Customer Reviews

The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop it

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Jonathan Zittrain is an American lawyer and academic currently based at the Oxford Internet Institute. I have heard him speak several times and he is a lively and witty presenter, but sadly his book is a dull read due to its legalistic style. The 246 pages of main text are dotted with no less than 835 footnotes gathered into 80 pages at the back. This is a man who, when he mentions a web page, records not just the date but the time that he last visited it.

His main theme - which he repeats endlessly - can be simply stated. In his words: "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".

The personal computer and the Internet are open and flexible systems (he uses the word "generative" all the time) which have enabled an incredible flowering of innovative products and services from a multitude of sources. However, the very openness of the PC and the Web have exposed then to a whole variety of threats such as hacking, viruses, spam, and a host of malware.

In the face of such threats, the temptation will be to 'lock down' such systems that that they can be controlled more tightly. So devices increasingly will be "tethered" to limit what they can do (for instance, smart phones like the iPhone or PVRs like Sky+) and the Net will attract the attention of governments and regulators who will endeavour to limit what we can access and do on-line.

To stop this undesired future, we need to find ways of tapping into the co-operativeness and ingenuity of users themselves to find flexible solutions that may not be perfect but work - such as the controls that make Wikipedia operate so well.

Zittrain is incredibly knowledgeable and immensely insightful (his chapter on privacy is especially challenging), but his basic message is repeated and reworked so often, his solutions are so varied and diffuse, and the language is so opaque and legalistic than ultimately the book is a disappointment to the general reader (as opposed perhaps to a law student or IT geek). In any event, it is not clear that what Zittrain calls generativity is overall on the decline or that we have to chose between generative and tethered devices as opposed to selecting a mixture of items for different purposes and roles.

In the wake of a range of books abstracting the Internet into concepts and asking about their longer term impact, comes this interesting and practical contribution from lawyer Jonathan Zittrain. It explores the technological/security complex that is now determining the experience of the Internet and the access to services through it. It posits a mixed model that balances the risks of generative technologies (like the PC) against the stability of locked down devices (like the iPad) whose services remain determined by the manufacturer. This tension is well known to most creative people working with technology, but the implications for the improperly named 'user experience' (a bit of technologist imperialism if ever I saw some) have yet to permeate more widely. The question is really whether we feel comfortable giving control to the corporate technologists to fend off the menace of malicious hacking. These seem to me to be dangers of equal intensity, and Zittrain, quite rightly, thinks we need to think about security another way. However, even the XO Project, in which he pins so much hope, has found itself hijacked by the corporates. There are fewer answers here than one might expect, but some excellent questions. Certainly encouraged me to download Herdict, whatever good it will do.

Zittrain's book makes us think about the endpoints. For years, we have been obsessed with the network, and defending its neutrality, and have taken for granted that the devices we use would always remain flexible and reprogrammable to do wathever we want with them. Certainly, if our PCs turn into sterile boxes (and we accept it for convenience), to have a free internet won't do us much good. I think that this is his main point in the book, and one that we should take into consideration. The book is pretty easy to understand and, as some reviewers have said, perhaps a bit long. But, anyway, interesting and well written.

This is the kind of book that gives academic writing a bad name. It is written in terrible nominal style, with as many latin words as possible, that is hard to read and dead boring. The cover blurb declaring this a "highly entertaining book" must be ironic. A random example (page 115): "If we move to a regime in which individuals, and not just distributors, are susceptible to impoundment remedies for digital contraband, these remedies might be applied only after the status of the contraband has been officially determined." An author who cannot express himself simpler probably has not that much to say.

The thesis of the book is simple: The internet has been great so far because it allows free tinkering, which the author calls a "generative" technology. However, its abuse leads to a trend towards sterile "tethered appliances" (which allow no tinkering), like the iphone which can only be modified by the manufacturer. Let's think hard how to keep the internet free! This is a bit too short, but the whole book can probably be condensed to ten pages of plain English. It would be nice to have a concise and intelligent debate of the topic. This book does not provide one.

Someone once said, "The plural of anecdote is data." Zittrain's new book is a delightful illustration of this principle, engaging the reader with fascinating observations and stories, then weaving them together to present a powerful narrative. Whether or not you share his vision for the future, you'll gain a new appreciation for how the online world that we take for granted today could easily have been--and still threatens to become--a strikingly different place.

Zittrain's book is a rare treat. Incisive without being trite and detailed without being dull. It is one of the rare books on the internet that is readable by both the amateur and the expert. It opens our eyes to the danger of neglecting the power of a generative internet. No-one can read this book without thinking differently about the internet afterwards. It will shape our future.
Disclaimer: The author of this review is a (soon to be former) colleague of Zittrain's at the University of Oxford but one whose work lies far from this area and whose eyes were opened widely by this book.

A must read for geeks ... Frontier stuff ... its a brave new world out there