird Science, Ghostbusters, Sixteen Candles—the nerds are always outcasts and misfits. And these fables all end the same way. Through a combination of smarts and good fortune, the nerds demonstrate some unique prowess, by means of which they join the ranks of normals. The outcasts aren’t so different, after all. Everyone hugs, cue music, roll credits.

It always should have been obvious that life doesn’t work this way. Real outcasts and misfits don’t enter the mainstream through quirky self-effacement turned tender sympathy. Misfits often stay misfits, even when fortune, power, and influence comes their way. And when it does, an outcast never forgets that he (yes, of course, he) was once cast out. If able, he takes revenge—preferably by burning down the institution of popularity itself.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: The Atlantic
Why the World Can't Quit Dots, the Brilliantly Designed Non-Game

September 21, 2016

Ian Bogost, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, was quoted in "Why the World Can't Quit Dots, the Brilliantly Designed Non-Game" by Wired.

Excerpt:

Although the game is three years old, it remains popular and has of late appeared in everything from magazines to promotional videos to fashion shows. That’s because Dots,the game and the eponymously named studio that created it, has from the start embraced a design ethos that lends itself to the artistically inclined.

“Playing Dots is like being in the cool lobby bar at the right boutique hotel, while playing Candy Crush is decidedly not like that,” says Ian Bogost, game designer and author of Play Anything. The company is capitalizing on that perception with strategic marketing to establish its reputation as a “game for non-gamers,” and make more games like that.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: Wired
Fact Checker: Cruz's Claim That ICANN's Transition Will Empower Foes to Censor the Internet

September 21, 2016

Milton Mueller, professor in the School of Public Policy, was quoted in "Cruz's Claim That ICANN's Transition Will Empower Foes to Censor the Internet" by The Washington Post.

Excerpt:

ICANN says it is only a technical administrator that does not regulate content on the Internet, and that Cruz is claiming it has power that does not exist. “The U.S. government has never, and has never had the ability to, set the direction of the community’s policy development work based on First Amendment ideas,” the statement said. “Yet that is exactly what Senator Cruz is suggesting. The U.S. government has no decreased role. Other governments have no increased role. There is simply no change to governmental involvement in policy development work in ICANN.”

Experts who favor the ICANN transition are scornful of Cruz’s assertions, saying they are a mash of misinformation and falsehoods. “Simply ending U.S. approval of root zone file changes does not alter the policymaking process in ways that increase the influence of foreign governments or global corporations. In some respects, the reforms associated with the transition reduce the power of GAC by requiring it to have consensus before it can offer advice,” said Milton Mueller, a professor in the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public Policy and author of a book on ICANN.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: The Washington Post
Don't Believe the Claims That the U.S. is Giving Away the Internet

September 20, 2016

Milton Mueller, professor in the School of Public Policy, was quoted in "Don't Believe the Claims That the U.S. is Giving Away the Internet" by MIT Technology Review.

Excerpt:

The argument, championed by Cruz, that the transition will cede control to foreign governments is “the opposite of the truth,” according toMilton Mueller, a professor of public policy at Georgia Tech and cofounder and co-director of the Internet Governance Project. The purpose of ICANN, which Mueller helped create, is to keep Internet governance out of the hands of governments, he says.

Mueller adds that if the United States does not honor the agreement to privatize these functions, it could lend weight to arguments from nations such as China and Russia that Internet governance should be nationalized or turned over to the United Nations.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: MIT Technology Review
Games Designer Ian Bogost: 'Play is in Everything'

September 18, 2016

Ian Bogost, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, was interviewed in "Games Designer Ian Bogost: 'Play is in Everything'" by The Guardian about his new book, Play Anything.

Excerpt:

Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and an Atlantic contributing editor, Ian Bogost is one of the foremost writers on gaming culture – though he’s probably best known for the Facebook game Cow Clicker, which, despite being a satire, became a viral hit. In his new book, Play Anything,Bogost takes his expertise away from the screen and into the real world, arguing that in the 21st century we’ve lost track of what it really means to “play”.

For the full article, read here

Published in: The Guardian
Ted Cruz is Trying to Sabotage the Internet’s Governance Transition

September 16, 2016

Milton Mueller, professor in the Ivan Allen College School of Public Policy, was quoted in "Ted Cruz is Trying to Sabotage the Internet's Governance Transition" by Vice.

