Mientras trabajaba sobre el potencial generativo de los mercados internos y el impacto derivado de los diferentes modelos de aprovisionamiento ‘estratégico’ en la cultura corporativa, recordé una conferencia de Zittrain ocurrida a principios de 2008 que me pareció interesante compartir con ustedes.

En esa oportunidad me interesó el planteo, no sólo por el futuro de la web y sus propuestas, sino fundamentalmente por la analogía con fenómenos de cambio más o menos radicales en nuestros modos generales de organización, y el planteo sobre la necesidad de conversar seriamente acerca de identidad, propiedad, control, seguridad, etc. si es que realmente queremos pensar en ‘generatividad sustentable’.

“Cheap to good home: used 360, pirated games, slightly banned” read an Ars Technica headline on November 12th[1]. The article counseled unsuspecting consumers to beware of used Xbox 360s available from resellers such as GameStop, or online from individual eBay and Craigslist sellers. The article was spurred by the influx into these markets of modified or hacked Xboxes resulting from a Microsoft ban preventing a number of such consoles from connecting to Xbox Live. Prompted by early access to pirated copies of the incredibly popular game Modern Warfare 2, Microsoft cracked down on moded Xboxes identified by their early access to the game. One of the largest draws of the Xbox is the ability to play multiplayer games through Microsoft’s online service, so in a retaliatory strike, Microsoft disabled this ability for the hacked consoles—a move that resulted in many dumping their compromised Xboxes in favor of new consoles that were Xbox Live compatible.

The ability of Microsoft to effectively ‘kill’ the Xbox Live functionality on specific consoles may be symptomatic of the internet’s transformation into a controlled network of tethered appliances as cautioned against by Jonathan Zittrain in The Future of the Internet—and How to Stop It. In this book, Zittrain provides a prescient assessment of the trends in the development of the internet, and warns of the possibility that in a not so distant future the PC may give way to the internet console—an information appliance wholly controlled by the manufacturer. He argues that in this scenario the current issue of net neutrality is a non-issue because if the user end-points (PCs) are tightly controlled then functionally so is the internet. Zittrain’s sobering warnings serve as a useful check on the optimistic tales of Wikipedia-like triumphs, and his book is a must-read companion to other contemporary writings about the future of the internet.

From the title, it seems that Zittrain’s book might be all doom and gloom, but the reality is far more positive. Zittrain begins by analyzing the technical architecture of the internet—a structure that he identifies as being conducive to creation of related work, or of high generativity. He shows that the 5 qualities that make a system generative (capacity to leverage, adaptability, ease of mastery, accessibility, and transferability) are all abundantly present in the technical structure of the internet making it an incredibly generative system. Similarly, the generativity in structure effectively filters up into all of the layers of the internet system (application, content, and social layers) enabling the kind of networked information economy described by Yochai Benkler in Wealth of Networks. Zittrain details the benefits of such generativity, citing examples like Wikipedia and SETI@home. He shows how the ability of individuals to contribute to various layers of the internet without requiring knowledge of the entire structure enables greater participation. Moreover, he argues that this greater participation will enable an increasingly participatory creation of cultural mores. Clearly, Zittrain sees the many benefits of the generative internet; however, he doesn’t end with his optimism. Rather, he dives deeper to see whether these positive effects are sustainable.

Ultimately Zittrain sees a push toward a less generative system as the natural progression from a relatively unknown incredibly generative internet, to an internet that has successfully entered the “prime time.” He argues that this natural push is the result of increased participation for two reasons. The first is that the more people that participate the less likely it is that all people will have the same kind of cultural norms of conduct that initial internet users possessed, enabling a greater risk that the unwritten norms break and lead to serious breaks in etiquette such as the creation of a truly destructive virus. Moreover, the increasing ubiquity of the internet, especially with the rise of rich internet applications that mimic the functionality of desktop applications, creates ever increasing risk associated with failures in internet security.

According to Zittrain, the increase in damaging activity and the increase in potential risk will combine to push users toward safer alternatives. The catalyst for this push could come in one of two forms. The first is a major watershed event—perhaps the release of an incredibly damaging virus that would rapidly infect millions of computers and at a pre-coded time would erase all infected hard drives. Zittrain believes that such a catastrophe has been prevented thus far mostly because of an existing ethos among hackers that limits most viruses to mischief rather than true harm. The second is described as death by a thousand cuts, meaning that over time the malware, badware, and spyware will come to be such a nuisance that users will begin to opt for safer more controlled machines. It is precisely this move toward safety that Zittrain identifies as the death knell for the future of a generative internet. Safety for end users might come in the form of increasingly appliance like computers—essentially dummy terminals that enabled with an internet connection and limited to preapproved, preinstalled applications. The ability to modify the machines and the choice to do so would be solely in the hands of the manufacturers or providers.

Ultimately, Zittrain warns that the result of such an appliance outcome would be terribly detrimental to the democracy, cultural diversity, and individual empowerment enabled by the generative internet. Sadly, although his warning is clear and his logic soundly sobering, his proffered solutions lack clear implementability. Basically, Zittrain advocates using lessons from successful generative endeavors in the social layer such as Wikipedia to help regulate the internet in ways that will minimize serious security threats, but will not stifle the internet’s fundamental generativity. How these might actually manifest remains partially formed in his analysis, and further discussion of more specific regulatory measures would help flesh out how it is possible to alter his theoretical future. Despite his lack of specific solutions, Zittrain still poses incredibly important questions about the fundamental role of the internet in societies of the 21^st century, and this book is well worth reading for any interested in what the future may hold.

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My Thoughts Enclosed…Rb

Häromdagen satt jag i soffan och bläddrade i Negropontes bok Being Digital. Den ansågs ju så framsynt och, öhm, modern när den kom i mitten på nittiotalet. Herregud vad det har hänt saker sedan dess. Allt tal om AOL, telefax, och e-postens globala möjligheter; all storögd framtidstro som inte var långt ifrån 1950-talets tankar om att vi snart alla kommer att ha flygande bilar; alla visioner. Being Digital har åldrats tre generationer på 15 år. Men ett kvardröjande intryck är  ändå optimismen. All utveckling i Being Digital är, mer eller mindre, framsteg. Allt blir bättre med Det Digitala.

Annolunda tecknas bilden i vår tids motsvarigheter. Harvard Law-professorn Jonathan Zittrain har skrivit en bok om Internet som, för att vara skriven av juridikprofessor, innehåller ganska litet juridik men väldigt mycket “food for thought”. Zittrains Internet är inte samma nyttiga glädjemaskin som Negropontes. Men det är inte heller någon dystopisk skildring av framtidens digitala samhälle som Zittrain levererat. Internet är som samhället i övrigt: Man får ta det onda med det goda.

The Future of the Internet – and How to Stop It kan laddas ned och läsas alldeles gratis under en creative commons-överenskommelse. Jag har bara precis börjat läsa men rekommenderar den redan nu.

