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Graham Perrin

Description of group and of the book - 32 views

Tony: thanks! First impression: the exemplars to which you refer may be ideal for inclusion under http://groups.diigo.com/Diigo_HQ/forum/topic/sharing-please-share-your-creative-uses-for-diigo-8596 ...

help introduction description book group

started by Graham Perrin on 16 Dec 08 2 follow-ups, last by Graham Perrin on 17 Dec 08
tony curzon price

The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It » Chapter 4: The Generative Pattern - 1 views

yupnet.org/13

montpelerin

shared by tony curzon price on 26 May 08 - Snapshot


  • <!-- Content -->
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 26 May 08
       
      I wonder what the relationship is between the JZ notion of generativity and the anti-trust notion of verticla restraints. I think that JZ could be interepreted as taking a strong line against vertical integration, beyond anything the Coasian market would on its own support.
  • hierarchies
  • principle at work
  • ...37 more annotations...
  • Generativity is a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences.
  • consumers
  • f code.
  • specialized
  • training
  • accessible
  • generative
  • frequently generativity at one layer is the best recipe for generativity at the layer above.
  • generates
  • Free software satisfies Richard Stallman’s benchmark “four freedoms”: freedom to run the program, freedom to study how it works, freedom to change it, and freedom to share the results with the public at large
  • generative
  • platform
  • detail
  • Generative systems facilitate change.
  • breakthrough
  • compete
  • market model.
  • initial spark
  • They represent tinkering done by that one person in a hundred or a thousand who is so immersed in an activity or pursuit that improving it would make a big difference—a person who is prepared to experiment with a level of persistence that calls to mind the Roadrunner’s nemesis, Wile E. Coyote.
  • The genius behind such innovations is truly inspiration rather than perspiration, a bit of tinkering with a crazy idea rather than a carefully planned and executed invention responding to clear market demand.
  • Web service
  • Generativity, then, is a parent of invention, and an open network connecting generative devices makes the fruits of invention easy to share if the inventor is so inclined.
  • He then noted the innate value of being able to express oneself idiosyncratically
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 28 May 08
       
      This Mill quote does not point to an innate value in idiosyncracy - it points to the tenet of liberal utilitarianism sometimes held by Mill that satisfying desires increases utility.
  • We are seeing the possibility of an emergence of a new popular culture, produced on the folk-culture model and inhabited actively, rather than passively consumed by the masses.
  • makers
  • policy issues
  • innovation
  • The divide is not between technology and nontechnology, but between hierarchy and polyarchy.72 In hierarchies, gatekeepers control the allocation of attention and resources to an idea. In polyarchies, many ideas can be pursued independently. Hierarchical systems appear better at nipping dead-end ideas in the bud, but they do so at the expense of crazy ideas that just might work. Polyarchies can result in wasted energy and effort, but they are better at ferreting out and developing obscure, transformative ideas. More importantly, they allow many more people to have a hand at contributing to the system, regardless of the quality of the contribution.
  • contribution
  • eccentric
  • Internet
  • disruption
  • economic harm.
  • But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences.
  • The generative Internet and PC were at first perhaps more akin to new societies; as people were connected, they may not have had firm expectations about the basics of the interaction. Who pays for what? Who shares what? The time during which the Internet remained an academic backwater, and the PC was a hobbyist’s tool, helped situate each within the norms of Benkler’s parallel economy of sharing nicely, of greater control in the hands of users and commensurate trust that they would not abuse it.

  • This is the generative pattern, and we can find examples of it at every layer of the network hourglass:



  • An idea originates in a backwater.
  • It is ambitious but incomplete. It is partially implemented and released anyway, embracing the ethos of the procrastination principle.
  • Contribution is welcomed from all corners, resulting in an influx of usage.
  • Success is achieved beyond any expectation, and a higher profile draws even more usage.
  • Success is cut short: “There goes the neighborhood” as newer users are not conversant with the idea of experimentation and contribution, and other users are prepared to exploit the openness of the system to undesirable ends.
  • There is movement toward enclosure to prevent the problems that arise from the system’s very popularity.


