Archive for October, 2008

I saw this author on the PBS show, ‘Charlie Rose’ a few months ago and then recently bought his book entitled ‘The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It’ (an attention grabbing title I know) – anyway, the Author is Jonathan Zittrain, He is a Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University and co-founder of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

This fascinating book covers the history of the Net and its future, touching on how the everyday, reprogrammable PCs may be replaced by new appliances and Web 2.0 platforms. He contends these new platforms will create new gatekeepers – plus, more opportunities for regulation.

Basically, the author describes how so much use of the Internet is going in a direction that some think goes against the principles that made the Internet great.

One of the main principles he mentions is what he calls ‘generativity flexibility’ regarding the creation of hardware, operating systems, applications, or websites that allow people to make new contributions, often resulting in unexpected contributions where people can continue to build upon further and continually improve.

He fears the increasing use of “tethered appliances” to perform Internet-related tasks threatens this pattern – despite. . . Wikis, Linux, Apache web servers and the IBM PC’s open architecture – plus, other platforms that have come into existence up to this point.

Innovative products such as Apple’s iPhone, TiVo, and the XBox 360. etc. are actually tightly controlled by their developers and manufacturers. So, any innovations built on these platforms are coming from companies that control them.

. . .you can write a new app for the iPhone but nobody can load your application onto his/her iPhone until it passes through Apple, is approved, and then distributed by Apple.

Even though the Internet grew by people creating new open apps. . . Now, if you want to add a new menu option to Firefox – there is no such approval process for people to use it. . .

Even though his book seems pessimistic, Zittrain presents a hopeful argument for how we can build on current work by technical users and legal scholars to stop or at least slow down what he sees as the pending state of a corporate-controlled Internet.

Hope, Zittrain argues – lies with the millions of users out there.  People who use technologies like Wikipedia where people can work to develop new technologies and social spaces that enable people to collaborate and foster what he hopes are the real “netizens.”