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# 2022-07-14 - The Future of the Internet by Jonathan Zittrain | |
This book is more about the history of the Internet than its future. | |
I love that this book uses plain English to tell a compelling | |
narrative. Since history is cyclical, the patterns described can | |
inform the readers about the future. | |
The history told in this book helps remind me why i was so enamored | |
with the early Internet, and gives me a more positive way to frame my | |
career than "I got caught up in the tech bubble glamor and traded my | |
health and well-being for money." | |
Internet history | |
The author frequently uses the phrase "generativity" to mean | |
openness. I think "creativity" would have worked well enough for me, | |
in contrast to consumerism. But the author wanted to emphasize the | |
disruptive and inclusive nature of generativity. | |
Regarding the problem of lockdown and regulation, i think that boat | |
has already sailed. While i laud the author for discussing potential | |
solutions and strategies, i think it is too late for them to succeed. | |
# Preface to the Paperback Edition | |
[The author compares the origins of the PC and the Internet to Wiley | |
E. Coyote because of the love of amateur tinkering.] | |
The first reaction to abuses of openness is to try to lock things | |
down. One model for lockdown can be drawn from our familiar | |
appliances... ...we've seen glimpses of that model in communications | |
platforms like iPods, most video game consoles, e-book readers like | |
the Amazon Kindle, and cable company set-top boxes. | |
But there's another model for lockdown that's much more subtle, and | |
that takes, well, a book to unpack. This new model exploits | |
near-ubiquitous network connectivity to let vendors change and | |
monitor their technologies long after they've left the factory--or to | |
let them bring us, the users, to them, as more and more of our | |
activities shift away from our own devices and into the Internet's | |
"cloud." | |
This model is likely the future of computing and networking, and it | |
is no minor tweak. It's a wholesale revision to the Internet and PC | |
environment we've experienced for the past thirty years. The | |
serendipity of outside tinkering that has marked that generative era | |
gave us the Web, instant messaging, peer-to-peer networking, Skype, | |
Wikipedia--all ideas out of left field. Now it is disappearing, | |
leaving a handful of new gatekeepers in place, with us and them | |
prisoner to their limited business plans and to regulators who fear | |
things that are new and disruptive. | |
# Introduction | |
Though these two inventions--iPhone and Apple II--were launched by | |
the same man, the revolutions that they inaugurated are radically | |
different. For the technology that each inaugurated is radically | |
different. The Apple II was quintessentially generative technology. | |
It was a platform. It invited people to tinker with it. ... The | |
Apple II was designed for surprises--some very good (VisiCalc), and | |
some not so good (the inevitable and frequent computer crashes). | |
The iPhone is the opposite. It is sterile. Rather than a platform | |
that invites innovation, the iPhone comes preprogrammed. | |
Viruses, spam, identity theft, crashes: all of these were the | |
consequences of a certain freedom built into the generative PC. As | |
these problems grow worse, for many the promise of security is enough | |
reason to give up that freedom. | |
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... But the future unfolding right now is very different from | |
this past. The future is not one of generative PCs attached to a | |
generative network. It is instead one of sterile appliances tethered | |
to a network of control. | |
But along with the rise of information appliances that package those | |
useful activities without readily allowing new ones, there is the | |
increasing lockdown of the PC itself. PCs may not be competing with | |
information appliances so much as they are becoming them. | |
In turn, that lockdown opens the door to new forms of regulatory | |
surveillance and control. | |
A lockdown on PCs and a corresponding rise of tethered appliances | |
will eliminate what today we take for granted: a world where | |
mainstream technology can be influenced, even revolutionized, out of | |
left field. | |
# Part 1, The Rise and Stall of the Generative Net | |
Today's Internet is not the only way to build a network. In the | |
1990s, the Internet passed unnoticed in mainstream circles while | |
networks were deployed by competing proprietary barons such as AOL, | |
CompuServe, and Prodigy. ... The proprietary networks went extinct, | |
despite having accumulated millions of subscribers. They were | |
crushed by a network built by government researchers and computer | |
scientists who had no CEO, no master business plan, no paying | |
subscribers, no investment in content, and no financial interest in | |
accumulating subscribers. | |
The framers of the Internet did not design their network with visions | |
of mainstream dominance. Instead, the very unexpectedness of its | |
success was a critical ingredient. The Internet was able to develop | |
quietly and organically for years before it became widely known, | |
remaining outside the notice of those who would have insisted on more | |
cautious strictures had they only suspected how ubiquitous it would | |
become. | |
# Chapter 1, Battle of the Boxes | |
The Hollerith model is one of powerful, general-purpose machines | |
maintained continuously and exclusively by a vendor. The appliance | |