  • surfing
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 26 May 08
       
      stallmans 4 freedoms
    tony curzon price

    The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It » Chapter 3: Cybersecurity and the ... - 0 views

    yupnet.org/11

    shared by tony curzon price on 04 May 08 - Snapshot
    • Urging users to patch their systems and asking hackers to behave more maturely might, in retrospect, seem naïve.
      • tony curzon price
        tony curzon price on 04 May 08
         
        Think of the naivety of the Incas when they encounter Cortes ....
    • operations
    • enforced
    • ...25 more annotations...
    • the Internet.
    • Internet
    • responsibility
    • attack
    • the Internet.
    • The decentralized, nonproprietary ownership of the Internet and the computers it linked made it difficult to implement any structural revisions to the way it functioned, and, more important, it was simply not clear what curative changes could be made that did not entail drastic, wholesale, purpose-altering changes to the very fabric of the Internet.
      • tony curzon price
        tony curzon price on 07 May 08
         
        a thought about JZ's position: is it a sophisticated version of the report that suggested that "education in ethics" was needed to solve Morris-like problems ... only JZ is explaining to us where the ethics come from? they come from the communities themselves that build code collaboratively ... so we have a wonderful bootstrapping.
    • considered
    • Then it stalls.
    • generativity
    • password security.
    • a set time.
    • syndicates
    • happening
    • money
    • orbit
    • Internet
    • globe
    • starts
    • compromised
    • appliancized
    • decisions
    • device
    • the fore
    • gatekeeper
    • f the user is allowed to make exceptions, the user can and will make the wrong exceptions, and the security restrictions will too often serve only to limit the deployment of legitimate software that has not been approved by the right gatekeepers.
      • tony curzon price
        tony curzon price on 19 May 08
         
        Thsi reminds me of the discussions of self-determination: "We want the freedom to make OUR OWN mistakes."

        The appliantised world is like the Hobesian state -- the contract is simple: safeguard my life/machne, and I will hand over my freedom to Leviathan/Device Maker.

        JZ is asking for a state of self-determination and looking for its conditions.
    tony curzon price

    The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It » Chapter 2: Battle of the Networks - 0 views

    yupnet.org/10

    shared by tony curzon price on 30 Apr 08 - Snapshot
    • One possibility is a set of information appliances.
      • tony curzon price
        tony curzon price on 30 Apr 08
         
        Would all our specific tasks be performed by appliances if the hobbyists' PC had not become mainstream? I doubt it - surely there is a strong economic driver for the general purpose machine: that you can share hardware costs between appliances. Remember the craze for reconfiguralbe mobile computing devices in 2000/2001?
    • somehow
    • one another.
    • ...47 more annotations...
    • connect to it.
    • networking
    • Hush-A-Phone, which was invented in 1921 as a way to have a conversation without others nearby overhearing it
      • tony curzon price
        tony curzon price on 01 May 08
         
        :)
    • were sold.
    • The court drolly noted, “[AT&T does] not challenge the subscriber’s right to seek privacy. They say only that he should achieve it by cupping his hand between the transmitter and his mouth and speaking in a low voice into this makeshift muffler
      • tony curzon price
        tony curzon price on 01 May 08
         
        :)

        ATT's view of how to achieve privacy on its network
    • small ways.
    • phone network.
    • The physical layer had become generative, and this generativity meant that additional types of activity in higher layers were made possible.
      • tony curzon price
        tony curzon price on 01 May 08
         
        Was it easier to make the physical layer generative because ATT was a regualted monopolist? ie would it have been harder, possibly, with a disorganised, competitive market?
    • services business
    • THE PROPRIETARY NETWORK MODEL
      • tony curzon price
        tony curzon price on 03 May 08
         
