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even the safest Volvo can be driven into a wall.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-06-02
- Too much power in the hands of bad users means it is tempting to tether and undermine the generative economy
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-06-02
the appliances.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-06-02
- a more tethered internet is a more regulable internet
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-06-02
a network.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-06-02
- TiVo v. EchoStar and PlayMedia v. AOL show how tethering increases the powers of regulators
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-06-02
A change in technology can change the power dynamic between those who promulgate the law and those who are subject to it.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-06-02
- Technology transforms all sides of the power equation
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-06-02
normal surfing.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-06-02
- china's simple ways of censoring -- add bumps
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-06-02
Comprehensive regulatory crackdowns require a non-generative endpoint or influence over the individual using it to ensure that the endpoint is not repurposed.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-06-02
- real regul crackdown not possible with the generative end-point
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-06-02

tony curzon price

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The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It » Chapter 7: St...

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The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It » Part II: Afte...

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The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It » Chapter 3: Cy...

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computer
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- Nov 2nd 1988 - First Internet Worm launched from Princeton ... just looked through directories on a machine for addresses to send itself to and do the same... Internet almost crawls to a halt.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
count
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
digital nose count.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- Morris' code contained a bug that made it proliferate - the intent had been the harmelss one to count machines on network.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
from afar.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- worm shows danger of generativity: ease of reprogramming could be dangerous.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
and less-skilled users.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- Situation is worse today than in 1988 - network bigger and faster, processors more powerful and users less skilled.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
threats
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- Public reaction to worm: other Interent engineers thought it was a challenge; govt set up an enquiry and a program at Carnegie that still today is a clearing-house for info on network security, viruses, etc.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
at MIT
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- Fairy story ending to the fate of Morris, the first worm-maker, dot com millionaire, and now tenured professor at MIT.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
Internet
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- The Internet Engineering Task Force, the de facto UNIX gods of the Internet, published a report ("The Helminthiasis of the Internet" :) describing the technology of the worm, and recommending some ethics training for new comers on the Net. ..
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
retool them.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- Naivety of Internet's response has to be understood in relation to logic of computer architectures.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
Urging users to patch their systems and asking hackers to behave more maturely might, in retrospect, seem naïve.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
operations
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-06
- Original ATT crack at 2600Hz : ATT, because it controlled a centralised network, could change the architecture to close-down the backdoor.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-06
enforced
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-06
- Compuserve similarly adopted post Cap'n Crunch rule: "do not let the paths that carry data also carry code."
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-06
Internet
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-06
- the networks evolved slowly and with few surprises either good or bad. This made them both secure and sterile
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-06
the Internet.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-07
- Security = slow to change, sterile
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-07
responsibility
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-07
- 1988 internet had no ways to control spread of morris worm
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-07
attack
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-07
- endpoint machines were disparate and open - no single way to secure them against morris attack
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-07
the Internet.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-07
- Insecurity of Internet - allowing code to be run on end-poitns, eg, - is critical to its creative potential
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-07
considered
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-07
- Post Morris, no one really offered to solve the problem, because there was no non-transforming solution ,,,
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-07
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.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-07
Then it stalls.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-07
- generative is good: great products, and also great opportunities for self-expression.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-07
generativity
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-07
- generative systems require trust; trust gets abused; if it is abused enough, people choose security over generativity.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-07
password security.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
- Remarkable scalability of Internet, especially given new demographic of users in 1990s
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
a set time.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
- hacker non-malevolence has slowed the issue of bad code from getting out of hand.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
syndicates
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
- graffiti vs. drugs trade - where is the pay-off to bad code ... we can now see one
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
happening
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
- organised crime apparently controls 1 in 10 home pcs through botnets.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
money
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
- spam, ddos ($50k per day), gaming passwords, private infrmation -- all are biz model for malware
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
orbit
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
- malware has become very sophisticated, with recovery essentially impossible against the worst infections
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
Internet
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
- generativity is put at risk - either from death by 1000 cuts, or by watershed security moment.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
globe
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
- Wipe the world's drives - the watershed scenario.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
starts
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
- Badware subterfuge examples
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
compromised
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
- Badware or not is subjective, in the eye of the installer - see VNC
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
appliancized
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
- Frustrated consumers, their machines getting infected and mis-performing, will go for appliances
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
decisions
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
- consumers will increasingly to use the XBOX that works over the PC that crashes.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
device
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
- appliances clip the wings of invention
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
the fore
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
- Vital function of PC is to keep the appliance honest - it is general purpose, and so can be reconfigured into the appliance; but this insurance policy is not WHY the PC is bought, it is unintended social benefit.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
gatekeeper
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
- PCs that are shared are getting appliantised by various restrictions.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19
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.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-19

Renata Avila

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The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It » Chapter 9: Me...