Hittas här.

Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) prototype for the planned city of Masdar

A link to Hammersmith’s latest thought piece exploring the opportunities of embedding logic and sensors into vehicles, as well as using social media to enhance the driving experience – from Trapster’s wiki geotagging of speed traps, to the potential to embed sensors in public parking spaces so that drivers can scan for open spaces, to combining DPW and police news feeds into GPS devices so that they provide useful, real-time route information:

http://thehammersmithgroup.com/images/reports/networked_vehicles.pdf

This piece focused more on personal vehicles rather than commercial ones – that would be a piece on its own.

Feel free to share thoughts, as always.

Zittrain OP-ED about a topic I’ve written about recently (waiting for editors to review), applies his generativity argument to reasons why we should worry about the cloud from a development perspective. Issues that we should worry about include privacy, lack of control over our data, and lack of functionality (preventing the freedom to innovate). However, third parties are not mentioned, which pose an increasing privacy risk on sites like Facebook with over 950,000 application developers accessing user data for secondary purposes (see: Facebook needs to improve privacy practices, investigation finds).

The chief worry is that our computing and content will exist in an environment controlled by a cabal of “gated cloud communities,” providing platforms that discriminate against developers, “hindering revolutionary software.” Zittrain’s recommendations for a better cloud environment include: 1) requiring companies, under fair practices law, to allow users to access and erase their digital dossiers 2) requiring companies to adopt more secure communication practices and password protections 3) demanding companies to keep their word about how users can use content sold and accessed online (in the cloud) 4) applying a regulatory requirement – governments or independent judiciaries to demand better safeguards for data held in the cloud 5) provide a “subtle set of incentives . . . tax breaks and liability relief”

Zittrain’s most emphatic point, again, is the generativity argument. Cloud computing environments that are controlled by “mighty incumbents” like Google, Apple, Facebook, are gated. That is, they prevent the freedom to develop applications for these sites and services, thereby control their uses, and reign in the radical potential of ICT innovation. When we fight against poor applications, wonder why there aren’t better ones that perhaps enable more interoperability and more syndication features, its due to a closed “cloud-computing infrastructure” that prevents it.

Well guys and girls, this is supposed to be my traditional comment on my monitored site. But unfortunately my site has not been updated since May when I was originally assigned to Prof. Wesch’s blog. So lucky for you, I won’t be talking about YouTube or Anthropology today.

Instead I want to talk about how social networks are spreading defiance online. That’s right; I’m talking about the article in Monday’s New York Times. I found the link on Prof. Wesch’s blog.

Just so you know what I’m talking about: “As the embattled government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to be trying to limit Internet access and communications in Iran, new kinds of social media are challenging those traditional levers of state media control and allowing Iranians to find novel ways around the restrictions.”

Yup, the government has limited the country’s access to the Internet and has tried to stop Iranians from using Twitter to form groups and organize protests. Basically it comes down to censorship. This is really quite depressing if you think about it. These social tools are what’s keeping Iranians focused and positive and providing them a way to communicate with one another during such a trying time. The government was restricting the media coverage regarding the election so the only way the stories were being told and heard were through social tools such as Twitter. These tweets were being re-tweeted or “echoed” across the world.

Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School (an Internet expert) said “As each new home for this material becomes a new target for censorship, a repressive system faces a game of whack-a-mole in blocking Internet address after Internet address carrying the subversive material.”

I encourage the class and DeNel to pay close attention to this story as it develops. I have a feeling this will bring light to social media issues we have not thought about before.

Music

Limewire – thoughts on their prospects based on a recent interview jeremy1.wordpress.com

Publishing

Tipping point: Cambridge University Press rescue www.guardian.co.uk and Scribd store www.nytimes.com

O’Reilly: Scribd opens storefront for ebooks radar.oreilly.com

Espresso on-demand book printer. With video bookshop.blackwell.co.uk

Internet and Society

CCTV schemes in city and town centres have little effect on crime, says report www.guardian.co.uk

How to get what we all want: Zittrain on civic technology www.cato-unbound.org

The Future of the Internet by Jonathan Zittrain is available in a commentpress edition yupnet.org

Twitter

Literature re-told in the Little Book of Twitter bookfutures.blogspot.com Ulysses: overtweeting

What the hashtag: user-editable encyclopedia for hashtags found on Twitter  wthashtag.com

Copyright and education

Internet Archive Requests Copyright Indemnity  Open Education News openeducationnews.org

More about the Derrida case: ‘Argentina Copyright Case Brings Access To Education Into The Spotlight’ www.thelicensingplate.com

US: Testimony on the DMCA Film Clip Compilation Exemption digital-scholarship.org

Open Innovation, Creative Commons, OpenAccess

YouTube – Peter Suber on the Future of Open Access  www.youtube.com

John Wilbanks’ presentation at  NESTA: Open Innovation, Creative Commons – scienceblogs.com

Digital Britain #digitalbritain

UK’s games industry demands action to stop brain drain www.guardian.co.uk

Overcome obstacles to more free wifi in british cafes wperrin.blogspot.com

Why UK shouldn’t invest in upgrades to broadband infrastructure joannejacobs.net

The engineer’s view: ex BT CTO on DIY broadband aggregation networks.silicon.com

Liveblog from a seminar on The Future Of The Net (Jonathan Zittrain’s book – The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.), 20 March 2009, by John Naughton.

Update: Listen to the MP3 and see the useful concept map from John Naughton himself.

Audience small but quite high-powered (eight, including Tony Walton, Paul Clark, Andy Lane) . OU Strategy Unit trying to reach out to academic units and others.

John  lost his physical copy … but rightly guessed it’d be available online as Creative Commons-licensed text.

Jonathan Zittrain was employed sight-unseen as a Unix sysadmin at 13, then by some process (probably involving Larry Lessig) became a lawyer.

Part of an emerging canon – Lessig’s Code 2.0, Benkler’s Wealth of Networks – heavyweight academic stuff. Two sorts of people – trailblazers and roadbuilders; Lessig is the first. Our role in OU (including Relevant Knowledge Programme) is to follow and be roadbuilders, which is an honorable activity.

Core argument of book: Internet’s generative characteristics primed it for success, and now position it for failure. Response to failure will most likely be sterile tethered appliances.

Transformation of the Internet in a blink of an eye from thinking it’s just “CB de no jours” to taken-for-granted. John’s message is don’t take this for granted.

Three parts: 1 rise & stall of generative network, 2 after the stall (including a long and good analysis of Wikipedia), 3 solutions.

Conjunction of open PC and open Internet created the explosion of creativity, but contains within it the seeds of its own destruction. Parallel with T171 You, Your Computer and the Net (Martin did the PC, John did the net) – but didn’t study what happens when you put them together, which Zittrain does here. Not about proprietary versus open source – PC was an open device, if you could write code you could program the device.

