News.com talk: 'The Future of the Internet--and How to Stop It'
Jonathan Zittrain speaks at CNET's offices in San Francisco on Wednesday evening.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET News.com )SAN FRANCISCO--Restrictive tools and rash approaches to security challenges are endangering the health of the online ecosystem, an Oxford University researcher warned Wednesday.
Jonathan Zittrain, who has written a book due out in April called The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It, gave a public talk on the issue Wednesday night at CNET's offices here. News.com hosted the talk--a first for our newsroom. The event, which drew 120 people, was sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
You can call Zittrain's theme the AOL-ization of technology. Instead of personal computers being able to run any program from any source without approval from a third party--which many of us were used to in the 1980s and 1990s--Zittrain fears we're entering a world where centralized approval becomes necessary.
Examples are numerous: Apple's lockdown of the iPhone. Some Google applications that say developers can't "disparage" the company. Facebook.com's copyright policy for developers that says if the application permits file-sharing, they must "register an agent for notices of copyright infringements with the U.S. Copyright Office." Some terms of service agreements that require disclosure of source code. Applications on the Symbian OS that require signatures to work (I don't think Zittrain mentioned this one, but it fits the theme).
"Can you imagine if Microsoft said that for every application that runs on Windows, we get a copy of the source code?" Zittrain asked. Google and Facebook can turn your application "into a brick at any time." Employees from Facebook and Google were sitting in the audience, by the way, but didn't engage him during the Q&A period.
Another way to think about Zittrain's point is to rephrase it this way: Who controls the technology you use? If you think you do, are you sure? There's the case of the FBI almost managing to persuade the courts to let it eavesdrop on an unspecified OnStar-like remote assistance product installed in a luxury car. There's also the lesser-known one of a federal judge ordering Echostar to send software updates to its digital video subscribers that would cripple their devices.
And Zittrain's solution? There's no simple one. Publicity, in the form of persuading people to think about these sorts of trade-offs, is one. Another is distributed control. Zittrain invoked Wikipedia as a model, pointing to project co-founder Jimmy Wales (who was sitting in the front row) and suggesting that in 2001, nobody would have thought a user-edited encyclopedia would work. And they would have been wrong.
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan. 
Also Zittrain is going to be speaking at Stanford law school's Internet center on I think Monday so you can maybe catch him then.
The Internet isn't free. It just has an economy that makes no sense to capitalism. - Brad Shapcott
All members are welcome to my blog
www.gateway2internet.com/blog
- The Future of the Internet
- by ZinRen December 7, 2007 10:42 AM PST
- The Internet is a powerful communication channel that sits at the center of virtually all the media convergence in the world. Indeed, the Internet and the World Wide Web have changed the world, and reshaped all other mass media. These changes can be both positive and negative for the future of the internet.
- Reply to this comment
-
(6 Comments)The development of Internet enabled devices is a significant aspect of the future of the internet. Personal Computers (PCs) are no longer the primary means of accessing the Internet and the World Wide Web. Devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) and cellular phones are now used to send and receive e-mail, and log on to the web. The I-phone and the NOKIA Multimedia phone are two such devices which facilitate this.
In addition, all other forms of media can be accessed online. Books, newspapers, magazines, film, television, video games, radio and popular music are now available via the Internet. We are gradually seeing a shift from the traditional methods of accessing different media, as the internet becomes the most popular form of communication. These changes allow for improved and easier access of information. People are soon going to be living and working in a ?virtual world?, as all other forms of media become computerized.
Furthermore, the wide availability of web terminals in almost every corner has made the Internet a successful and popular commercial medium. It has also resulted in hyper commercialism. Within the near future, however, it may negatively result in information overload.
The changes in the Internet industry are going to significantly impact on all other forms of media. The future of the Internet is generally going to bring about beneficial and non-beneficial developments in the mass media industry.The internet is one of the most significant facilitators in the process of globalization. As a result, this has raised multiple issues for media literacy in an interconnected world. The Internet and the World Wide Web has the power to impact on all other forms of media, and this is a major consideration for its future.