“The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It”, Interview and CC-Licensed Download
July 29, 2008 – 1:21 pm by Thomas GideonI have been peripherally aware of Jonathan Zittrain’s new book, “The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It”.
Reader Kevin Crosby wrote in to recommend an interview with Zittrain on the podcast, Lawyer to Lawyer.
This is a legal podcast which does a survey review of hot topics. This specific episode interviews Harvard’s Jonathan Zittrain on his new book “The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It” which looks at the current trend in monetizing (hate the word, but it fits) the internet by creating tethered hardware systems. The most famous tethered hardware system being Apple’s iPod.
This is a pretty good introduction to the core ideas of the book. Cory recently posted an in-depth review of the book itself on Boing Boing. I tend to agree with Cory’s views that the dangers of open systems and tethered devices are far from coincidental. Cory’s past discussions of the authoritarian urge when discussing massive online monitoring and tracking dove tail well with this point. Malware becomes yet another stalking horse to feed this urge, a negative one as opposed to the drive towards ad personalization, what that idea’s proponents would like us to think of as a positive argument for that same movement to centralized control.
Mostly I am in agreement with what I understand of Zittrain’s characterization of “generative” technologies. This meshes well with my views on the power and attraction of open media and open systems more generally. I however think the risks Zittrain perceives in maintaining openness are well worth it. I don’t entirely agree with the character and frequency of these threats though acknowledge that openness is not entirely without problems of its own making. As to the other thrust of his argument, living in one of the states that actually enacted UCITA, I feel the pain of not just tethered devices but tethered software acutely.
I have yet to read the book itself but Cory’s post has an update pointing out that it is also available as a CC-licensed download. That makes sense as it positions the work as participating in the the world of “generative” media. Time to add another item to ever growing stack to read.