John says people don’t understand what we’ve got in the current Net. Knowing the history helps. Design problem (Vint Cerf, IETF etc) – design for apps that haven’t yet been dreamed of, given distributed ownership. If you’re designing for the future, you don’t optimise for the present. Architectural solution has two key points: anyone can join (permissiveness); dumb network, clever apps (end-to-end principle). The openness is a feature, not a bug. Contrast with the case of the Hush-a-Phone.

Zittrain equation: Open PC + surprise generator = generative system

Thought experiments from James Boyle – gave two talks recently, at the RSA and John’s Cambridge programme. Almost everybody has a bias against openness: when something free and unconstrained is proposed, we see the downsides. (Because you can imagine those, whereas you by definition can’t imagine what hasn’t been invented yet.)  Imagine it’s 1992 and you have to choose between: approved sites with terminals at the end (like teletext/Minitel); dumb, unfiltered, permissive network (the Internet) with general-purpose computers at the end. Who would invest in the latter? Second question, still 1992, have to design an encyclopedia better than Brittanica: broader coverage, currency. Options: 1 – strong content, vast sums of money, strong editorial control, DRM. 2 – I’d like to put up a website and anyone can post stuff. Who’d pick the latter?

Posits tension – or indeed tradeoff – between generativity and security. Consumers will become so worried about this that they’ll (be encouraged to) favour tethered appliances and heavyweight regulation.

(I wonder if I can’t bring myself to believe in the Net being locked-down out of all recognition because I’ve always had it around in my adult life. It’s probably easier for people who really knew a world without it to imagine it going away.)

Part 2 explores our likely response to these problems, then Wikipedia. “With tethered appliances, the dangers of excess come not from rogue third-party code, but from [...] interventions by regulators into the devices themselves.”

Criticism of book – it underestimates the impact of Governments on the problem. Remembering 9/11, like JFK assassination. (John was on the phone to a friend who was there at the time!). John wrote in his blog on that day that this was the end of civil liberties as we knew them, and in many ways was right. (My memory was that it was the first huge news story that I got almost entirely from the web.) But – one day the bad guys will get their act together and we’ll see a major incident. Dry-runs with what happened to Estonia. But there will be something huge and coordinated, and that’ll evoke the same sort of response.

Rise of tethered appliances significantly reduces the number and variety of people and institutions required to apply the state’s power on a mass scale. John thinks it’s like the contrast between Orwell and Huxley – likelihood of being destroyed by things we fear and hate, or things we know and love.

Dangers of Web 2.0, services in the cloud – software built on APIs that can be withdrawn is much more precarious than software built under the old PC model.  Mashups work (except they’re always breaking – see Tony Hirst’s stuff, just like links rot). Key move to watch: Lock down the device, and network censorship and control can be extraordinarily reinforced.

iPhone is the iconic thing: it puts you in Steve Jobs’ hands. It’s the first device that does all sorts of good things and could be open but isn’t.  (What about other mobile phones?) Pew Internet & American Life survey – Future of the Internet III – prediceted that the mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020. So this could be a big issue.

Wikipedia analysis in the book is extensive.  Looks at how it handles vandalism and disputes – best treatment John’s seen. How it happens is not widely understood. Discussion about whether Wikipedia or Linux is the more amazing phenomenon. (My argument is that Linux is in some ways less startling, because you have some semi-independent arbitration/qualification mechanism for agreeing who’s a competent contributor and which code works.)

Part 3 – solutions to preserve the benefits of generativity without their downsides. “This is easier said than done”. The way Wikipedia manages itself provides a model for what we might do. (I think not – I think Wikipedia works because it can afford to piss off and exclude perfectly good and competent contributors.) Create and demosntrate the tools and practices by which relevant people and institutions can help secure the Net themselves instead of waiting for someone else to do it – badwarebusters.org.

Barriers – failure to realise the problem; collective action problem; sense that system is supposed to work like any other consumer device.

Nate Anderson’s review in ArsTechnica – three principles – IT ecosystem works best with generative tech; generativity instigates a pattern; ignore the downsides at your peril.

Criticisms: too focused on security issues and not on commercial pressures; not enough on control-freakery of governments; too Manichean – mixed economies; too pessimistic about frailties (and intelligence and adaptability) of human beings; over-estimates security ‘advantages’ of tethered appliances.

Discussion

Parallel with introduction of metalled roads. Crucial to economic development, move people and stuff around as a productive system.  Early days were a free-for-all, anyone could buy a car (if rich enough) and drive it, no need for a test.  Then increased regulation and control.  (Also to cars – originally fairly easily tinkerable with, now not/proprietary engine management systems.)  Issue about equity, as much as open/closedness.

Lessons of Wikipedia and the creators of malware. Malware creators only need to be small in number. To take down Wikipedia and make it undependable would take too much effort and coordination. (I disagree – a smart enough distributed bot attack would do it.)

I can’t imagine no Internet/generative/smart programmable devices because never not had them. Grew up on ZX81 onwards, had the CPU pinout on the connector.  Helps to have smart people around who have known the world before that.

South Korea got taken out by SQL Slammer, bounced back though – system is pretty resilient.

Manhattan Project perhaps a bad parallel for an effort to help here – it was the ultimate in top-down command-and-control project, with a clearly-defined outcome. And it was constrained and planned so tightly that it couldn’t actually work until people like Feynman loosened things up a bit to allow some degree of decentralisation.

How do you sign people up? Won’t do anything about e.g. climate change – until their gas bills shot up. Science and society stuff, well known that people only become engaged when it becomes real to them. Liberal is a conservative who’s been falsely arrested; conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged.

Surveillance – makes it unlikely that major public outrage leading to reaction is small, most people don’t realise their clickstream is monitored. It’s only if something happened that made people realise it that they’d say no.  Hard to imagine the scale of community engagement happening.

Case a few months ago – Wikipedia vs Internet Watch Foundation. Readymade community leapt in to action immediately.  But less likely where you don’t have such an articulate and existing community. Also photographer crackdown – they do have access to the media. Danger of the Niemoller scenario where they come for small groups one at a time.

It’s an argument about the mass of technology, not the small cadre of techies – iPhone can be jailbroken if you know what you’re doing. And there are more not fewer opps for techies and more techies than ever before. Most PC users in the 80s only used what they were given. In 1992 I could write an app for the PC and send it to anyone on the Internet. Except hardly anyone was on the Internet then, and even though most techies were among them, most Internet users then couldn’t write their own stuff – or even install software off the net.  Techies a small proportion still (even though bigger in number than before), so still vulnerable to this sort of attack.

Mobile devices are key here, consumerism. People just want stuff that works, generally.

Google as another example – they build very-attractive services, but on the basis of sucking up all our data.  Harness amoral self-interest of large corporations in this direction. Also (enlightened?) interest of Western Governments in promoting openness.