Excerpt:

Internet policy experts say the claims advanced by Cruz and his allies are blatantly false, and amount to political grandstanding that demonstrates a fundamental ignorance about how the internet works, especially when it comes to warnings that Russia, China, or Iran could somehow censor Americans’ speech on the internet.

"There’s no legitimate way for him to get to that conclusion,” Milton Mueller, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public Policy and a leading authority on global internet governance, told PolitiFact, which rated Cruz’s claims asFALSE. “What he’s doing is fear-mongering and trying to create a bogeyman, which is the United Nations.”

For the full article, read here.

Published in: Vice
Mayor Kasim Reed Attends ACP Meeting by Video-Conference from D.C.

September 16, 2016

"Mayor Kasim Reed Attends ACP Meeting by Video-Conference from D.C." by Saporta Report references the "Smart Cities" initiative for Atlanta, which involves a partnership between Georgia Tech and the Atlanta Committee for Progress. Jennifer Clark, associate professor in the School of Public Policy, is one of Georgia Tech's leading smart cities researchers. Learn more at the Center for Urban Innovation website.

Excerpt:

ACP members did support a “Smart Cities” initiative for Atlanta as a priority. AT&T will offer expertise for the effort, but it will include other key partners, including Georgia Tech.

“We want to get ACP aligned on what is possible,” said Duriya Farooqui, ACP’s executive director, adding the effort would be anchored at Georgia Tech. “It’s an opportunity to that shouldn’t be lost, and the goal is to really make a seismic leap in making Atlanta a smarter city.”

For the full article, read here.

Published in: Saporta Report
Mike Mullen and Sam Nunn: How to Deal with North Korea

September 15, 2016

Sam Nunn,distinguished professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, co-authored "Mike Mullen and Sam Nunn: How to Deal with North Korea" for The Washington Post.
Excerpt:
North Korea’s accelerating nuclear and missile programs, including its recent nuclear test, pose a grave and expanding threat to security, stability and peace in Asia and the rest of the world. This threat affects close U.S. allies — South Korea and Japan — and U.S. personnel and facilities in the region. In the coming months and years, it will create increasing danger for the United States. It is likely that the next president will face a North Korea that has gained the capability to strike the United States with nuclear weapons.
The Obama administration has succeeded in strengthening U.S. alliances in Asia and deterring a war, but, like its predecessors, has failed to change Pyongyang’s assessment that defiance is preferable to conciliation. It is clear that the next president will have to sharpen Pyongyang’s choice: offer greater benefits for cooperation and promise greater costs for continued defiance.
For the full article, read here.

Published in: The Washington Post
How to Play Your Way to a Fun Life

September 14, 2016

Ian Bogost, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, had his new book, Play Anything, reviewed in "How to Play Your Way to a Fun Life'" by Slate.

Excerpt:

The real value of philosopher and game designer Ian Bogost’s new book, Play Anything, didn’t hit me until I made several failed attempts to write this review. Since the central theme is play, I felt compelled to offer readers something fun—to fashion what Bogost describes as a playground.

It did not go well.

My first inspiration was drawn from Bogost’s account of an artistic school known as Oulipo, which crafts its products according to arbitrary constraints. Using a constraint that found popularity through Oulipo, I would try to dash off a manuscript without using our most common symbol (as I am in this paragraph, starting with My) and wax rhapsodic about how imposing random limits is actually magical, to show how Bogost’s approach in Play Anything can transform boring forms of writing into fun!

For the full article, read here

Published in: Slate
Ted Cruz Incorrect About Obama Giving Control of Internet to UN-like Body

September 14, 2016

Milton Mueller, professor in the Ivan Allen College School of Public Policy, was quoted in "Ted Cruz Incorrect About Obama Giving Control of Internet to UN-like Body" by PolitiFact.

Excerpt:

By "root zone file," Novack was referring to the nonprofit’s coordination of the domain name system, meaning a text file of the top-level domains that form part of web addresses. Contrary to Novack's characterization, though, the root zone file is not the "master address book" of the Internet, Milton Mueller, a professor in the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public Policy and author of a book on ICANN’s creation, cautioned when we asked. Rather, Mueller said by email, the root zone file "is just a list of top level domain names (like .COM, .ORG or .EDU)." Mueller presents a longer description in this September 2015 blog post.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: PolitiFact
How to Use Fun to Find Meaning in Life

September 13, 2016

Ian Bogost, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, was interviewed in "How to Use Fun to Find Meaning in Life" by The Atlantic about his new book, Play Anything.