model is one of predictable and easy-to-use specialized machines that | |
require little or no maintenance. Both have virtues. ... Neither | |
the Hollerith machine nor the appliance can be easily reprogrammed by | |
their users or by third parties, and, as later chapters will explain, | |
"generativity" was thus not one of their features. | |
The story of the PC versus the information appliance is the first in | |
a recurring pattern. The pattern begins with a generative platform | |
that invites contributions from anyone who cares to make them. The | |
contributions start among amateurs, who participate more for fun and | |
whimsy than for profit. Their work, previously unnoticed in the | |
mainstream, begins to catch on, and the power of the market kicks in | |
to regularize their innovations and deploy them in markets far larger | |
than the amateurs' domains. Finally, the generative features that | |
invite contribution and that worked so well to propel the first stage | |
of innovation begin to invite trouble and reconsideration, as the | |
power of openness to third-party contribution destabilizes its first | |
set of gains. | |
# Chapter 2, Battle of the Networks | |
In early twentieth-century America, AT&T controlled not only the | |
telephone network, but also the devices attached to it. People | |
rented their phones from AT&T, and the company prohibited them from | |
making any modifications to the phones. | |
The first online services built on top of AT&T's phone network were | |
natural extensions of the 1960s IBM-model minicomputer usage within | |
businesses: one centrally managed machine to which employees' dumb | |
terminals connected. | |
Even before PC owners had an opportunity to connect to the Internet, | |
they had an alternative to paying for appliancized proprietary | |
networks. Several people wrote BBS ("bulletin board system") | |
software that could turn any PC into its own information service. | |
Lacking ready arrangements with institutional content providers like | |
the Associated Press, computers running BBS software largely depended | |
on their callers to provide information as well as to consume it. | |
... But they were limited by the physical properties and business | |
model of the phone system that carried their data. | |
PC generativity provided a way to ameliorate some of these | |
limitations. A PC owner named Tom Jennings wrote FIDOnet in the | |
spring of 1984. | |
Those with Jennings's urge to code soon had an alternative outlet, | |
one that even the proprietary networks did not foresee as a threat | |
until far too late: the Internet, which appeared to combine the | |
reliability of the pay networks with the ethos and flexibility of | |
user-written FIDOnet. | |
The Internet's design reflects the situation and outlook of the | |
Internet's framers: they were primarily academic researchers and | |
moonlighting corporate engineers who commanded no vast resources to | |
implement a global network. | |
The design of the Internet reflected not only the financial | |
constraints of its creators, but also their motives. They had little | |
concern for controlling the network or its users' behavior. The | |
network's design was publicly available and freely shared from the | |
earliest moments of its development. ... The motto among them was, | |
"We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough | |
consensus and running code." | |
The Internet was so different in character and audience from the | |
proprietary networks that few even saw them as competing with one | |
another. | |
The resulting Internet was a network that no one in particular owned | |
and that anyone could join. | |
... Internet design, like its generative PC counterpart, tilted | |
toward the simple and basic. The simple design that the Internet's | |
framers settled upon makes sense only with a set of principles that | |
go beyond mere engineering. The most important are what we might | |
label the procrastination principle and the trust-your-neighbor | |
approach. | |
The procrastination principle rests on the assumption that most | |
problems confronting a network can be solved later or by others. It | |
says that the network should not be designed to do anything that can | |
be taken care of by its users. | |
The network's simplicity meant that many features found in other | |
networks to keep them secure from fools and knaves would be absent. | |
... the assumption that network participants can be trusted, and | |
indeed that they will be participants rather than customers, infuses | |
the Internet's design at nearly every level. | |
This basic design omission has led to the well-documented headaches | |
of identifying wrongdoers online, from those who swap copyrighted | |
content to hackers who attack the network itself. | |
The assumptions made by the Internet's framers and embedded in the | |
network--that most problems could be solved later and by others, and | |
that those others themselves would be interested in solving rather | |
than creating problems--arose naturally within the research | |
environment that gave birth to the Internet. | |
But the network managed an astonishing leap as it continued to work | |
when expanded into the general populace, one which did not share the | |
worldview that informed the engineers' designs. Indeed, it not only | |
continued to work, but experienced spectacular growth in the uses to | |
which it was put. | |
# Chapter 3, Cybersecurity and the Generative Dilemma | |
The university workstations of 1988 were generative: their users | |
could write new code for them or install code written by others. The | |
Morris worm was the first large-scale demonstration of a | |
