Three perspectives on the generative web
November 23rd, 2009 | by elisabeth | Published in Future of the Internet, Generativity | 5 Comments
Three great articles with themes and variations on FOI ideas:
Joe Hewitt, Facebook’s iPhone app developer, has quit developing for the iPhone because he is “philosophically opposed” to Apple’s review policies and their tight control over their platform. But instead of hitching his wagon to Android or some other mobile platform, he’s decided to focus instead on making the mobile web as strong as it can be. He told TechCrunch:
The web is still unrestricted and free, and so I am returning to my roots as a web developer. In the long term, I would like to be able to say that I helped to make the web the best mobile platform available, rather than being part of the transition to a world where every developer must go through a middleman to get their software in the hands of users.
And he says on his blog that we can avoid a world where “the only technologies that matter” are the ones where Apple or some other gatekeeper makes decisions (however irrational or infuriating, as yet another developer has chronicled). I’m not entirely convinced that a vigorous mobile web is enough—for instance, Apple can still disable Flash on its phone, thus crippling many web apps—but it might be, and it’s a valuable complement to more open mobile platforms.
Then we have two people thinking about whether the web itself will remain free. First is Chris Messina on The Death of the URL. Messina writes from the perspective of a user experience designer, who understands why the complexity of the Internet can frighten users (“thar be dragons!”) but thinks that should be a challenge for designers, not a reason to give up on “the infinite organicity of the web” and the structures of “one of the most generative periods in history.”
Second is Tim O’Reilly on The War for the Web. He notes that Facebook and the Apple iPhone require users to play by the company’s rules to some extent, although the web still exists as a partial backstop—e.g., Google Voice is available on the web, if not as a native iPhone app. But he worries that the web itself will become less interoperable and less generative as companies with natural monopolies in one area attempt to gain control in other areas as well. Go read the whole piece; it’s worth it.
JZ argues that the PC and the internet have been the perfect combination for generativity. The internet itself could itself be a solution to the control of mobile platforms. But these pieces point out, yet again, how even that combination isn’t untouchable unless we’re constantly, actively working at it.
—By Elisabeth Oppenheimer
November 23rd, 2009 at 1:19 am (#)
well flash (and silverlight) is basically a case of app-ifying the web by another means.
the only way to really have a flash like generative web, is to go for things like html5 and javascript-manipulated SVG (itself xml based).
November 23rd, 2009 at 1:21 am (#)
[...] Pro Tweets Three perspectives on the generative Web http://futureoftheinternet.org/three-perspectives-on-the-generative-web zittrain – Mon 23 Nov 6:01 0 votes [...]
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:06 am (#)
Glad to see the three people I admire most converge on defending a rather counter-intuitive aspect — I would, however, have preferred you mention exceptions to all your cases: Wars help edefine lines along which to set up protocols, the iPhone allows you to add a URL to your SpringBoard, etc.
November 24th, 2009 at 9:12 am (#)
“disabling flash on the iphone” is an odd turn of phrase, when it was never on the phone in the first place. It’s also odd to use that as evidence of Apple’s silo-thinking or walled-garden behaviour, when it is them actively rejecting a technology owned and controlled by a single company.
December 4th, 2009 at 9:29 pm (#)
[...] Internet:As the Internet matures, there is a greater tendency to ‘manage’ it and this could make it less generative. By that, we mean that developers could be prevented from creating non pre-determined applications. [...]