John uses example of bread mix and a recipe  to illustrate open source. Parallels with introduction of car (wow, I can go anywhere); PC (wow, I don’t have to ask people for most disk quota) and Net (wow, I don’t have to ask for more mail quota). These things have an impact on society, can damage it. So for instance, if you have an open machine, could damage other people’s computers, hence need to regulate ownership and operation. With car, annual check you have road tax, insurance, MOT; with a PC the surveillance needs to be continuous.

The 9/11 disaster scenario is instructive: why didn’t we have the same response to the Troubles? Because not transnational/non-State actors. The Provisional IRA have tangible, comprehensible political objectives that could be taken on. Whereas 9/11 terrorism is more vague.  And malware is different. Wasn’t a problem when it had no business model … but now it has. Can now take it on?

Is the Internet just (!) an extension of civil society and how you should regulate it, or is it something quite different?  Motor traffic law introduced absolute offences (no mens rea) – it’s an offence to drive over the speed limit regardless of whether you know you are going that fast or what the limit is) because quite different threat.  Internet is at least as new so likely to spur at least as revolutionary – and shocking – change to our legal system.  Ok, now I’m scared, so that’s a result.

But we’re only eighteen (nineteen?) years in to the web.  It’s idiotic for us to imagine we understand what it’s implications are.  So the only honest answer is we don’t know. John argues we’re not taking a long enough view. 1455, eighteen years after the introduction of the printing press. MORI pollster, do you think the invention of printing will undermine the authority of Catholic Church, spur Reformation, science, whole new classes, change of concept of childhood.  Web is a complex and sophisticated space, so to regulate it right can’t be done overnight.  Tendency for people to make linear extrapolations from the last two year’s trends.

In the long run, this won’t look like such a huge deal in the history of humanity. It’ll be a bit like what happened with steam. It looks like the biggest deal ever to us only because we’re in the middle of it.

So what do you do when you know that on a 20-year horizon you’re blind?

My answer: get moving now, plan to change and update regularly.  Expect to have to fiddle with it, throw great chunks of things away because they’re no longer relevant. Challenge to OU course production model! (Actually, I’m wrong to say throw away – more expect that things will become eclipsed and superseded – old technologies die very hard.)

We’ve become more open/diverse in our offer to bring in enough people. Which is hard – costs and scale versus personalisation.

Although last Friday I got my last package from Amazon, I’m not still reading any of those books, but Jonathan Zittrain’s The future of the Internet. And how to stop it. Disquieting, insightful, extremely interesting.

Here’s the last I’ve read from it:

The situation for online copyright illustrates that for perfect enforcement to work, generative alternatives must not be widely available. In 2007, the movie industry and technology makers unveiled a copy protection scheme for new high-definition DVDs to correct the flaws in the technical protection measures applied to regular DVDs over a decade earlier. The new system was compromised just as quickly; instructions quickly circulated describing how PC users could disable the copy protection on HD-DVDs. So long as the generative PC remains at the center of the modern information ecosystem, the ability to deploy trusted systems with restrictions that interfere with user expectations is severely limited: tighten a screw too much, and it will become stripped.

So could the generative PC ever really disappear? As David Post wrote in response to a law review article that was a precursor to this book, “a grid of 400 million open PCs is not less generative than a grid of 400 million open PCs and 500 million locked-down TiVos.” Users might shift some of their activities to tethered appliances in response to the security threats described in Chapter Three, and they might even find themselves using locked-down PCs at work or in libraries and Internet cafés. But why would they abandon the generative PC at home? The prospect may be found in “Web 2.0.” As mentioned earlier, in part this label refers to generativity at the content layer, on sites like Wikipedia and Flickr, where content is driven by users. But it also refers to something far more technical—a way of building Web sites so that users feel less like they are looking at Web pages and more like they are using applications on their very own PCs. New online map services let users click to grasp a map section and move it around; new Internet mail services let users treat their online e-mail repositories as if they were located on their PCs. Many of these technologies might be thought of as technologically generative because they provide hooks for developers from one Web site to draw upon the content and functionality of another—at least if the one lending the material consents.

Yet the features that make tethered appliances worrisome—that they are less generative and that they can be so quickly and effectively regulated—apply with equal force to the software that migrates to become a service offered over the Internet. Consider Google’s popular map service. It is not only highly useful to end users; it also has an open API (application programming interface) to its map data, which means that a third-party Web site creator can start with a mere list of street addresses and immediately produce on her site a Google Map with a digital push-pin at each address. This allows any number of “mash-ups” to be made, combining Google Maps with third-party geographic datasets. Internet developers are using the Google Maps API to create Web sites that find and map the nearest Starbucks, create and measure running routes, pinpoint the locations of traffic light cameras, and collate candidates on dating sites to produce instant displays of where one’s best matches can be found.

Because it allows coders access to its map data and functionality, Google’s mapping service is generative. But it is also contingent: Google assigns each Web developer a key and reserves the right to revoke that key at any time, for any reason—or to terminate the whole Google Maps service.It is certainly understandable that Google, in choosing to make a generative service out of something in which it has invested heavily, would want to control it. But this puts within the control of Google, and anyone who can regulate Google, all downstream uses of Google Maps—and maps in general, to the extent that Google Maps’ popularity means other mapping services will fail or never be built.

Software built on open APIs that can be withdrawn is much more precarious than software built under the old PC model, where users with Windows could be expected to have Windows for months or years at a time, whether or not Microsoft wanted them to keep it. To the extent that we find ourselves primarily using a particular online service, whether to store our documents, photos, or buddy lists, we may find switching to a new service more difficult, as the data is no longer on our PCs in a format that other software can read. This disconnect can make it more difficult for third parties to write software that interacts with other software, such as desktop search engines that can currently paw through everything on a PC in order to give us a unified search across a hard drive. Sites may also limit functionality that the user expects or assumes will be available. In 2007, for example, MySpace asked one of its most popular users to remove from her page a piece of music promotion software that was developed by an outside company. She was using it instead of MySpace’s own code. Google unexpectedly closed its unsuccessful Google Video purchasing service and remotely disabled users’ access to content they had purchased; after an outcry, Google offered limited refunds instead of restoring access to the videos.

Continuous Internet access thus is not only facilitating the rise of appliances and PCs that can phone home and be reconfigured by their vendors at any moment. It is also allowing a wholesale shift in code and activities from endpoint PCs to the Web. There are many functional advantages to this, at least so long as one’s Internet connection does not fail. When users can read and compose e-mail online, their inboxes and outboxes await no matter whose machines they borrow—or what operating system the machines have—so long as they have a standard browser. It is just a matter of getting to the right Web site and logging in. We are beginning to be able to use the Web to do word processing, spreadsheet analyses, indeed, nearly anything we might want to do.

Once the endpoint is consigned to hosting only a browser, with new features limited to those added on the other end of the browser’s window, consumer demand for generative PCs can yield to demand for boxes that look like PCs but instead offer only that browser. Then, as with tethered appliances, when Web 2.0 services change their offerings, the user may have no ability to keep using an older version, as one might do with software that stops being actively made available.

