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Opinion

NY laws need to become friendlier to tech startups

By
Post Editorial Board
Published Dec. 2, 2013, 12:49 a.m. ET
Peter Faris, an independent driver, works with Uber a technology firm which has created a mobile app which allows consumers to use their device to request a nearby taxi or limousine. Uber is among a number of apps which are being deployed in cities in the United States and worldwide. Getty Image

Call it the revenge of the nerds.

These days, most everyone understands that the future of New York will require making this city friendly to technology — and the geeks who make it possible.

Hence the cheering that went up when Carnegie Mellon University announced it will be setting up shop at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where it will offer programs to apply technology to the arts. That follows on the heels of Cornell Tech, which is building its own campus on Roosevelt Island. On top of this, hometown universities NYU and ­Columbia have announced their own Gotham-based technology initiatives.

We all take these developments as a good sign that people are thinking ahead. As they do, we encourage them to think beyond bricks and mortar. Because if New York is serious about becoming a center of high-tech innovation, it needs to make itself as open to new technology as new buildings.

For example, look at the difficulties facing Airbnb, a Web site that lets people rent out their homes on a temporary basis. It now operates in 192 countries, but in New York it’s facing many obstacles — including a demand by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman for the financial records of New Yorkers who have put rooms up for rent via Airbnb in the last three years.

Or think of the saga faced by Uber, the taxi e-hailing app that makes it easier for passengers to get cabs. After much back and forth with the city — and opposition from the established livery services — New York opened the door to a pilot program.

These are just two innovative enterprises that have come to New York to offer their wares. We don’t deny that new technologies often raise new problems. But instead of treating these new initiatives as threats to tax revenues or to some privileged piece of the status quo, New York needs to overhaul both its attitude and its regulatory system so that innovation is welcomed and problems are worked out in a spirit of accommodation.

After all, what purpose will it serve if New York lets the geeks in but then works to keep out the new technology they create?