Adam Thierer has posted a thoughtful review of the Future of the Internet. He picks up on something that others have mentioned that I don’t realize I appear to suggest: that my distinction between sterile and generative technologies appears to be too much of a dichotomy, and that I think that only generative technologies are good ones.

I don’t mind sterile technologies in principle — I like the idea of taking the rough-hewn innovations that spring from the Internet and packaging them into cleaner, more reliable forms. I love my TiVo. (Indeed, that used to be the first sentence of the book. Then I went with the iPhone.) I even appreciate that sterile technologies can come about without having to emulate the products of generative ones — not every toaster comes from nerds experimenting with heating elements.

My worry, though, is that we’ll lose a sense of equilibrium between the generative and sterile spheres, and that the emergence of contingently generative technologies — platforms that are open to third party innovation at first, but then close off selectively — will squeeze out fully generative technologies, to the detriment of innovation and enhancement of exquisite regulatory control. This is in part because the amateur nerds that drive innovation here rarely read the fine print; teenagers will code for the Facebook, iPhone and Google platforms without thinking about the ways in which their advances can be eliminated or proprietized.

Adam’s point of view is sympathetic to markets and skeptical of government intervention. He rightly asks why the market doesn’t just solve this. For that, I point to my reply to similar questions raised to parts of FOI that have been excerpted in the Boston Review:

Will the market solve this problem? Generative technologies allow consumers to become participants: to change technologies for themselves or to adopt improvements offered by others not operating through the usual mechanisms of the firm. Whether this is a market force depends on how broadly we define the term. Is any voluntary behavior endogenous to a market? Or are only those choices that have to do with purchases? If a group of people coalesces in Central Park for a game of Ultimate Frisbee, is the market for Ultimate working its magic? The question is important because often we rely too readily on the solutions proposed by firms and government. If there’s litter in a public space, the government should fine violators and clean it up, or pay a firm to do so. But the amount of litter in a park may depend not so much on the rules against it or the schedule for cleaning, but rather on the habits and normative commitments of the people who use it.

The solutions to the generative dilemma that I find most interesting are ones that don’t assume a zero-sum tradeoff between generativity and security. If we narrow ourselves to firms offering some devices that are generative but quickly compromised, and others that are sterile or contingently generative, but incapable of generating whimsical change, the market will no doubt achieve equilibrium somewhere along the axis. Bruce Owen figures that demand will create supply and the optimal point will be achieved. But Owen’s faith in the market ignores the role that a civic instinct can play if people take shared responsibility for their own and others’ security. To do so, they will need certain tools. But those tools may not be money makers, thus the market may not produce them. If the reply is “well, yes, but someone named Jimbo was moved to produce Wikipedia, and his charity is part of the market,” then the market is circularly defined as every possible action by someone. We can contribute more to our shared public life than what results indirectly through our buying or voting.

Moreover, the market may have trouble pricing the benefits of generative platforms. Behavioral economics is beginning to confirm the conventional wisdom that people do not plan very well. This is true in the PC market where people making platform investment decisions rarely weigh the unknown as part of their thought processes. They buy the PC for email or Web surfing, and only later find that it can be used for Internet telephony. And often the platform’s buyer is not the same as the user. Much of the revolution in PC software has taken place through user adventurousness on office computers acquired by companies for other reasons. What the economists might call an “agency gap” has produced great things. The true value of generative technologies is too easily dismissed when portrayed, á la Owen, as “the extent to which end-users and their communicants may indulge the whim to customize these tools.” What’s at stake is not just setting wallpaper style on your iPhone, but the very Net generativity that has facilitated entire new markets and social relationships.

Looking back, the market produced some sterile, competing consumer networks—CompuServe, the Source, and the like. Non-market forces led production on another course—the Internet. To be sure, the Internet’s reach was greatly extended through its later commercialization, but had the Internet’s architecture been obvious enough for the market to discover it, no modest government subsidies would have been needed. Sperry Rand, IBM, and Prodigy would have easily outpaced academics in producing the technologies underlying the dot-com boom. They did not.

I imagine Adam might agree with me on not reaching too quickly to government for solutions — the question is whether some of the cooperative solutions (rather than regulatory interventions) I suggest have any traction for a market-oriented thinker.