This is an unfortunate transformation. It is a mistake to think of the Web browser as the apex of the PC’s evolution, especially as new peer-to-peer applications show that PCs can be used to ease network traffic congestion and to allow people directly to interact in new ways. Just as those applications are beginning to show promise—whether as ad hoc networks that PCs can create among each other in the absence of connectivity to an ISP, or as distributed processing and storage devices that could apply wasted computing cycles to far- away computational problems —there is less reason for those shopping for a PC to factor generative capacity into a short-term purchasing decision. As a 2007 Wall Street Journal headline put it: “‘Dumb terminals can be a smart move’: Computing devices lack extras but offer security, cost savings.”

* * *

Generative networks like the Internet can be partially controlled, and there is important work to be done to enumerate the ways in which governments try to censor the Net. But the key move to watch is a sea change in control over the endpoint: lock down the device, and network censorship and control can be extraordinarily reinforced. The prospect of tethered appliances and software as service permits major regulatory intrusions to be implemented as minor technical adjustments to code or requests to service providers. Generative technologies ought to be given wide latitude to find a variety of uses—including ones that encroach upon other interests. These encroachments may be undesirable, but they may also create opportunities to reconceptualize the rights underlying the threatened traditional markets and business models. An information technology environment capable of recursive innovation in the realms of business, art, and culture will best thrive with continued regulatory forbearance, recognizing that the disruption occasioned by generative information technology often amounts to a long-term gain even as it causes a short-term threat to some powerful and legitimate interests.

The generative spirit allows for all sorts of software to be built, and all sorts of content to be exchanged, without anticipating what markets want—or what level of harm can arise. The development of much software today, and thus of the generative services facilitated at the content layer of the Internet, is undertaken by disparate groups, often not acting in concert, whose work can become greater than the sum of its parts because it is not funneled through a single vendor’s development cycle.

The keys to maintaining a generative system are to ensure its internal security without resorting to lockdown, and to find ways to enable enough enforcement against its undesirable uses without requiring a system of perfect enforcement. The next chapters explore how some enterprises that are generative at the content level have managed to remain productive without requiring extensive lockdown or external regulation, and apply those lessons to the future of the Internet.

J’ai parlé récemment du très intéressant livre The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It dans lequel il est soutenu, entre autres, que la montée en popularité des appareils verrouillés du genre iPhone, parce qu’ils sont « stériles », menacerait les fondements de ce qui a permis la révolution numérique que nous connaissons, la générativité d’Internet et de l’ordinateur personnel.

Dans son livre, l’auteur Jonathan Zittrain discute également abondamment d’une autre tendance tout aussi dangereuse et de plus en plus présente dans l’écosystème Internet : celle des “tethered appliances” c.-à-d. des appareils « tenus en laisse » par leurs fournisseurs.

Nous sommes depuis longtemps confrontés avec ce concept dans les applications informatiques que nous utilisons tous les jours. En effet, il est maintenant courant pour un logiciel ou un système d’exploitation de garder contact avec son créateur pour, par exemple, effectuer des mises à jour ou rapporter des problèmes. Certains développeurs sont allés encore plus loin en utilisant cette « laisse » pour combattre avec plus ou moins de succès le piratage de leurs produits. Mais dans le cas des logiciels pour PC ou pour MAC, l’appareil étant lui-même pleinement génératif, l’usager a toujours le choix d’installer un autre logiciel si cette laisse ne fait pas son affaire.

Une telle fonctionnalité est beaucoup plus pernicieuse lorsque les utilisateurs n’ont pas vraiment ce choix, comme dans le cas des appareils verrouillés. Même si le consommateur achète tout à fait légitimement un tel appareil, d’une certaine façon il n’en est jamais véritablement propriétaire. C’est plutôt un nouveau genre de location à long terme où le fabricant conserve à jamais le droit de modifier l’appareil à sa guise et selon ses propres intérêts. Avec bien des avantages sûrement (correction de bogues, ajout de fonctions, etc.), mais également des possibilités de dérives et d’abus extraordinaires.

Un des exemples dramatiques cités par Zittrain pour en illustrer les dangers concerne la possibilité « d’écouter aux portes » des utilisateurs d’appareils “tethered”. Il cite notamment le cas où un véhicule équipé d’un système OnStar a été reprogrammé à distance pour espionner les occupants suite à une injonction d’un corps policier. Et il s’inquiète avec raison de l’utilisation que pourraient faire de ces technologies les régimes politiques répressifs.

Mais, à mon avis, le plus grand danger est beaucoup moins spectaculaire et surtout plus insidieux. Un danger que Apple, avec son iPhone, pourrait bien être en voie de démontrer.

Sous ses airs de produit pleinement personnalisable, le iPhone est peu génératif au sens « Zittrain » du terme, le fabricant exerçant un strict contrôle des applications qu’il est possible d’y installer. C’est un appareil (presque) verrouillé et quasi stérile.

C’est également un appareil solidement tenu en laisse par son fabricant. En effet, à l’indignation des aficionados de la pomme qui ont eux-mêmes découvert le pot aux roses, Apple a confirmé que son appareil phare était muni d’une « kill switch » permettant de désactiver à distance des logiciels « malicieux ou inappropriés » déjà installés dans l’appareil.

Jusqu’à présent, les quelques cas où des applications ont fait l’objet d’un refus de la part de Apple ont soulevé peu de controverses. Ce dernier incident ici, qui implique un petit jeu pas très « politically correct », n’en soulèvera probablement pas davantage. Mais celui-ci est à mon avis beaucoup plus lourd de signification et démontre les dangereuses possibilités de dérive associées à un tel contrôle. Apple est pris en flagrant délit de censure morale arbitraire carabinée.

Certains diront que cela est somme toute une très banale et inoffensive censure?

Nonobstant le fait qu’il est périlleux pour une société démocratique, où la liberté d’expression est cruciale, de laisser l’entreprise privée s’arroger le droit de dicter les limites à cette liberté, c’est également la négation du principe de base qui fait d’Internet une si extraordinaire invention : la libre circulation de toutes les formes d’expressions et d’innovations.  Et cela nous donne une idée du genre d’Internet qui en résulterait : un Internet à la merci de la rectitude politique, un média ou l’anticonformisme et la contre-culture seraient réduits au silence.

Ce qui est alarmant c’est que cette tendance vers les appareils « tethered » est loin d’être marginale. À preuve, Google « Don’t be evil » lui-même a inclus une « kill switch » similaire dans Android, son tout nouveau système d’exploitation Open Source pour les appareils mobiles. Et déjà une première controverse se dessine peut-être à l’horizon pour celui-ci.

Chose certaine, l’avènement des « Tethered Appliances » est un autre pas dangereux vers la fin de l’Internet tel que nous le connaissons.