vulnerability of generativity: even in the custody of trained | |
administrators, such machines could be commandeered and reprogrammed, | |
and, if done skillfully, their users would probably not even notice. | |
As a postmortem to the Morris worm incident, the Internet Engineering | |
Task Force, the far-flung, unincorporated group of engineers who work | |
on Internet standards and who have defined its protocols through a | |
series of formal "request for comments" documents, or RFCs, published | |
informational RFC 1135, titled "The Helminthiasis of the Internet." | |
RFC 1135 was titled and written with whimsy, echoing reminiscences of | |
the worm as a fun challenge. The RFC celebrated that the original | |
"old boy" network of "UNIX system wizards" was still alive and well | |
despite the growth of the Internet: teams at university research | |
centers put their heads together--on conference calls as well as over | |
the Internet--to solve the problem. After describing the technical | |
details of the worm, the document articulated the need to instill and | |
enforce ethical standards as new people (mostly young computer | |
scientists like Morris) signed on to the Internet. | |
RFC 1135 | |
Urging users to patch their systems and asking hackers to behave more | |
maturely might, in retrospect, seem naïve. To understand why these | |
were the only concrete steps taken to prevent another worm | |
incident--even a catastrophically destructive one--one must | |
understand just how deeply computing architectures, both then and | |
now, are geared toward flexibility rather than security, and how | |
truly costly it would be to retool them. | |
Generative systems are built on the notion that they are never fully | |
complete, that they have many uses yet to be conceived of, and that | |
the public can be trusted to invent and share good uses. Multiplying | |
breaches of that trust can threaten the very foundations of the | |
generative system. | |
The burgeoning gray zone of software explains why the most common | |
responses to the security problem cannot solve it. ...the | |
fundamental problem is that the point of a PC--regardless of its | |
OS--is that its users can easily reconfigure it to run new software | |
from anywhere. | |
The Internet Engineering Task Force's RFC 1135 on the Morris worm | |
closed with a section titled "Security Considerations." This section | |
is the place in a standards document for a digital environmental | |
impact statement--a survey of possible security problems that could | |
arise from deployment of the standard. RFC 1135's security | |
considerations section was one sentence: "If security considerations | |
had not been so widely ignored in the Internet, this memo would not | |
have been possible." | |
What does that sentence mean? ...if the Internet had been designed | |
with security as its centerpiece, it would never have achieved the | |
kind of success it was enjoying, even as early as 1988. | |
# Part 2, After the Stall | |
Our information technology ecosystem functions best with generative | |
technology at its core. A mainstream dominated by non-generative | |
systems will harm innovation as well as some important individual | |
freedoms and opportunities for self-expression. However, generative | |
and non-generative models are not mutually exclusive. They can | |
compete and intertwine within a single system. | |
# Chapter 4, The Generative Pattern | |
Generativity is a system's capacity to produce unanticipated change | |
through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences. | |
What makes something generative? There are five principal factors at | |
work: | |
* Leverage: The more a system can do, the more capable it is of | |
producing change. | |
* Adaptability: [Technology that] can be endlessly diverted to new | |
tasks not counted on by... original makers. | |
* Ease of mastery: The more useful a technology is to both the | |
neophyte and to the expert, the more generative it is. | |
* Accessibility: The easier it is to obtain access to the | |
technology, along with the tools and information necessary to | |
achieve mastery of it, the more generative it is. | |
* Transferability: How easily changes in the technology can be | |
conveyed to others. | |
Generative tools are not inherently better than their non-generative | |
("sterile") counterparts. | |
The more that the five qualities are maximized, the easier it is for | |
a system or platform to welcome contributions from outsiders as well | |
as insiders. | |
Generative systems facilitate change. | |
Generativity's benefits can be grouped more formally as at least two | |
distinct goods, one deriving from unanticipated change, and the other | |
from inclusion of large and varied audiences. The first good is its | |
innovative output: new things that improve people's lives. The | |
second good is its participatory input, based on a belief that a life | |
well lived is one in which there is opportunity to connect to other | |
people, to work with them, and to express one's own individuality | |
through creative endeavors. | |
Non-generative systems can grow and evolve, but their growth is | |
channeled through their makers... | |
If one values innovation, it might be useful to try to figure out how | |
much disruptive innovation remains in a particular field or | |
technology. For mature technologies, perhaps generativity is not as | |
important: the remaining leaps, such as that which allows transistors | |
to be placed closer and closer together on a chip over time without | |
fundamentally changing the things the chip can do, will come from | |
exploitative innovation or will necessitate well-funded research | |
