Tom Standage of the Sunday Times makes an interesting point in his review of The Future of the Internet:

“Zittrain insists that generativity at the code level is the most important kind, but it is not clear that this is really under threat. In the early days of home-computing, most enthusiasts learnt the essentials of programming. (Remember Basic?) As other uses such as word-processing and e-mail came along, computers became general-purpose tools, and sales went up. Did it matter that the proportion of users who actually learnt how to program declined? Of course not. As long as some people know how, most do not have to. And as long as there are hundreds of millions of PCs out there, innovation on the internet will continue. Despite Zittrain’s concerns, the emergence of other, simpler internet-access devices alongside PCs seems unlikely to change that.”

The question Standage is asking – and it’s one that’s been echoed here and here – is this: why will my iPhone hurt the Internet’s generativity (that is, its capacity for innovation and creation)? If I’m not a programmer, does it matter that I’m not allowed to program my phone? The simply answer of course is no, it doesn’t matter. But the overall market for appliances like the iPhone does matter, and unless we act as responsible consumers, this market for “tethered” appliances – those that do not allow user innovation and that remain controlled by the manufacturer – might destroy the market for generative ones.

Let’s look at a few statistics. Contrary to popular wisdom, a huge percentage (pdf), and in some industries a majority, of product innovations are created by consumers, not manufacturers. When a consumer added foot straps (pdf) to a windsurfing board to control his movement mid-flight, he exploded the market for competitive windsurfing. When Linus Torvalds (pdf) started an open-source operating system, he inadvertently created a technical-support market for businesses like Red Hat and IBM. These specific examples are huge innovations, creating whole new companies and industries. Most user-generated innovations are not nearly so large. But they are still significant. Over 60% of innovations in the semiconductor industry come from semiconductor users, not manufacturers; over 70% of innovations in the scientific instrument industry come from users. And these user-driven innovations are generally qualitative improvements of their products. That is, users generally add new features and new functionality to the products they use; manufacturers generally make existing functions and features more useful.

Yet most of the innovations come from a minority of users. Only about 10-40% of users in a particular field modify their products (pdf). What this means is that the ‘generative’ market – that is, people who add functionality to the products they use – is not large.

Should we expect Apple to produce two iPhones: one ‘tethered’ phone for consumers worried about security and reliability, and one ‘generative’ phone for the 10%-40% of consumers who want to modify their phones? Probably not. Apple and companies like it lock down their products specifically to stop ‘generative users’ from modifying their products. After all, if a generative user fixes a bug or creates a new killer app, how can Apple monetize that user’s creation? Better, Apple executives think, to let such problem solving and innovation occur ‘in house’.

From all this we can draw two conclusions. First, generative technologies are worth sustaining as innovation enabling devices. But second, because only a small percentage of the market actually innovates, generative technologies are not self-sustaining.

The good news however, is that we can protect generative technologies by acting as responsible consumers. Does this mean putting ‘Certified Generative’ stickers on products that enable innovation, on par with ‘Certified Organic’ stickers in grocery stores? Maybe. But more likely it means using good passwords, not opening unknown email attachments, and running community safety programs like Herdict. It means using technologies responsibly, so that generative machines are just as safe and reliable as tethered ones.
Generative technologies – technologies that allow users to innovate – are worth sustaining. And I believe that through responsible shopping and surfing, the market for these generative technologies can be sustained.