Pierre M

I’ve wanted to write about one of my recent reads for quite a while now, but couldn’t get around to it until now. The Future of the Internet, and How to Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain is an intriguing read about where we’ve been in our computing history and development, and where we’re heading. He is not trying to stop the Internet from having a future, rather he is trying to stop the Internet from evolving into something very different from what it has been. Basically, this is the net neutrality argument explained with great detail in understandable terms. But it’s more than just that.

The only part of the book that this post will deal with is a small portion of his material dealing with tethered appliances and generative (vs. non-generative) devices.

Right at the beginning of the book, Zittrain draws the distinction between the development and introduction of the PC and that of the iPhone. Regarding the introduction of the Apple II personal computer over 30 years ago, “The Apple II was a blank slate, a bold departure from previous technology that been deployed and marketed to perform specific tasks from the first day of its sale to the last day of its use.” (continuing from page 2) “The Apple II was quintessentially generative technology. It was a platform. It invited people to tinker with it.”

Contrast that with the iPhone (pg. 2). “The iPhone is the opposite. It is sterile. Rather than a platform that invites innovation, the iPhone comes preprogrammed. You are not allowed to add programs to the all-in-one device that Steve Jobs sells you. Its functionality is locked in though Apple can change it through remote updates. Indeed, to those who managed to tinker with the code to enable the iPhone to support more or different applications, Apple threatened (and then delivered on the threat) to transform the iPhone into an iBrick. The machine was not to be generative beyond the innovations that Apple (and its exclusive carrier, AT&T) wanted. Whereas the world would innovate for the Apple II, only Apple would innovate for the iPhone.”

Zittrain also devotes some quality time to exploring some of the early proprietary systems such as “Networks like CompuServe, The Source, America Online, Prodigy, Genie, and MCI Mail gave their subscribers access to content and services deployed solely by the network providers themselves.” (pg. 23) He continues: “PCs were to be only the delivery vehicles for data sent to customers, and users were not themselves expected to program or to be able to receive services from anyone other than their central service provider. CompuServe depended on the phone network’s physical layer generativity to get that last mile to a subscriber’s house, but CompuServe as a service was not open to third-party tinkering.”

The part that I find ironic is probably perfectly obvious by now. No self-respecting geek or pseudo-geek (I put myself in that category) would have been caught dead subscribing to AOL or Compuserve when the wide open Internet was just sitting there waiting for them to shed the bindings of the proprietary service providers. However, these same geeks and pseudo-geeks can’t wait to get their hands on the iPhone.

Zittrain ties it altogether on page 106. “Indeed, recall that some recent devices, like the iPhone, are updated in ways that actively seek out and erase any user modifications. These boxes thus resemble the early proprietary information services like CompuServe and AOL.” I think it’s funny that the iPhone fanatics don’t look anything like the old AOL and CompuServe fanatics.

Zittrain’s book deals with much more than what is included in this post. I highly recommend it, except maybe to the iPhone fanboys who might not like being compared to a CompuServe fanboy. This book is available for free on the Internet, although you can also buy a copy in almost any bookstore. I got mine at Amazon.

Je recommande fortement, à quiconque s’intéresse à l’avenir du web, la lecture du livre The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.

Derrière ce titre accrocheur, mais approprié, j’ai découvert une thèse très érudite et extrêmement intéressante de Jonathan Zittrain qui pourrait bien faire date dans la courte histoire d’Internet. D’ailleurs, le livre, ainsi que les articles précurseurs de Zittrain, font beaucoup parler.

La pierre angulaire de l’ouvrage, et à mon avis son concept le plus novateur et important, est celui de “générativité”.

Selon la définition de Zittrain, la générativité désigne « la capacité d’une technologie à produire des changements inattendus et spontanés, par l’action non coordonnée d’un auditoire diversifié et suffisamment important » (traduction libre).

Ou plus simplement, dans les mots de Nicholas Carr, elle « permet à une foule de gens de créer et de distribuer un tas de choses, pouvant ensuite être utilisées pour créer encore plus de choses » (traduction libre).

Un des exemples les plus représentatifs d’une technologie générative est le papier et le crayon. On ne compte plus le nombre de réalisations humaines, la plupart inattendues, découlant de l’invention du papier et du crayon. À l’opposé, un grille-pain est un bon exemple d’une technologie non générative ou stérile. On ne peut pas en faire grand-chose d’autre que ce pourquoi il a été conçu, soit griller des tranches de pain (des gaufres aussi peut-être?).

Zittrain suggère que la qualité la plus importante du système composé de l’ordinateur personnel et du réseau Internet, celle qui représente le mieux son essence, celle qui a permis la révolution numérique extraordinaire que l’on connaît, c’est la générativité. Parce qu’ils sont hautement génératifs, l’action combinée du PC et d’Internet a permis cette explosion sans précédent de créativité et d’innovation. Et il suggère donc d’orienter les décisions et de juger des technologies et des forces en présence sur le fait qu’elles contribuent ou non à la générativité du système.

Et vu à travers la lorgnette de la générativité, l’avenir d’Internet et du PC serait plutôt sombre­. De nombreuses forces sont à l’oeuvre qui pourraient avoir comme conséquence sinon de tuer, de restreindre considérablement leur générativité à plus ou moins court terme. Avec comme résultat probable un déclin important du niveau d’innovation et de créativité que nous vivons actuellement. Le livre de Zittrain dresse un portrait des menaces à la générativité du système web/PC et propose certaines pistes de solution.

L’une des principales menaces réside dans la tendance vers “l’accessoirisation” des appareils utilisés par les consommateurs pour accéder au réseau.  L’exemple phare de cette tendance est le iPhone. En effet, aussi utile et bien conçu que puisse être l’appareil, celui-ci ne permet pas l’installation et l’utilisation libre d’applications conçues par des tierces parties, sauf celles dûment autorisées par Apple. Le iPhone n’est pas un appareil génératif au sens où l’est le PC.

Et cette tendance serait renforcée par la prolifération incontrôlable des virus et autres “badwares” qui polluent actuellement l’espace numérique, poussant ainsi les utilisateurs à choisir des appareils qui les prémuniraient davantage contre ces nuisances. Ce que font beaucoup plus efficacement les appareils peu génératifs.

Un peu de la même façon, le Cloud Computing menacerait également la générativité du web/PC. En permettant de substituer au traditionnel couple ordinateur personnel – logiciel, un simple terminal web couplé à des applications “dans le nuage”, le Cloud Computing enlève à l’utilisateur une partie plus ou moins grande de sa capacité (et de sa motivation) à expérimenter et à modifier son environnement technologique.

Peut-être qu’une des planches de salut réside dans cette autre tendance forte, celle des produits Open Source? On peut argumenter que ceux-ci, parce que pouvant être librement modifiés par quiconque en a les compétences, constituent également un facteur génératif significatif. Un appareil ou une application web Open Source, même si stérile en soi, permettrait de regagner une partie de la générativité perdue, celle-ci se déplaçant simplement de l’utilisateur à la communauté des développeurs.

