The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It

by: Jonathan Zittrain
The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It
List Price: $30.00
Price: $21.90
You Save: $8.10 (27%)
Prices subject to change.

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Product Description:

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.”

(20080725)

Alternate Versions: Click to Display
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: out of 5 stars
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars - I hoped the content would be as intriguing as the title
Despite the title "the Future of the Internet", more than half the book is about its past including the history of PCs. In simple words, the book was boring. Maybe it would have been more interesting, if it used more subtitles or in-text information boxes to make it more attractive.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Generation Generators
The Internet has indeed evolved and it continues to create myriad social and legal questions far beyond battles over hacking and file sharing. In fact, technological control and government regulation are now the biggest issues, but they've largely escaped the public's notice. This book is a very useful primer on up-to-the-minute issues in cyberlaw, and Zittrain insightfully frames the history of the Internet from multiple social and technical perspectives. The Internet was once totally user-defined ... Read More
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - interesting, but flawed, look at the future of cyberspace
Contrary to what Zittrain would have us believe, reports of the Internet's death have been greatly exaggerated. Not only is the Net not dying, but there are signs that digital generativity and online openness are thriving as never before.

Essentially, Zittrain creates a false choice regarding the digital future we face. He doesn't seem to believe that a hybrid future is possible or desirable. In reality, however, we can have a world full of some tethered appliances or even semi-closed ... Read More
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars - meh
Systems such as the internet which allow for growth ('generativity') also encourage things to grow which aren't desireable (malware, etc).Systems which attempt to regulate growth are similarly split, both encouraging productivity by weeding out the crud, and by inhibiting productivity by blocking certain types of innovation.We encounter the same problem with any type of collective... innovation and growth is tempered by interlopers and vandals, and such is the price of success.

At the ... Read More
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - A Cautionary Tale
The Internet has largely thrived on its open-ness, both in the free-flow of information, and the development of new never before imagined capabilities and applications.But with that open approach comes the inevitable downside, whether from self-replicating viruses and email spam or from corporate or legislative attempts to close down that very open-ness in response.To keep the Internet's ability to spawn innovation requires that we avoid the temptation to over-regulate it, and yet some regulation seems ... Read More
see more
 
 
Online Shopping » Shopping » Books » The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It