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tony curzon price

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The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It » Chapter 4: Th...

stallmans 4 freedoms

Tags: montpelerin on 2008-05-29 -Cached -About Shared by:tony curzon priceand 1 member(s) first by: Renata Avila

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three layers.
posted by Renata Avila on 2008-05-01
- The Network = physical layer + protocol layer + content layer
  posted by Renata Avila on 2008-05-01
hierarchies
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- Network layer separation is a condition of polyarchy --- "ordered independence".
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
principle at work
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- IP protocol is the "Natural Monopoly" in the system --- that AND NO MORE
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
Generativity is a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- JZ defines generativity:
  Generativity is a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences.
  and says open, free and communal don't quite capture it.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
consumers
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- Generativity requires unfiltered inputs and unexpected outputs; this requires contributors and participants, not just consumers to animate the system.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
f code.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- Conditions of generativity:
  1. Leverage, meaning that it makes hard work easier.
  (sounds like the opposite would not be much use in any context...) This might also be called a productivity advantage - it increase output per relevant unit input.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
specialized
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- Conditions of Generativity: adaptability-
  Can the same equipment be put to new, un-anticipated tasks? Plastic, AC electricity, PC
  
  ((How does a musical instrument do here? Does just one thing - produce notes -- but in an infinite variety))
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
training
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- Conditions of Generativity: Ease of mastery.
  
  Many code masters got there without formal training. They allow a certain level of use (lik cars) that falls short of mastery.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
accessible
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- Accessibility - the easier it is to get mass adoption, the more likely to become generative.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
generative
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- Transferability - or viral nature (/?) -- is it easy for copies to propagate?
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
frequently generativity at one layer is the best recipe for generativity at the layer above.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- Frequent link btwn generative tools and generative systems - a question of culture?
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
generates
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- Accessibility of Free Software is key to its viral generativity
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
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
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
generative
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- Generativity is different from Stallman's 4 freedoms: Windows is generative, but not free to examine or distribute; and Linux in TiVo is free but not (technically) accessible.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
platform
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- Subjective affordance maps the possibility space of an object -- greater affordance probably implies greater generativity ... but not if it leads to over-functionalism.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
detail
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- Is there a public good aspect to generative systems?
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
Generative systems facilitate change.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- For good and ill
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
breakthrough
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- The non-generative encourages change that is conceived of by the single controlling orgnaisation of change
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
compete
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- Generativity and disruptive change ... generativity helps with the process of creative destruction.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
market model.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- Generativity gives the amateur a chance
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
initial spark
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- The venture capital model, the amateur, the long tail and generativity all come together - VC picks up once a generative experiment has hit a big seam.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
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.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- The type case of the use-innovator -- like Auden's: "caveman who first forgot his supper".
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
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.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- In the young internet, innovations like wikis are inspirational, low effort, out of the blue innovations; lots of bang for buck.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
Web service
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- Generative systems can accommodate many models of production - market, amateur etc
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
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.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
- Generativity as a medium of invention - it makes me think of a market place - 2nd Century Palmyra, say - as opposed to a market or a trade.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-26
He then noted the innate value of being able to express oneself idiosyncratically
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-28
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.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-28
makers
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-28
- Benkler: particpation and transparency potential of new networks changes us deeply as cultural co-creators.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-28
policy issues
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-28
- Benkler, contd: free culture makes us citizens, market cutlure makes us consumers.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-28
innovation
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-28
- An economy of "sharing nicely" has created great wealth and internet allows it to increase in scope.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-28
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.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-29
- Polyarchy is ... what allows parallel, uncoordinated action to nevertheless produced orderly wholes
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-29
contribution
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-28
- Hierarchy and Polyarchy - who forages better? (is this intrinsic or extrinsic)?
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-28
eccentric
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-28
- Intrinsic bebefits are not just there for the technically enclined - there is recursion in generativity, allow all sorts of activities to become generative.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-28
Internet
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-29
- Internetworled PC makes group coordination much simpler than it used to be.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-29
disruption
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-29
- Generativity encourages mutations
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-29
economic harm.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-29
- How much harmful mutation are we prepared to put up with from Internet - especially social harm?
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-29
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.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-29
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.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-29
This is the generative pattern, and we can find examples of it at every layer of the network hourglass:
123
1. An idea originates in a backwater.
2. It is ambitious but incomplete. It is partially implemented and released anyway, embracing the ethos of the procrastination principle.
3. Contribution is welcomed from all corners, resulting in an influx of usage.
4. Success is achieved beyond any expectation, and a higher profile draws even more usage.
5. 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.
6. There is movement toward enclosure to prevent the problems that arise from the system’s very popularity.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-29
- The general cycle of generativity, at every level. (NB How does the market avoid these? what is the role of free-riding and externalities?)
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-29
surfing
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-29
- Spam and malware are like Mill's notion of individuality having got too far ahead of the collective power to discipline it.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-29

