The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It Reviews
The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It
This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquityand reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovationand facilitating unsettling new kinds of control. IPods, iPhones, Xboxes, and TiVos represent the first wave of Internet-centered products that can’t be easily modified by anyone except their ve
 | GBP 9.99 End Date: Wednesday Feb-22-2012 19:34:32 PST Buy It Now for only: GBP 9.99 Buy it now | Add to watch list |
| GBP 9.99 End Date: Wednesday Feb-22-2012 19:34:32 PST Buy It Now for only: GBP 9.99 Buy it now | Add to watch list |
Superb, Engrossing, Useful, Relevant, Alarming,
I ordered this book on the strength of the title, and on receiving it, discovered that the author is the Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University, and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School (they hate it when we just say “Harvard”–must be a culture thing). So right off I know this is at least as serious a book as I hoped for.
The book is instructive without being tedious, alarming without being hysterical. It is balanced, informed, and most relevant to all of us.
The entire book focuses on the transformation of the Internet from one in which the innovation could be done at the edges, with generative innovation that built on the provided software or hardware, to one in which we are allowed to buy tethered appliances like iPhone or X-Box that are “locked down.”
Even PCs are being locked down today, and with this and other examples the author has my total attention.
He suggests that the end point matters, and that the confrontation between flexibility and openness, versus security and perfect reliability (and later, perfect enforcement) is one that requires more creative thinking rather than knee jerk mandates one way or the other.
He notes that historically IBM tried to bundle everything, and they were forced by anti-trust to unbundle, just as AT&T was, as Microsoft was, and as Google will be if the USG Government ever gets either honest or informed–either will do. Look for my book review of “Google 2.0: The Calculating Predator” to understand this suprnational unsupervised threat to multiple sectors, never mind privacy and copyright.
In a nutshell, he frames the challenge as that of modularity within which the end-user can innovate, versus walled gardens that are locked down.
In passing the author vindicates both Morris, and the manner in which justice was applied. Morris intended to count the computers on the Internet, and screwed up the code. The judge intended to punish him but not end his promising career. All good.
The author discusses what Vint Cerf and others have, the degree to which bots have taken over tens of millions of computers, using broadband connections left on at all times to create a subrosa network that does evil.
On page 63, three important principles from the author on generativity:
1. Our information technology ecosystem functions best with generative technology (i.e. NOT with locked down appliances hard-wired to a center)
2. Generativity instigates a pattern both within and beyond the technological layers of the information technology ecosystem (i.e. content collaboration and social collaboration and value-added)
3. Proponents of generative systems ignore the drawbacks attendant to generativity success at their peril.
This is followed by a great discussion of features of a generative system as they would be hoped for by the author:
- Leverage
- Adaptability
- Base of mastery
- Accessibility
- Transferability
He cites benefits of a generative system as including:
- Non-profit social innovation
- Disruptive innovation
- Broad participation
- Generative systems from generative building blocks
- Recursion (of value) to content and then to society
The scary chapter in the book–the author is elegant but one needs little help to imagine the worst–discusses how tethered appliances enable “perfect enforcement” to include GPS devices turned on remotely to serve as audio surveillance on demand, and so on.
Turning to solutions, the author distinguishes between flexibility needed at the content level (he is laudatory about Wikipedia) and the technology layer. He discusses one possible solution, a Green-Red split system in which the Green system is locked down and totally reliable, and the Red system is open to innovation but also treated with caution.
He calls for better easier security tools for group and individual use, but as one who could never ever find a coder willing to document their code, and as one completely fed up with the pig code that comes out of Microsoft and Norton–pig in the sense of way too much crap and way too big a footprint–I fear that only an open source conversion experience will do. I note with interest a chart that shows that Sun Open Systems are the LAST to plug security holes, Not good.
The author suggests a “least harm” protocol.
He calls for a very large conversation among end-users, coders, manufacturers, regulators, and so on, and what I hear him saying is that the “system of systems” is on auto-pilot, the government is out of brakes (or brains, I would add), and if we don’t all do a collective “STOP, We Want to Discuss This,” we are destined to…
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|Wonderful Exposition Poor Persuasion,
This book should have either been 150 pages shorter and simply an argument or 100 pages longer with fully developed ideas. Zittrain frequently references and discusses the idea of “generativity” and changes the definition at each usage. Sometimes it means “creativity” sometimes it means “openness” and sometimes it means “freedom”, while all these ideas are tied to generativity, none are categorical or clear. It seems to be a shorthand for “computer good stuff” in the same way the word “umami” or “freedom” is used with several means and a body of meanings that’s poorly defined.
The book also references several seeming contradictions that I felt were poorly addressed. The opening of the book talks about the triumph of the Internet because of its openness over walled garden, then says that it’s under thread by tethered services, which the Internet had initially bested.
Hacking isn’t referenced for devices like DVRs, iPhones, and other such beasts.
DRM is entirely ignored as well as its failure in the music realm. I think the Sony Rootkit debacle would have served as a nice piece.
Finally, the book’s title includes “and how to stop it”. I don’t recall much in the book that actively tells the read what to do to stop a tethered device dominated network nor what legislation should be avoided or promoted.
The center bits on generativity and how it pops up in everyday life was both informative and interesting. Maybe this book should have been broken into two parts rather than the odd mingling that took place in this text.
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|A major stake in the ground on the policy implications of the net,
The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It is a major work of business, legal and policy research that will be less accessible to most people, but important to those looking to understand the future direction of today’s ecommerce world. Zittrain is both a technologist and a lawyer and he appears to be writing this book more to influence policy and thinking rather than proposing a specific solution.
This is fine, in my opinion, as Zittrain provides two important frameworks that define new ways of thinking about the net and its impact: the notion of generative technology and the idea that the value of that technology is moving from the network to the endpoints. The book describes these ideas and develops them into a range of policy and technical decisions facing business, political and judicial leaders.
In the Future of the Internet, Jonathan Zittrain provides a detailed analysis of the development of the Internet, the nature of networks, and the evolution of technology. This book concentrates on the central elements of what Zittrain calls “generative” solutions. A generative solution is one that provides a basis for innovation, new products and new sources of value through experimentation and individual innovation (ala Cheesbourgh’s open innovation). Zittrain sees the Internet and the PC as generative technologies, which the clearly are. However he sees generative technologies go through a pattern where the openness and high levels of trust that made them generative and attracted new solutions soon fall prey to fraud, abuse and outright criminal activities.
Zittrain argues that this is what the Internet is going through now as SPAM, Malware, Phishing and other forms of cyber crime and mischief are eroding the value of the Internet as a generative platform. The book makes this argument in a very logical way with good examples. This takes up the first part of the book and is perhaps the best part.
Zittrain’s idea is that as these generative technologies become compromised, the value potential moves from the network that connects devices to the devices themselves. Here is where he introduces the notion of appliance devices that are purpose build, not readily programmable at the functional level and give the consumer more protection and the provider more control. The notion that the value is moving away from the network is very intriguing; particularly interesting give the recent warm reception of appliances such as the iPhone, Wii, Tivo and others.
Overall this book is not for the faint of heart, nor for the casual reader of business and technology books. The text is well written, loaded with examples and details that will make for good cocktail party stories, but it is more of a policy book and a scholarly work than a business text.
CIOs should read the first half of the book with great interest as it lays out a new way of thinking about the network.
Corporate development officers at technology companies should read the whole book as it describes a possible legal, regulatory and economic framework for the future of technology.
Business leaders should read the first part of the book to understand the true nature and exposure they have in the current generative Internet era.
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