Well I disagree with justice Kagan. I think the Court gets the gist of what Facebook, etc, is, and I don't think there is much that is valuable about having really deep understanding of the technology.
I think technologists confuse technology with ideology. Facebook is a technology that lets your friends see messages and photos you post, like a private bulletin board. I think every Justice gets that. All the other stuff, about what sort of social role that technology should play, that's ideology and politics.
As an aside, when younger people say older people don't get technology, I think its usually a proxy for social disagreements. E.g. My mom (62) has a Facebook, and iPhone, iPad, etc. She gets how it all works. She just doesn't approve of people posting pictures of themselves in revealing outfits or airing personal business in public on Facebook, or teenagers sexting pictures on their iPhones. That's not her not understanding technology. That's her having different social views.
I do think a current justice is much more qualified to talk about how the court views and understands technology then we are...
Regardless, in this case, a well-written amicus brief from technology leaders could also shape some of the ideology that would come to play, and I think it would be respected because they would be subject experts.
It's a very cogent description of the internet as it worked in 1996. I can't read something like that, which even goes to the length of describing how the internet uses packet-switching, and conclude that judges as a group don't have a grasp of how Facebook works.
"As an aside, when younger people say older people don't get technology, I think its usually a proxy for social disagreements"
Could be, but I think to a large extent it is that older people tend to assume things that are just not true. Example: my mom asked if I would be able to communicate with her during my upcoming trip to Europe, because she was concerned that there might be "international rates" for the Internet. This is the same woman who is able to use Fedora for daily tasks and who has been using command-line ffmpeg to transcode personal videos for her various devices.
To "get technology" can mean a lot of things. It could mean knowing how to use a terminal. It could just as easily mean understanding that a desktop computer can do all the things that a TiVO can do, or that the Internet does not have any long distance fees, or that the intended use a computer is irrelevant in a conversation about the possible uses of a computer. I would not discount such poor assumptions -- hackers are repeatedly bitten in the ass by law enforcement agencies and judges who have such misconceptions.
I think technologists confuse technology with ideology. Facebook is a technology that lets your friends see messages and photos you post, like a private bulletin board. I think every Justice gets that. All the other stuff, about what sort of social role that technology should play, that's ideology and politics.
As an aside, when younger people say older people don't get technology, I think its usually a proxy for social disagreements. E.g. My mom (62) has a Facebook, and iPhone, iPad, etc. She gets how it all works. She just doesn't approve of people posting pictures of themselves in revealing outfits or airing personal business in public on Facebook, or teenagers sexting pictures on their iPhones. That's not her not understanding technology. That's her having different social views.