Peter Zelchenko

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The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It » Chapter 2: Ba...

Tags: no_tag on 2009-02-17 -Cached -About Shared by:Peter Zelchenkoand 1 member(s) first by: tony curzon price

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somehow
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
- Everyone - even the appliance - needs a network
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
one another.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
- But imagine the cost and inconvenience of every appliance having its own network ... so the ability of th enetwork to re-purpose itself is also important to diffusion of technology.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
connect to it.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
- Network architectures and protocols work in an environment in which certain behaviors are assumed ... and new assumptions on behavior lead to new desires for network configuration; trustworthiness is an important such behavioral dimension.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
networking
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-01
- Regulation, not jsut technology, made it hard to make the telephone network useful for anything apart from telephoning.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-01
Hush-A-Phone, which was invented in 1921 as a way to have a conversation without others nearby overhearing it
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-01
were sold.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-01
- ATT had control of network adn devices attached to it
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-01
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
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-01
small ways.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-01
- Courts forced ATT to accept non-ATT devices on phone system
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-01
phone network.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-01
- Court principle in 1940s: "as long as network is not harmed, 3rd parties can hook up to it".
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-01
The physical layer had become generative, and this generativity meant that additional types of activity in higher layers were made possible.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-01
services business
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-01
- The modem on the "open" ATT network was first generative opportunity for hobbyists and businesses
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-01
THE PROPRIETARY NETWORK MODEL
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
themselves
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
- Firt online services were along IBM model but consumer-facing; one company supplied the lot.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
unchanged
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
- In 10 years of business, between 1984 & 2004, Compuserve hardly changed its array of offerings.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
tinkering
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
- Compuserve piggy-backed on ATT network, phy layer generativity, but did ot itself offer 3rd party acces for generativity.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
Why would the proprietary services not harness the potential generativity of their offerings by making their own servers more open to third-party coding?
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
model prevailed.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
- Information service companies were charging by the minute - so why didn't they want to cultivate 3rd party apps?
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
shopping
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
- Probably no one actually saw the commercial potential.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
free-for-all
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
- By early 90s, a small umber of networks offered slightly differentiated, closed, monolithic services.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
who built them.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
- The answer is probably deep in organisational behavior: mature markets encourage exploitation of niches, not radical exploration of new models.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
possible.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
- Hobbyist BBS encouraged the opposite incentive of proprietary netowrk: bandwidth limitation meant that users had to be as quick as possible.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
Jennings’s work
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
- FIDOnet - the original p2p file sharing system - got over some of the bandwidth limitations.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
annoyed person.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
- FIDOnet was a great kludge, but had some real issues - like wrong numbers in the call list ... and irate humans at the end of them.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
the world
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
- FIDOnet problems were exactly the problems that ATT worried about when it wanted to limit 3rd party appliances on the network - who was to blame for quality of service.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
FIDOnet
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
- Internet offered flexibility of FIDOnet with robustness of proprietary network.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-03
services
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- PC <--> Internet analogy: Internet connects to proprietary networks and eventually replaces them
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
message
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- From the first, Internet is designed to pass information along diverse computer platforms by defining protocols.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
points
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- Internet was low level: allow 2 nodes to exchange information ... and that is all; no prejudgement of what people want to do with that information.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
billion
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- Internet builders were academics who could devote time to the project and yet were doing it for the innate interest; $10m or so spent on Internet between 1969 and 1990 --- great return on investment, from a social point of view.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
from them.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- Environment of creation is critical in determining the nature of the system: Internet pioneers were trying to get the most out of existing infrastructure and diverse netwroks; contrast business logic of FedEx network.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
