Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society has generated a rushing river of ideas and discussions at the intersection of technology and society since its formation 10 years ago. The work has been so fundamental that Harvard announced this week that the Center, which is based in the law school, would become a university-wide research center.
Typical of the work done by Berkman is the recently launched Publius Project, a collection of original essays about the evolution of the Net from distinguished thinkers including Esther Dyson, Doc Searls, David Weinberger, Reed Hundt, and JP Rangaswami.
Here is the one you need to read if you make your living creating or selling Internet-based products: The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.
Author Jonathan Zittrain argues that the Internet, much like the PC before it, started as an open innovation system where users (and companies) could create improvements never foreseen by the inventors. They were “generative” in that respect, to use Zittrain’s word.
The PC revolution was launched with PCs that invited innovation by others. So too with the Internet. Both were generative: they were designed to accept any contribution that followed a basic set of rules. Both overwhelmed their respective proprietary, non-generative competitors, such as the makers of stand-alone word processors and proprietary online services like CompuServe and AOL.
But what’s happening now on the Internet? Zittrain says we may be at the beginning of a lockdown phase, where the Internet as a development platform and playground for new ideas becomes less open in the name of security against identity theft, spam, and virus attacks. And it’s a trade-off that consumers are increasingly willing to make.
His example: The iPhone. This wonderful device came preprogrammed with innovation, but users are locked out of the option of making their own improvements. Even now, developers who want to create apps for the device must register with Apple, use Apple’s tools, meet Apple’s standards, and sell through iTunes.
Zittrain’s example may not be the best — Steve Jobs has usually favored offering consumers a closed, non-tinkerable product so he can produce a consistent user experience. But think also of the Xbox, TiVo, and other Internet-centered devices modifiable only by the companies that created them. In locking down the Internet to keep bad guys away, are we are also locking out the user innovations that create Big Bang advances?
Says Zittrain:
The future is not one of generative PCs attached to a generative network. It is instead one of sterile or contingently generative appliances tethered to a network of control. These appliances take the innovations already created by users and package them neatly and compellingly, which is good — but only if the Internet and PC can remain sufficiently central in the digital ecosystem to compete with locked-down appliances and facilitate the next round of innovations. The balance between the two spheres is precarious, and it is slipping toward the safer appliance.
Is the open Internet beginning to close to user innovation? What do you think?
(Lock image by AMgill, CC 2.0)
