Groklaw Discussion on “The Generative Internet”
Groklaw is hosting a new round in its discussion with Jonathan Zittrain about his fast-becoming-prominent Generative Internet thesis — the subject of a Harvard Law Review article and ultimately destined to become a book. The reopened discussion begins with a great FAQ in which Zittrain responds, with typical wit and incisiveness, to many of the comments he received before. I particularly liked his answer to the question, “What does ‘generative’ mean?”
I wanted a label to capture the idea of a general-purpose platform in someone’s hands that can be easily repurposed by that person, using code written by others. I chose the word generative, since it gets at the idea of something that’s able to produce new things. To me, both the Internet and the PCs traditionally hooked up to it are that way, in particular because they allow people to build and distribute new code (and have that code itself use the network) with no major barriers. There are lots of academics in the cyberlaw space worried about keeping the Internet open, and I’m more or less in that camp. But no one has focused on whether the PC itself will stay open. Without an open PC, the ability of the Internet to generate new things is severely limited.
Definitely worth checking out. I wrote a blog post about the Harvard article when it first appeared, and I think that pretty much sums up my own views. I notice that the FAQ, when summarizing his key ideas about how to preserve generativity, leaves out greater authentication of users. That was one of the strategies touched on in the Harvard article that made me nervous. Structural changes that make anonymity impossible threaten what I see as possibly an even greater virtue of the internet than its generativity: a widely available (though not universal) capacity to engage in efficient and effective one-to-many communication. JZ, are you changing your mind on that one?
Filed under: Anonymity, Berkman, Blogging, Digital Media, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Scholarship
Not changing my mind, exactly — I think that greater opportunities for direct identification of online wrongdoers could help reduce pressure for larger solutions that make for more collateral damage. Of course, we’d want ways to have that information not automatically divulged to governments, and keeping it off limits to governments that haven’t established the rule of law — and they know who they are. …JZ
[...] This is a large part of what Jonathan Zittrain warns of in his “Generative Internet” theory (see also here). The increasing “appliancization” of technology is a threat to the capacity for unpredicatable innovation that has made the internet so valuable and significant. It is also, as Palfrey’s experiences with AOL and many other examples demonstrate, frustrating and alienating for many computer users. Designers who equate “user-friendly” with “paternalistic and bossy” may find that users flee. And a parallel movement toward more user-centric design principles will continue to provide alternatives. As John cloncludes: Users have a lot to say, and some of it might help get to innovation, if the conversation is kept open. Put another way, instead of trying to make it more and more simple but also more and more closed, could AOL and others similarly situated instead make its application more “hackable”? [...]