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This site has been archived and will not be updated further. Jonathan Zittrain’s new personal website is accessible at https://blogs.harvard.edu/jzwrites/

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.”

Future of the Internet Blog

  • A novel way of defending against mass uses of our data
  • AI is getting better at performing mass categorization of photos and text. A developer can scrape a bunch of photos from, say, Facebook -- either directly, likely violating the terms of service, or through offering an app by which people ...
  • Should the director of OPM be fired over its massive data breach?
  • I participate in a regular poll by the Christian Science Monitor on Internet policy topics.  This week's question was about the recent data breaches at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management: As you can see, most people said yes.  I count myself ...

Blog Archives

 

@michaelbd Just going to leave this here (before it vanishes) theatlantic.com/technology/ar…

About 2 days ago from Jonathan Zittrain's Twitter via Twitter for iPhone

@simonw @BioTurboNick True in both directions! twitter.com/ChrisBettles1/…

About 4 days ago from Jonathan Zittrain's Twitter via Twitter for iPhone

@PeterContiBrown You have always been, as Yiddish would have it, a mensch. <3

About 5 days ago from Jonathan Zittrain's Twitter via Twitter for iPhone

@davidfrum The answer to which branch the VP is in (which is probably “yes”) shouldn’t affect former VP Pence’s stance on the subpoena. Any immunities are privileges, not duties. Given what happened (and his affirmation of same), and the importance to country, he should voluntarily testify.

Last week from Jonathan Zittrain's Twitter via Twitter for iPhone

@paulg Imagine this phenomenon applied to legal reasoning: AI might predict what a judge would say and even write the appellate opinion. But then does the law stop developing in 2023? Do we have a pool of human judges to apply contemporary standards and create new training data?

Last week from Jonathan Zittrain's Twitter via Twitter Web App


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