        I'm wondering how the notion of generativity relates to the anti-trust notion of "vertical restraint". There have been a number of thorny anti-trust cases relating to market power exercised through control of ertical market relationships - like service/nertwork/appliance. The classic case in UK anti-trust cases was Raleigh bicycles' refusal to supply supermarkets with their bikes ... The relationship is that if you have competition at every level of a supply chain, then the market _should_ deliver the generative opportunities. And if it does not, it is a question of regulating market power.
    • themselves
    • unchanged
    • tinkering
    • Why would the proprietary services not harness the potential generativity of their offerings by making their own servers more open to third-party coding?
    • model prevailed.
    • shopping
    • free-for-all
    • But none seemed prepared to budge from the business models built around their mainframes
      • tony curzon price
        tony curzon price on 03 May 08
         
        I'd like a comment of the French Minitel model. I was a young programmer in Paris in 1987, and Minitel was a full-employemnt ticket for keyboard jocks .... especially, of course, the "Minitel Rose" .... The Minitel encouraged 3rd party apps, and th eproliferation of pornography alongside banking services was quite similar to Interneet circa 1997.

        The minitel even had PC hook-up apps, and quite fiddly ways of pulling data off the Minitel (eg bank statements) and integrating them in your accounts package.

        The Minitel could have worked, but did not, I would venture, because its lingua franca was French.
    • who built them.
    • possible.
    • Jennings’s work
    • annoyed person.
    • the world
    • FIDOnet
    • services
    • message
    • points
    • billion
    • from them.
    • network work.
    • controlling it.
    • tryout period
    • access
    • code for it.
    • rust that at least some third-party software writers will write good and useful code, and trust that users of the device will be able to access and sort out the good and useful code from the bad
      • tony curzon price
        tony curzon price on 04 May 08
         
        Very reminiscent of the motor car. Many potential uses ... remember that Michelin, a tyre manufacturer, started writing guide books for travellers because 1. they wanted to get people to drive more and use more rubber and 2. wanted to make the open experience of arriving somewhere new at least somewhat predictable .... a restaurant is an app on the network of roads ...
    • harmful code.
    • approach
    • Its origins can be found in a 1984 paper by Internet architects David Clark, David Reed, and Jerry Saltzer.
      • tony curzon price
        tony curzon price on 04 May 08
         
        First (engineering) argument for network neutrality, maybe? the 1984 paper asking for only unversal features to be built into the network.
    • requirements
    • The people using this network of networks and configuring its endpoints had to be trusted to be more or less competent and pure enough at heart that they would not intentionally or negligently disrupt the network.
      • tony curzon price
        tony curzon price on 04 May 08
         
        Environment of trust that allowed network to arise .. in general social-evolutioanry terms, this suggests that closed-ish groups that allow repetition-based behaviors to emerge might do better than isolated tit-for-tatters.
    • persists today.
    • Yet the assumption that network participants can be trusted, and indeed that they will be participants rather than customers, infuses the Internet’s design at nearly every level.
      • tony curzon price
        tony curzon price on 04 May 08
         
        Internet assumes participants, not customers. This is the first sense of the Aristotelian argument ... man as "neworking zoon".
    • an outsider.
    • the IDs.
    • User identification is left to individual Internet users and servers to sort out if they wish to demand credentials of some kind from those with whom they communicate.
      • tony curzon price
        tony curzon price on 04 May 08
         
        If the proprietary networks were modeled on single businesses, the Internet was built as a mirror of society.
    • contents
    • regulation
    tony curzon price

    The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It » Chapter 1: Battle of the Boxes - 1 views

    yupnet.org/9

    shared by tony curzon price on 30 Apr 08 - Snapshot
    tony curzon price

    The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It » Introduction - 1 views

    yupnet.org/6

    shared by tony curzon price on 28 Apr 08 - Snapshot
    • groups with shared norms and a sense of public purpose
      • tony curzon price
        tony curzon price on 28 Apr 08
         
        So far, JZ offers 2 foundational reasons we should prefer the open to the tehtered: a) it allows innovation to flourish, and b) the tehtered is really bad news in authoritarian states.

        These "groups with shared norms and a public purpose" seem to be instrumental to that end.

        This was not exactly the way I heard it in the lecture I wrote up here:
        http://www.opendemocracy.net/blog/tony_curzon_price/from_zittrain_to_aristotle_in_600_words
        where the way we solve these issues will in itself make us better or not.

        Still waiting for that argument ....
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