On peut ou non être d’accord avec les solutions proposées par Zittrain (et plusieurs ne le sont pas), mais son concept de générativité, et l’analyse subséquente qu’il fait de l’état des lieux, est à mon avis tout à fait pertinente et solide. Il y aurait donc réellement matière à s’inquiéter pour l’avenir du net.

Pierre M

P.-S.

1) Le livre est publié sous licence Creative Common et disponible ici. Mais ne soyez pas chiche, si le sujet vous intéresse au point d’envisager de vous taper un livre de 325 pages rivé à un écran d’ordinateur, encouragez plutôt l’auteur et achetez-le.

2) On trouvera ici la vidéo d’une conférence où l’auteur fait un très bon et très divertissant résumé du livre.

You’ve written a clear and compelling explanation of the book and why you liked it. Despite the title and cover photo of a train track running off a cliff, you capture Zittrain’s positive can-do approach to the challenges facing generative technologies.

In my conversation with Zittrain last Spring he worried that “wonderful anarchy” of computers and the internet is open to two different threats. The first he called the death of a thousand cuts. There will be so much badware, so many worm and viruses invading your machine that it becomes unusable. But the second threat is more catastrophic. He imagines a watershed event where 25 to 30 percent of the pc’s on the internet have been ordered to self-destruct or trash their documents. Zittrain asked computer scientists if they were in a Jack Bauer situation with a gun to their head, could they do it two weeks. They said they could do it easily. One computer scientist demurred. He said it might take three weeks. if a watershed event occurs confidence in the “wonderful anarchy” will collapse. It could set back generative technologies for years. Some may opt for a green and red version PC. But the very fact that they would have to be connected could give users pause. In the wake of catastrophic failure, computer users would willingly embrace the perceived safety of a closed system in the same way the American public sought the perceived security of a gung-ho president following 9/11.  PS I’m going to try to work “Verkeersbordvrij” into as many conversations as possible.

Although this is not my field, I want to talk about new stuff related to the internet. First, there is a new service by Google called knol. It is a direct competitor to Wikipedia, presenting articles written by one specialist at a time. This should make for better quality. There is still choice, since more than one author can write on any one topic. However, the need for collaboration is absent. After all, the one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience (Harper Lee).

In other news, Google is attacked by a new outfit that has been started by former Googlers: Cuil. The search-engine has a bigger catalogue than Google itself and saves a lot of energy due to its black background. It collects less private information and seems to present itself as the nicer Google. Interesting.

The last topic is a new book by Jonathan Zittrain called The Future of the Internet. Of course, there is a corresponding blog. Science has a review, which I find quite revealing:

A prominent feature of his framing, repeated throughout the book, is the dichotomy between generative and sterile technologies. At the outset, Zittrain uses two technologies developed by Apple to illustrate this idea. First, he describes the Apple II personal computer as a “quintessentially generative technology” because it was a “platform,” it “invited people to tinker with it,” “Jobs (and Apple) had no clue how the machine would be used,” it was “designed for surprises,” and fortunately, nothing constrained the personal computer to the “hunches of the founders.” At the opposite extreme, he tells us, is the Apple iPhone, which is “sterile” because it “comes preprogrammed”; is not a platform for user innovation; its “functionality is locked in”; and only Apple-authorized innovation is permitted.

First, I think there should be a correction. By now, Apple allows third-party software to run on its iPhone (see here). Then, I cannot see how a specialized device like the iphone “comes preprogrammed”, whereas the Apple II (we used these in high-school back in the 90s) is “a platform for user innovation”. I think that my current Mac Mini is an even better platform (and I do not plan to replace it with an iPhone). The iPhone is itself an extension of a mobile phone. I would argue that an old-school mobile phone is more “preprogrammed” than an iPhone. From reading the review, I wonder whether Jonathan Zittrain is comparing Apple IIs with orange iPhones.

Jonathan Zittrain holds the Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University and is a principal of the Oxford Internet Institute. He is also the Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Visiting Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, where he co-founded Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society in 1996. With students, he began Chilling Effects, a web site that tracks and archives legal threats made to Internet content producers….

I’ve read many of his academic papers, and I’ve ordered his new book,  the Future of the Internet and how to stop it. People will be reading him 200 years hence. His paper on the Generative Internet  should be compulsory reading for anyone studying the internet or working in technology industry.

Jonathan, please tell me you are using the word applicancization for a bet.

It is a word only in the sense that this is a wheel. (thanks Bepster)

The growing menace of Internet crime is really astounding. Phishing. Malware. Spam. The volume of attacks and deceptions are extraordinarily high. Estimates of the number of personal computers which are controlled by botnets range from 12-30% of connected computers; these hundreds of millions of machines are then harnessed to attack servers, mine the net for personal data or any number of other nefarious activities. No longer is hacking the pursuit of curious tinkerers or bored teens. Today an entire industry, estimated recently by Gartner to be worth $3.2 billion in 2007, has arisen to sell malicious computer activities.

Cybercrime takes advantage of both the generative nature of the net, poorly written code and user ignorance. Like all crime, cybercrime has brought about attempts to regulate the Internet, and often these regulations err on the side of caution and over-regulate, limiting beneficial activities. Rampant copyright infringement brought about the DMCA which tried to limit illegal song-swapping, but instead has been used to silence critics or sue adorable kids. And, most likely, it hasn’t done a whole lot to stop copyright infringement.

What is at risk with Internet crime is a similar course of events. In briefly reviewing Zittrain’s book, Lessig poses the question:

“Whether a single event, or a coordinated event, whether intentional, or accidental, it is simply a matter of time before a catastrophic network event happens. And when it happens — think of it as a kind of i9/11 event, but the bad guys are not Al-Qaeda — will we be prepared for the inevitable iPatriot Act response? Are we better prepared than civil libertarians were when we were hit with the USA Patriot Act? Have we even framed the right debate?”

Arguably this over-regulation has already started to take place, but it could certainly get worse. To help flesh out some of the important ideas about the future of cybercrime, the Publius Project has commissioned three essays.

Michael Barrett, head of information security at PayPal, writes that the impetus for regulation of cars and airplanes were prominent accidents. Paul Starr tells a similar story in The Creation of the Media about the beginning of radio regulation. Following the sinking of the Titanic, the Radio Act of 1912 required all radio operators to be licensed, all ships to have transmitters and allocated bands of spectrum for certain purposes. Barrett thinks that cybercrime will have the same effect that the Titanic did and be the cause of serious government regulation of the Internet. In fact, he welcomes it as an important part of the interconnecting regulation needed from government, private industry and users.

First of all, it is not clear that cybercrime will be able to have the dramatic effects that a sinking Titanic did. Many of the threats from online activity, especially identity theft, are well-known and publicized. Others are becoming more publicized, like Internet-facilitated espionage. These cybercrimes will not necessarily serve as the shock that government needs to begin regulation. But, let’s say there is an event or series of events which are powerful enough to induce government response, like Barrett welcomes and Lessig fears, is that the right response?

