The Future of the Internet And How To Stop It-- Jonathan Zittrain-- Thoughts

The Future of the Internet And How To Stop It-- Jonathan Zittrain-- Thoughts



The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain is about the difference between generative or open technologies and tethered or controlled technologies. The author takes the position that free and open generative technologies are the best technologies for the internet.


The central thesis is that there is a conflict between having an open, disruptive, creative, often unsafe internet versus having a tightly controlled, monitored, and surveilled internet. Various connotations come to mind freedom versus safety, open access versus closed access.


The book also traces the origins of the internet starting with the Hollerith punch card machine, going through the early telelphone system, to the modern personal computer. Jonathan Zittrain talks about how the internet was created by academics and other professionals. It was based on rough consensus. He quotes the saying, "No presidents, no kings, no voting."


There is an unwritten vision of two different internets, one where we access the internet from dumb terminals through a router to a fixed access point with high security, and another where we have very powerful personal computers with firewalls, cloud computers, and a policy of open access and freedom of use.


The book brings up many more questions than it answers. The writing is complex, at times confusing, and often deeply interesting.


Jonathan Zittrain views the generative internet as the best possible world. He uses Wikipedia as an example of a superb invention created by the free exchange of ideas. He points out that it is often inaccurate, subject to scurilous content, and cannot be cited as an authoritative source most of the time. Still, his description of how Wikipedia is self correcting and employs many mechanisms to protect its data is very interesting.


In contrast, he describes what would be called, the situation of perfect enforcement, where everything is under universal monitoring. Your cell phone listens to your calls, your computer tracks which websites you visit, camera phones watch everything you do on the street, your tivo lets everyone know what you are watching, and everything you buy is tagged with RFID (radio frequency identification.) You are not the only one being watched. You are watching the police and bureaucrats with camcorders (a la Rodney King), reporting on your local politicians in blogs, and watching the police and bureacrats. In other words a totally monitored society. This is a very real potential future.


The author is arguing this may not just come about because of a police state, but because everything we do will become copyrightable media. This includes videos we place on youtube, personal songs, things downloaded from Ipods. There are already "black networks" of copyright infringers who share illegal downloads.


The book is very interesting. It is well worth reading. It will expand your horizons on issues that have to do with the internet. I enjoyed reading it a lot. I support the idea of a generative internet.


I personally don't like cell phones, ipods, and other tethered devices like xboxes which tie directly into large companies like Apple Computer, Sprint, and Microsoft. I do really enjoy my personal computer and would like to be able to be as creative as possible with it. I also like web suring and blogging as you can tell. Read this, it will keep you informed.

Afternoon Thoughts, Evening Thoughts

A copy of The Thinker by Auguste Rodin at Columbia University in New York.


Afternoon Thoughts

Tonight is my late night. It is a day for minor cleanup. I finished most of the ordering I plan on doing this week. Right now, I am sorting the boxes next to my desk to see what I will send to the recycling bins. I already sent several old phone books to the recycling boxes as well as some dated law material. We really can't save old phone books and legal materials because it ceases being accurate. Actually, this isn't quite true, we do keep a copy of the old phone book each year for the local history collection.

We have over fifty years worth of old phone books for our town. Occassionally people use this for genealogical purposes. Looking up old obituaries is also the main reason we keep the old newspapers on microfilm. People often send us letters requesting obituaries from the old papers. We search for them then print them up and send them out to requesters.

Someone wrote a review for this blog. I am posting a link to it here.


Evening Thoughts

I did some weeding of the business management and leadership sections the 650 dewey numbers. It looks like I'll have to replace a lot of the material on office automation. Most of the material was very outdated. I'll be ordering "administrative assistant" handbooks, office planning, home office books, keyboarding, and wordprocessing books.

I am looking at a copy of Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell. It comes before Ragamuffin in the series.

I have written a bit of the review for The Future of the Internet by Jonathan Zittrain. It has been a slow, but steady process.

Morning Thoughts, A Word Quiz

O is for Opera, the browsing software.

Morning Thoughts

I am quite happy to say, my car passed inspection so I don't have to worry about this for another year.  I tried to drive over to the Queens main library, but there was a giant street fair and all the parking was taken.  I ended up driving for a little while, then heading home.

I am finding the Opera browser to be most satisfying.  It is even faster than I thought.  Browsing and loading websites happens very quickly.  It makes Entrecard dropping go fast.  I still haven't looked through all the features but I like it better than Internet Explorer.

I read a bit more of The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It.  I am up to page 88.  At this point in the book, the author is talking about innovation.  It is much harder for large companies to innovate because it requires them to focus on things which are not necessarily their major selling points.  There is also a bit on how customers create innovations with existing products.  For example, 20% of mountain bikers are likely to modify their bikes to make them easier to ride.   The author uses many general ideas in this work as well as ideas on the internet.

