The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today launched a new blog — Tech @ FTC — focused on technology and consumer issues. Through the blog, the FTC aims to provide a vehicle for the agency’s Chief Technologist to communicate about technology issues to both technology experts and the broader public. Ed Felten, on leave from Princeton University (where he’s Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs) to serve as the first Chief Technologist at the FTC, wrote in his first post:

…As the nation’s consumer protection agency, the FTC works on technology issues every day. You’ll see lots of discussion of technology in our reports, cases, speeches and testimonies, not to mention the consumer and business education pieces we publish. But we haven’t had a venue for speaking, more directly and less formally, to the technically minded public about tech issues. That’s what this blog is for [more following the link].

 

Our goal is to talk about technology in a way that is sophisticated enough to be interesting to hard-core techies, but straightforward enough to be accessible to the broad public that knows something about technology but doesn’t qualify as expert. Every post will have an identified author — usually me — who will speak to you in the first person. We’ll aim for a conversational, common-sense tone — and if we fall short, I’m sure you’ll let us know in the comments.

 

I’m looking forward to having a conversation with you about technology. Stay tuned for our first “real” post…

To learn more, read Ed’s entire post on the Tech @ FTC blog.

(Contributed by Erwin Gianchandani, CCC Director)