Excerpt:

Ian Bogost is really into things. He’s been my colleague for the three years I’ve worked at The Atlantic, and in that time, there have been a lot of chats in our work Slack-room about video games and Soylent and Tab and typewriters and the new iPhone’s missing headphone jack. He also edits Object Lessons, a series that goes super in-depth on the history and meaning of things, like cardigans and meatballs.

So it’s not surprising to those who know him that his newest book, Play Anything,is mostly about stuff, all the stuff that makes up the world, from the duct tape at Walmart with the boys of One Direction printed on it to his lawnmower. (He talks about his lawnmower a lot.) By paying attention to this stuff instead of just dismissing it, we can find meaning, he says.

For the full article, read here

Published in: The Atlantic
Energy Efficiency, Clean Power Plan Would Cut Consumer Costs, Reduce Use of Dirty Fuel

September 11, 2016

Marilyn Brown, professor in the School of Public Policy, wrote "Energy Efficiency, Clean Power Plan Would Cut Consumer Costs, Reduce Use of Dirty Fuel" for Saporta Report.

Excerpt:

In a year marked by ever deepening political divides, an unlikely consensus has formed between Georgia regulators and environmental advocates: energy bills must remain affordable as we transition to a low-carbon economy. My research on sustainable energy policies and the electric utility industry demonstrates that we can best achieve this result by using innovative tools already available to us.

One year ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set the nation’s first-ever limits on carbon pollution from power plants. TheClean Power Plan addresses the largest source of the pollution driving climate change and is the centerpiece of President Obama’s climate action plan, as well as the linchpin of the U.S. commitment to the Paris climate agreement.

For the full article, read here

Published in: Saporta Report
Mao's Long Shadow: A Difficult Discussion for China

September 8, 2016

Fei-Ling Wang, professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, was quoted in "Mao's Long Shadow: A Difficult Discussion for China" by Yahoo Finance.

Excerpt:

Under President Xi, the government has gone to ever greater lengths to make sure everyone says the same thing when they talk about Mao.

The most powerful leader since the Great Helmsman himself, Xi has cautioned against both "historical nihilism" and "neo-liberalism", an implicit warning to bury both praise and criticism of Mao's era.

"There is an officially-induced and sanctioned amnesia about Mao's true record," said Fei-Ling Wang, a China expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

For the full article, read here

Published in: Yahoo Finance
How Apple Sells its Controlling Ways as Futurism

September 8, 2016

Ian Bogost, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, wrote “How Apple Sells its Controlling Ways as Futurism” for The Atlantic.

Excerpt:

The company has a good track record for success, too. Two of its other forced obsolescences have largely been forgotten by today’s users. The removal of floppy drives upon the launch of the iMac in 1998 felt similarly aggressive at the time. Most computer users had dozens of disks loaded with software and files, all rendered useless. And the MacBook Air, first introduced in 2008, removed the optical drive to allow for a thinner, lighter laptop body. Today, none of Apple’s computers feature built-in CD/DVD drives, and nobody seems terribly bothered. Thinner computers are far more important.

But Nicer’s parody underscores an unseen motivation: Apple’s aggressive battle against the retrograde pull of hardware standards also exerts an implicit control on its users. Buying an Apple product becomes an exercise in trust for the future it will bring about. And the problem with the future is that it’s very hard to think about how it might have been different once it arrives.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: The Atlantic
What If Star Trek Had Never Existed?

September 8, 2016

Lisa Yaszek and Jay Telotte, professors in the Ivan Allen College School of Literature, Media, and Communication, were quoted in "What If Star Trek Had Never Existed?" by Wired.

Excerpt:

Fans had been active in creating and shaping science fiction since the days of Hugo Gernsback, but Trek was the first big media franchise to engage fans in that way—and the fans reacted in kind by creating media-oriented conventions of their own. “Isaac Asimov remembers casually walking over to the first Star Trek convention in the 1970s, expecting it to be a relatively small affair for maybe a few hundred fans at most,” says Lisa Yaszek, a Georgia Tech professor and author of Galactic Suburbia: Recovering Women’s Science Fiction. “But when he got there, he was surprised and delighted to see thousands of fans patiently waiting to get into a venue that, as it turned out, was far too small to accommodate everyone there.”