through institutional channels. | |
It may well be that, in the absence of broad-based technological | |
accessibility, there would eventually have been the level of | |
invention currently witnessed in the PC and on the Internet. Maybe | |
AT&T would have invented the answering machine on its own, and maybe | |
AOL or CompuServe would have agreed to hyperlink to one another's | |
walled gardens. But the hints we have suggest otherwise: | |
less-generative counterparts to the PC and the Internet--such as | |
standalone word processors and proprietary information services--had | |
far fewer technological offerings, and they stagnated and then failed | |
as generative counterparts emerged. | |
The joy of being able to be helpful to someone--to answer a question | |
simply because it is asked and one knows a useful answer, to be part | |
of a team driving toward a worthwhile goal--is one of the best | |
aspects of being human, and our information technology architecture | |
has stumbled into a zone where those qualities can be elicited and | |
affirmed for tens of millions of people. | |
Generative technologies need not produce forward progress, if by | |
progress one means something like increasing social welfare. Rather, | |
they foment change. ... To use an evolutionary metaphor, they | |
encourage mutations, branchings away from the status quo--some that | |
are curious dead ends, others that spread like wildfire. They | |
invite disruption--along with the good things and bad things that can | |
come with such disruption. | |
The paradox of generativity is that with an openness to unanticipated | |
change, we can end up in bad--and non-generative--waters. | |
# Chapter 5, Tethered Appliances, Software as Service, and Perfect | |
# Enforcement | |
The most likely reactions to PC and Internet failures brought on by | |
the proliferation of bad code, if they are not forestalled, will be | |
at least as unfortunate as the problems themselves | |
A shift to tethered appliances and locked-down PCs will have a ripple | |
effect on long-standing cyberlaw problems, many of which are | |
tugs-of-war between individuals with a real or perceived injury from | |
online activity and those who wish to operate as freely as possible | |
in cyberspace. | |
As legal systems experienced the first wave of suits arising from use | |
of the Internet, scholars such as Lawrence Lessig and Joel Reidenberg | |
emphasized that code could be law. In this view, the software we use | |
shapes and channels our online behavior as surely as--or even more | |
surely and subtly than--law itself. Restrictions can be enforced by | |
the way a piece of software operates. | |
If regulators can induce certain alterations in the nature of | |
Internet technologies that others could not undo or widely | |
circumvent, then many of the regulatory limitations occasioned by the | |
Internet would evaporate. Lessig and others have worried greatly | |
about such potential changes, fearing that blunderbuss technology | |
regulation by overeager regulators will intrude on the creative | |
freedom of technology makers and the civic freedoms of those who use | |
the technology. | |
Appliances become contingent: rented instead of owned, even if one | |
pays up front for them, since they are subject to instantaneous | |
revision. | |
The law as we have known it has had flexible borders. This | |
flexibility derives from prosecutorial and police discretion and from | |
the artifice of the outlaw. When code is law, however, execution is | |
exquisite, and law can be self-enforcing. The flexibility recedes. | |
Mobile phones can be reprogrammed at a distance, allowing their | |
microphones to be secretly turned on even when the phone is powered | |
down. All ambient noise and conversation can then be continuously | |
picked up and relayed back to law enforcement authorities, regardless | |
of whether the phone is being used for a call. | |
When a regulator makes mistakes in the way it construes or applies a | |
law, a stronger ability to compel compliance implies a stronger | |
ability to compel compliance with all mandates, even those that are | |
the results of mistaken interpretations. Gaps in translation may | |
also arise between a legal mandate and its technological | |
manifestation. This is especially true when technological design is | |
used as a preemptive measure. | |
Law professor Meir Dan-Cohen describes law as separately telling | |
people how to behave and telling judges what penalties to impose | |
should people break the law. In more general terms, he has observed | |
that law comprises both conduct rules and decision rules. There is | |
some disconnect between the two: people may know what the law | |
requires without fully understanding the ramifications for breaking | |
it. This division--what he calls an "acoustic separation"--can be | |
helpful: a law can threaten a tough penalty in order to ensure that | |
people obey it, but then later show unadvertised mercy to those who | |
break it. If the mercy is not telegraphed ahead of time, people will | |
be more likely to follow the law, while still benefiting from a | |
lesser penalty if they break it and have an excuse to offer, such as | |
duress. | |
Perfect enforcement collapses the public understanding of the law | |
with its application, eliminating a useful interface between the | |
law's terms and its application. | |
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. | |
# Chapter 6, The Lessons of Wikipedia | |
The Dutch city of Drachten has undertaken an unusual experiment in | |
traffic management. The roads serving forty-five thousand people are | |
"verkeersbordvrij": free of nearly all road signs. Drachten is one | |
