Latest read: The Future of the Internet

Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University wrote The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It. This book is very interesting for all the wrong reasons. BTW: The cover is not an actual photo rather a Photoshop’d image. However the image clearly represents his message.

Zittrain documents that existing, closed, controlled systems are damaging the internet an if continued, he writes will negatively impact our future access and interaction.  I enjoyed reading the book and dedicated blog established by Zittrain to keep his conversations moving forward.

The book is about Generativity impacting the internet.  Ultimately his argument is to place generativity at the core of all open technologies that tap into the internet.

Zittrain begins Part I in the book with a tbit of historical reflection: The Battle of the Boxes, Battle of the Networks and CyberSecurity.  He followed on the impact of legal lessons learned from Wikipedia.  There are plenty of examples how open, generativity systems make the internet better.  Here are a couple of examples Zittrain addressed that do not:

Law enforcement agencies have used network devices to manually turn on OnStar (the in-vehicle security, communications, and diagnostics system from GM) to record and monitor conversations of unknowing passengers.  OnStar is installed in over 50 models of GM cars alone.

The FBI requested from a judge the ability to turn on the microphone of a unsuspecting cell phone owner allowing law enforcement to tap, track and record conversations.

Think about that for a moment. Ever take a picture with your digital camera or cell phone?  Millions of people do this everyday and upload content to photo-sharing websites like Flickr.  Can you imagine taking a series of photographs — only to later realize the camera (via remote commands) copied all your photos without your knowledge.  Zittrain addresses how your personal content can be affected by a judge in Texas while you live … say in Ohio.  Don’t believe it? Read Chapter 5: Tethered Appliances, Software as Service and Perfect Enforcement” to see how a judge in Marshall Texas did just that — regarding a copyright case involving TiVo.

Zittrain accurately addresses how generativity (on the internet) will impact how we engage data — regardless if the task is email, video streaming, blogging or accessing robots over a wireless network via smartphone.   He uses the example of two products from Apple that were developed in opposite directions exactly 30 years apart:  The Apple II and the iPhone but missed out on Amazon’s Kindle.  The Apple II fit the idea of generativity perfectly.  It was an “open” desktop computer and the world began to tinker, develop, push and ultimately secure the product’s success.

Zittrain compares this approach to the 1st generation iPhone.  Zittrain recently blogged about a bizarre copyright conflict between an iPhone application that clearly reinforces his position: Apple has the ability to control application distribution.  This means you can purchase an application at Apple’s iTunes store, download it and use it on your iPhone but Apple can remotely kill that program at any given point in the future.

To be fair: At the time of his writing the 1st generation iPhone was selling for $500.  Today we have the iPhone 3GS, OS 3.0, The App Store and Apple’s road-map for iPhone developers. The most change has been the highly successful App Store on iTunes with over a billion apps downloaded.
Yes – BILLION.  Profit gets in the way too.

To see another example of Zittrain’s idea substitute TiVo or Amazon’s Kindle and you’ll get his message. Remember TiVo tipped its hand revealing it tracks what users watch? That came as a bit of a surprise to many  unaware their viewing habits were tracked.

Even though Amazon recently updated their Kindle ebook reader to support users adding PDF files, the Kindle’s generativity score (this might be a new blog all by itself) would be very low due to its lack of open standards.  Amazon has run into issues due to remotely crippling installed ebooks due to copyright and DRM.

There is also a copyright issue with the new Kindles.  The new model has the ability to read ebooks aloud.  Publishing companies began suing Amazon over this “feature” on the bigger Kindles.  Publishers want to sell you an Audiobook version of the eBook loaded on your Kindle.  So in the end you pay twice for the same digital product!  Publishers argue eBooks legally cannot be read out loud.  Amazing.  For all the technology advances, profit still drives old school publishing companies to sue Amazon.

I found his conclusion powerful.  He shares the impact of Generativity on the OLPC project. I am a fan of the One Laptop Per Child project.  As he suggests Generativity is really at the core of this product. It has changed the world and can be viewed (in a limited way) as a path for future internet generatively.