For the full article, read here.

Published in: Wired
Who Controls the Internet? Ted Cruz's Fantasy vs. the Reality

September 6, 2016

Milton Mueller, professor in the School of Public Policy, was quoted in "Who Controls the Internet? Ted Cruz's Fantasy vs. the Reality" by Fusion.

Excerpt:

“Literally, half of them, people like Steve Crocker, Jon Postel, Vint Cerf, went to the same high school in Southern California. They knew each other very well, they trusted each other,” explained Milton Mueller, a Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Public Policy and longtime researcher of internet governance. “They had built something that, obviously, was very important, and they all deserved an enormous amount of credit for their expertise, and for their governance capabilities, in terms of setting up standards organizations. But when [the internet] got so big and so important that conflicts over political power and wealth started coming in, they really resented it.”

For the full article, read here.

Published in: Fusion
Blacks Lag in Business Ownership, but Gap is Narrowing

September 2, 2016

Dr. Thomas Boston, professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, was quoted in "Blacks Lag in Business Ownership, but Gap Is Narrowing" by The Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

In addition, many black-owned firms have focused on doing business with the public sector, leaving them vulnerable to cutbacks in government spending and affirmative action programs.

“Black businesses, even though they have been growing, have lagged behind the growth of other groups,” said Mr. Boston, who also owns a consulting firm that focuses on minorities and small business.

For the full article, read here

Published in: Wall Street Journal
The Great Debate

September 2, 2016

Fact and Fiction in Global Energy Policy: 15 Contentious Questions, the new book co-authored by School of Public Policy Professor Marilyn Brown, was reviewed in "The Great Debate" by Science.

Excerpt:

I have rarely read a book or policy piece that has so clearly laid out the competing perspectives on contentious energy questions with such sympathy, humility, and rigor. In light of the tremendous energy and environmental challenges facing us today and in the future, this would be an excellent book for classes in environmental policy, political science, and geography. Indeed, this is a must read for researchers and practitioners interested in understanding how to address the most pressing contentious energy questions of our day.

For the full article, read here

Published in: Science
Does Killing Terrorist Leaders Make Any Difference? Scholars Are Doubtful

August 30, 2016

Jenna Jordan, an assistant professor in the Ivan Allen College Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, was featured in “Does Killing Terrorist Leaders Make Any Difference? Scholars Are Doubtful" for The New York Times.

Excerpt:

Two features make a terrorist group able to withstand a senior officer’s death, according to research by Jenna Jordan, a Georgia Tech professor and a leading expert on the subject.

The first is popular support. Groups need a steady stream of recruits and a pool of potential new leaders. Support among civilians in areas in which the groups primarily operate also makes them more stable, by broadening support networks and helping them to safely retrench when needed. Leaders are usually killed in or near communities that support them, resulting in those communities rallying behind the terrorist group and against whoever did the killing.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: The New York Times

Recent Press Coverage

Sam Nunn Talks Nuclear Weapons and Terror Prevention

Why a Silicon Valley Founder is Funding a Factory for Trump Memes

Why the World Can't Quit Dots, the Brilliantly Designed Non-Game

Fact Checker: Cruz's Claim That ICANN's Transition Will Empower Foes to Censor the Internet

Don't Believe the Claims That the U.S. is Giving Away the Internet

Games Designer Ian Bogost: 'Play is in Everything'

Ted Cruz is Trying to Sabotage the Internet’s Governance Transition

Mayor Kasim Reed Attends ACP Meeting by Video-Conference from D.C.

Mike Mullen and Sam Nunn: How to Deal with North Korea

How to Play Your Way to a Fun Life

Ted Cruz Incorrect About Obama Giving Control of Internet to UN-like Body

How to Use Fun to Find Meaning in Life

Energy Efficiency, Clean Power Plan Would Cut Consumer Costs, Reduce Use of Dirty Fuel

Mao's Long Shadow: A Difficult Discussion for China

How Apple Sells its Controlling Ways as Futurism

What If Star Trek Had Never Existed?

Who Controls the Internet? Ted Cruz's Fantasy vs. the Reality

Blacks Lag in Business Ownership, but Gap is Narrowing

The Great Debate

Does Killing Terrorist Leaders Make Any Difference? Scholars Are Doubtful

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