of several European test sites for a traffic planning approach called | |
"unsafe is safe." The city has removed its traffic signs, parking | |
meters, and even parking spaces. The only rules are that drivers | |
should yield to those on their right at an intersection, and that | |
parked cars blocking others will be towed. | |
The result so far is counterintuitive: a dramatic improvement in | |
vehicular safety. Without signs to obey mechanically (or, as studies | |
have shown, disobey seventy percent of the time), people are forced | |
to drive more mindfully--operating their cars with more care and | |
attention to the surrounding circumstances. They communicate more | |
with pedestrians, bicyclists, and other drivers using hand signals | |
and eye contact. They see other drivers rather than other cars. | |
A small lesson of the verkeersbordvrij experiment is that standards | |
can work better than rules in unexpected contexts. A larger lesson | |
has to do with the traffic expert's claim about law and human | |
behavior: the more we are regulated, the more we may choose to hew | |
only and exactly to the regulation or, more precisely, to what we can | |
get away with... This observation is less about the difference | |
between rules and standards than it is about the source of mandates: | |
some may come from a process that a person views as alien, while | |
others arise from a process in which the person takes an active part. | |
More generally, order may remain when people see themselves as a part | |
of a social system, a group of people--more than utter strangers but | |
less than friends--with some overlap in outlook and goals. Whatever | |
counts as a satisfying explanation, we see that sometimes the absence | |
of law has not resulted in the absence of order. | |
# Part 3, Solutions | |
This book has explained how the Internet's generative characteristics | |
primed it for extraordinary success--and now position it for failure. | |
The response to the failure will most likely be sterile tethered | |
appliances and Web services that are contingently generative, if | |
generative at all. The trajectory is part of a larger pattern. If | |
we can understand the pattern and what drives it, we can try to avoid | |
an end that eliminates most disruptive innovation while facilitating | |
invasive and all-too-inexpensive control by regulators. | |
So what to do to stop this future? We need a strategy that blunts | |
the worst aspects of today's popular generative Internet and PC | |
without killing these platforms' openness to innovation. Give users | |
a reason to stick with the technology and the applications that have | |
worked so surprisingly well--or at least reduce the pressures to | |
abandon it--and we may halt the movement toward a nongenerative | |
digital world. This is easier said than done, because our familiar | |
toolkits for handling problems are not particularly attuned to | |
maintaining generativity. | |
The key to threading the needle between needed change and undue | |
closure can be forged from understanding the portability of both | |
problems and solutions among the Internet's layers. We have seen | |
that generativity from one layer can recur to the next. | |
If generativity and its problems flow from one layer to another, so | |
too can its | |
solutions. | |
...two approaches that might save the generative spirit of the Net, | |
or at least keep it alive for another interval. The first is to | |
reconfigure and strengthen the Net's experimentalist architecture to | |
make it fit better with its now-mainstream home. The second is to | |
create and demonstrate 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. | |
# Conclusion | |
Nicholas Negroponte, former director of the MIT Media Lab, announced | |
the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project at the beginning of 2005. | |
The project aims to give one hundred million hardy, portable | |
computers to children in the developing world. The laptops, called | |
XOs, are priced around $100, and they are to be purchased by | |
governments and given to children through their schools. | |
Yet OLPC is about revolution rather than evolution, and it embodies | |
both the promise and challenge of generativity. The project's | |
intellectual pedigree and structure reveal an enterprise of | |
breathtaking theoretical and logistical ambition. | |
But the XO completely redesigns today's user interfaces from the | |
ground up. Current PC users who encounter an XO have a lot to | |
unlearn. | |
XO is but the most prominent and well-funded of a series of | |
enterprises to attempt to bridge the digital divide. | |
[But... I read that OLPC was designed by first world elite | |
intellectuals without significant participation from the people to | |
whose governments it was marketed. I also read that it is marketing | |
a technology solution that is looking for problems, when there are | |
plenty of more pressing real world problems to be addressed. In | |
other words, it was part of the tech bubble glamor. | |
> OLPC's failure can be attributed to its lack of understanding of | |
> local communities and their day-to-day lives. | |
The Failure of OLPC | |
] | |
author: Zittrain, Jonathan (Jonathan L.), 1969- | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/The_Future_of_the_Internet_and_How_to_Stop_It | |
LOC: I57 Z53 | |
source: https://blogs.harvard.edu/futureoftheinternet/download/ | |
tags: ebook,history,non-fiction,technical | |
title: The Future Of The Internet and How to Stop It | |
# Tags | |
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history | |
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