Just as an aside.  I've noticed that there are not as many Star Trek books as used to be put out.  I guess this is because the show is no longer on television.  In fact, I see no star trek books as part of the Locus bestsller list.  Star Wars seems to be a lot more prominent lately.  Dark Horse comics has been producing a lot of Star Wars comics, and Pocket Books has been producing a lot of Star Wars paperbacks.  There are a few series which I have not ordered a lot of which seem to be at a lot of libraries.  These are Warhammer 40K and Forgotten Realms.  Maybe, I like to have my science fiction paperbacks to have original stories.  I might order a few of these just to show we have them.  Also Halo is another popular series that is being put out as paperback books.

A Word Quiz

This was a nice little entertaining quiz which I found while looking at the Oxford University Press Blog. http://www.oup-concisequiz.co.uk/  

Morning Thoughts, Evening Thoughts

Hollerith Card

Morning Thoughts

I think I finally got up on the right side of the bed today. I took the train in to work this morning. I napped most of the way in. But, towards the end, I started reading The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain. He has licensed it for free over the internet under Creative Commons license. http://futureoftheinternet.org/download

I think this is kind of interesting. It means you can look it over on the computer then see if you want to buy it in print. The book so far focuses on the difference between generative technologies like the internet and tethered technologies like mainframes. Generative technologies are open to use and programming by everyone, and tethered technologies are designed to be used for specific purposes. An xbox game console or an ipod would be a good example of a tethered technology. A personal computer would be an example of a generative technology.

I have various things piled up which I need to do. I have two copies of the New York Times Book Review to look through and a variety of legal material to process.

I think today should be interesting. I have to return all the numerous books, dvds and graphic novels which I took out for the weekend.

Several books have come in for me to read. By Schism Rent Asunder by David Weber, Kellory The Warlock by Lin Carter, and The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria. One of the people who reads this site asked me to review The Post American World. I am going to read this after I finish reading The Future of the Internet.

Right now, I am just catching up on things. Doing things like writing monthly reports and checking how my work is going.

I worked some more on ordering for the graphic novels section. This of course includes newspaper comic strips. I went and picked up the Daily News and tried to order books on the comic strips that are in one of the local papers. I ordered books based on several comic strips including Zits, Pearls Before Swine, Sherman's Lagoon, Dilbert, Mother Goose and Grimm, and Rose is Rose.

I also ordered a few science fiction and fantasy titles.

As part of the process, I put a few titles on hold for myself to read, Slanted Jack by Mark L. Van Name which is the author's second book, Reaper's Gale by Steven Erikson which is the seventh book in an excellent fantasy series, and Saturn's Children by Charles Stross. Saturn's Children by Charles Stross is supposed to be a tribute to Robert Heinlein's Friday. Saturn's Children is a tale for adults.

Evening Thoughts

I took the car out for a short drive in preparation for my road test tomorrow.  I drove around the neighborhood as well as down to the mall and stopped at Barnes and Noble.  I hope my car passes the state inspection tomorrow.  I have put over a hundred miles on it.

This evening, Internet Explorer was not working correctly.  I download Opera 9.51 and found it worked fine for my site.  Internet Explorer was not working with Entrecard or this blog.  It was also giving me errors with several other sites.  So far Opera has been doing a fine job.

Good Afternoon, Future of the Internet, Solar Concentrating

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Google DC Talks: The Future of the Internet

Good Afternoon

Good afternoon, I am not going to post a huge amount today. I started reading a bit of The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain. This book is about the excesses of the internet like Web 2.0, iPhones, Opensource, and various other slightly incomprehensible things. This book is attempting to suggest a practical way to deal with these things. Making these things seem practical is rather impractical to me, but it should be rather interesting reading.

I also learned something kind of interesting by following my stock, Capstone Turbine. They are working with a company called HelioFocus to develop a hot air powered turbine where the air is heated by solar concentrators. The concept is quite interesting.

http://www.capstoneturbine.com/news/story.asp?id=476

Mostly, I have been resting today and getting some extra sleep. I'll probably go drive around this afternoon a bit after I take a long nap.

Between the zinc tabs, the vitamin c, the tylenol, and napping, I sm starting to feel a lot better. My head doesn't ache as much.

I took a short drive on both the highway and the city streets. I think the car will pass inspection now. I drove down to Circuit City and looked at the computers. I still have an inkjet printer. Now, they sell these printers with a fas, scanner, copier, and printer all built into one unit for about $150.00. Also, I still don't have a flatacreen, which I can get for about $200.00. I have a big old clunky monitor. To tell you how old my computer is, there is a 3 1/2 inch floppy drive in it.

It still works. I keep on promising myself, I will get an upgrade. If I got the cheapest computer from Dell, it would still outperform my current computer. I have the patience to look for a package deal, computer, monitor, and printer as a bundle.

I do have a cable modem however. Fiber optic is much faster. I might look at Verizon which just got the right to sell fiber optic around New York.

I feel like I fell off the tracks today. I seem to be losing focus right now on this blog. I think I will be back on point tomorrow.