Cybercrime, as best we know, is not centralized. There is no capital city to bomb, leaders to sanction or even mob boss to imprison. As security expert Bruce Schneier says, even the alleged Chinese spy-hackers are not controlled by the state. So, what the cyber-police or other government regulation would be up against is a distributed network of criminals – a classic starfish – and one does not combat decentralized organizations in the same manner as centralized ones. As The Starfish and the Spider points out, to beat a decentralized foe, in this case, cybercrime, one must decentralized oneself, centralize the opponent or change the ideology. In this light, Barrett’s assertion that “it’s quite possible that a new global governance organization is needed” seems misguided. While I welcome his support of a shared responsibility between stakeholders, I am fearful that calling for government regulation may be regrettable.

Instead, the words of Internet guru David Clark seem more nuanced:

So the starting point for improving the state of Internet security must be a social dialog, not just a technical dialog, about what sort of Internet we want. The challenge to the technical community is not to build a very secure Internet—that might be more of a price than we actually want to pay. The challenge is to find clever ways to give us more security without taking away our freedom of action. And finding these better solutions will require a design process that involves both technologists and social observers, because it will take both technical imagination and social imagination to conceive of a different Internet from what we have today, more secure but still suited to our desires for open, diverse access.

This social dialog should recognize the power of defaults and architect a security-bias. Beau Brendler, in his essay, embraces this by calling for simple solutions which “nudge,” to use Sunstein and Thaler’s expression, users towards more secure computing. Provide free anti-virus software and simple-to-understand security manuals, for one.

But if these soft-power solutions are to emerge, they had better do so quickly because while mainstream media rhetoric on the issues may border on panicked, those who know best are worried, too. And if we are to save the open, generative net, it will need saving from both itself and outside regulation.

Jonathan Zittrain, author of The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It reviews the current and future trend of technology and the internet. He brings up some valid points gaining praise from institutions of law. I’m not going to go over the details of his points, at least not in this post. But, his primary concern is with the underlying dark nature of the internet and its abilities. I don’t think his concerns are unfounded.

I work in the Information Technology department of a growing government body. Actually, we are splitting at the seams. One of my primary concerns is security. We often have malicious attacks by various world countries that attempt to steal and falsify data on our network. It’s a serious issue. A computer, as we know, is simply a device for running code and doing as it says. It doesn’t have the intellect to decide what “bad” code is and what “good” code is. To put it into perspective, if it were a human, it would be a person who can’t determine the difference between “kill yourself” and “smile.” Granted, I wish some people would follow the commands you give them but their brain does a bit more processing for each command given than your household computer.

Here is where I depart from Mr. Zittrain. He wants us to fix the internet. I don’t. The internet is our looking glass into us. It only shows us what we put into it. And it’s no wonder that one in ten web sites is implanted with malicious software designed to sell us something or harm our computer. When I step outside and drive to work; as I look around, I see people trying to sell me their trash (not literally). I turn to NPR and listen to the latest numbers of people dying all over the place. Self-promotion and destruction is everywhere. Is it any wonder that the internet reflects those things? No!

BUT! That is not reason for alarm. The internet also has a brighter side. And while we are still uncertain about the future of the internet, we are just as uncertain about our own futures. It could really go either way. I’ll continue to hope for the best. Don’t change my internet. Let it evolve alongside ourselves.

David Weinberger, in an early essay for Publius explained that “Rules are norms that have failed.” In his reasoning, the majority of human action is not governed by explicit rules; instead, tacit governance – norms, conventions and expectations – dictate the appropriate behavior in most cases. Where explicit governance is needed, the norm based approach has failed. Roads need explicit speed limits to avoid people’s tendency to cause accidents. “The overwhelming preponderance on the Net of tacit governance over explicit is a sign of the Net’s depth, importance, humanity, health and success.”

This tacit governance is connected to the civic technologies extolled by Zittrain. Those technologies, like Wikipedia or the Internet, which require constant care and effort to be successful, rely on mix of tacit and explicit governance. On the one hand, the Internet Engineering Task Force decides through “rough consensus,” often by humming. On the other, Wikipedia has an extensive list of rules and policies (of which one is to “ignore all rules”).

This mix of governance strategies hints at an effort to capture the civic ethic which allows these technologies to avoid formal, external institutional rule-making. Partly as a result of a technopanic over online porn, the Communications Decency Act was passed to regulate online speech. Because badware is so pervasive, McAfee and Symantec have a tidy business of combating it. Both of these are purely explicit governance which can have numerous complications.

How do we govern the Internet and technologies in either purely tacit manners or through a mix which minimizes explicit rules? I think it comes back to the civic ethic which can motivate heroes like Ghandi or just a simple Wikipedian who deletes a malicious edit. The question, then, is how to capture this civic ethic and expand it to new fields? This is more than a technological question, but by designing the tools and understanding the motivations of civic engagers, we can seek to expand this.

Last month, the Personal Democracy Forum brought together leading thinkers on the evolution of politics and technology. The list of speakers was really impressive and I’ve been watching the videos posted to Blip.tv. I really enjoyed Jonathan Zittrain’s discussion of “civic technologies” which he defines as those technologies which succeed as long as people are self-consciously willing to help it succeed. Non-civic technologies work pretty well regardless of people’s efforts. To JZ, radios are non-civic, but Wikipedia is civic. It, along with others like PCs and the Internet, require neighborliness to work and defend against threats that may befall them (in the form of the tragedy of the commons or short-term commercial exploitation).

The law is expensive to enforce and, as such, requires cooperation. Historically, volunteer groups used to help round-up criminals. More recently, the public has been used to “notice anything suspicious.” This nature of the law, which requires cooperation, is what makes civic disobedience so potent. When laws are unpopular enough that citizens choose to not assist in their enforcement, then the legal institutions are put under enough strain that they may break.

A civic engagement, though, can help to enforce certain ethics. Wikipedia is a civic technology because it has a core of users which defend against spam and other violations of the rules. Digg, JZ points out, does not have this civic nature and has spawned a site, Subvert and Profit, which aims to game the system.

The Internet and Wikipedia are able to succeed largely without formal governance because tacit norms of civic technology provide enough incentive to defend against violators; the users operate in a framework of empowerment and realization which motivates them to create and defend.

Much of Zittrain’s work has been an effort to understand and create civic ethics around technologies. PCs are under massive attack by adware, viruses, trojan horses and spam; StopBadware.org is a way to combat this. The the principle of free expression online is under massive attack by corporations and governments censoring the Internet; the OpenNet Initiative and the forthcoming Herdict are ways to combat this.

Although I’m not clear exactly the delineation between civic and generative technologies (they are intricately connected), it is obvious that the civic ethic is an important way to frame the debate over Internet governance.