The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It
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This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity—and reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation—and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control.
IPods, iPhones, Xboxes, and TiVos represent the first wave of Internet-centered products that can’t be easily modified by anyone except their vendors or selected partners. These “tethered appliances” have already been used in remarkable but little-known ways: car GPS systems have been reconfigured at the demand of law enforcement to eavesdrop on the occupants at all times, and digital video recorders have been ordered to self-destruct thanks to a lawsuit against the manufacturer thousands of miles away. New Web 2.0 platforms like Google mash-ups and Facebook are rightly touted—but their applications can be similarly monitored and eliminated from a central source. As tethered appliances and applications eclipse the PC, the very nature of the Internet—its “generativity,” or innovative character—is at risk.
The Internet’s current trajectory is one of lost opportunity. Its salvation, Zittrain argues, lies in the hands of its millions of users. Drawing on generative technologies like Wikipedia that have so far survived their own successes, this book shows how to develop new technologies and social structures that allow users to work creatively and collaboratively, participate in solutions, and become true “netizens.”
- Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
- The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google
- Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
- Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering (Information Revolution and Global Politics)
- The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet
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- Books » Subjects » Computers & Internet » Home Computing » Internet » General AAS
- Books » Subjects » Computers & Internet » Business & Culture » Culture
- Books » Subjects » Computers & Internet » Business & Culture » Privacy
- Books » Subjects » Computers & Internet » Computer Science » General
- Books » Subjects » Computers & Internet » Computer Science » General AAS
- Why you should both love and hate your Amazon Kindle e-reader?I read this book on my Amazon Kindle.Ironically this book describes why myAmazon Kindle (and for that matter your iPhone) may represent a problem for the information technology industry (and for all of us as individuals).
Zittrain describes how open devices and software platforms can faciltate innovation and how closed platforms don't.Further, he discusses how theseemerging closed device platforms risk converting the internet into a tool for simplified corporate or governmental ... Read More
- Not a Bedtime StoryYou do not want to crawl into bed with this book. A mind stimulator, it narrates the history of the Internet's making and a possible doomsday scenario in which what started out as a generative platform could become a tightly regulated one that suppresses innovation. Although projections of the future are certainly interesting, the making of the Internet and its early characteristics is a 101 for anyone who doesn't quite understand how the Internet came about. Some sections go into technical depth that ... Read More
- BrilliantWatch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R18D30YU9QC3KT An important book well worth reading.
- Wonderful Exposition Poor PersuasionThis book should have either been 150 pages shorter and simply an argument or 100 pages longer with fully developed ideas.Zittrain frequently references and discusses the idea of "generativity" and changes the definition at each usage.Sometimes it means "creativity" sometimes it means "openness" and sometimes it means "freedom", while all these ideas are tied to generativity, none are categorical or clear.It seems to be a shorthand for "computer good stuff" in the same way the word "umami" or "freedom" ... Read More
- Interesting book but Kindle PriceTooHighMr. zittrain must have an inflated view of his worth.18 dollars for the Kindle version is greedy and stupid.