network work.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- The motto among Internet pioneers was, “We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code;” they were building it for themselves, in a sort of Kantian environment of universalisability of the user.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
controlling it.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- 1991, backbone privatisation context also allowed for decentralisation of network ownership and operation.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
tryout period
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- Internet -> Windows PC link built by a single academic hobbyist
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
access
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- 1991, first opening of Internet to non-research uses; by mid 90s, proprietary networks were branding mainly as ISPs --- generative boom was gathering unbelievable speed.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
code for it.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- Internet was built away from commercial logic, no trying to guess what the conusmer wanted; just like the hobbyist PC.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
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
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
harmful code.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- Basic trade-off: consistency, quality and reliability of service (closed systems) versus breadth of uses, trust of open systems.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
approach
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- Intenret design choices made sense given a sociology, not just an negineering environment.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
Its origins can be found in a 1984 paper by Internet architects David Clark, David Reed, and Jerry Saltzer.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
requirements
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- Procrastination principle: 1984 Internet engineer academics formuilate argument that only universally useful features should be built into the network, with other specific work being done at the end-points.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
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.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
persists today.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- Internet design assumed basic trustworthiness and competence.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
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.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
an outsider.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- Banks are built for robbers, airports for terrorists ... the Internet was built for colleagues.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
the IDs.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- AOL/CompServe had identity management built-in: wanted to know who you were for marketing purposes ... good for accountability, too.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
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.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
contents
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- On Internet, identity-management was left to specific service providers or apps to choose.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
regulation
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- There's good and bad in internet's anonymity -- can't pursue bad behavers, but can't get the freedom fighters against oppressive governments either -- but an engineering decision has ended up havign huge social impacts.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
The person at the endpoint must instead rely on falling dominos of trust. The Internet is thus known as a “best efforts” network, sometimes rephrased as “Send it and pray” or “Every packet an adventure.”
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- Internet as "network of networks" loosely cobbled together entails the inability to develop quality of service, or bandwidth agreements, that apply between any 2 points.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
chapter
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- "bit egalitarianism" is assumed in the network, and fixes have been found along the way (eg Akamai & network caching).
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04

Peter Zelchenko

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The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It » Chapter 1: Ba...

Tags: no_tag on 2009-02-16 -Cached -About Shared by:Peter Zelchenkoand 1 member(s) first by: tony curzon price

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went wrong.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
- The first computer company, Tabulating Machine Company, (1890) leased machines and operated them for clients (gvt, big business) and offered a service, not a piece of equipment.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
from scratch
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
- TMC becmae IBM and retained the model; the downside was that innovation was negotiated and slow, and new vendors found it very hard to enter the market.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
purposes
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
- The threat of anti-trust forced IBM to unbundle, allowing third party and in-house software in ... but large firms mainly maintained the old model nevetheless.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
Cutting and pasting different pieces of Flexowriter tape together allowed the user to do mail merges about as easily as one can do them today with Microsoft Word or its rivals.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
reprogram them.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
- '60s corporate comp[uting was IBM or single purpose appliances
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
problems
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
- PCs come out of a hobbyist branch, not a corporate branch---they were "solutions waiting for problems".
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
tabulators
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
- Watch and calculator are the consumer equivalent of the information appliance --- and at heart this has got to do with having someone to blame when it doesn't work.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
springy posts.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
invent entirely new appliances from scratch as long as they had the ideas and the patience to attach lots of wires to springy posts.
posted by Peter Zelchenko on 2009-02-16
- Actually, this product rarely encouraged developing new products from scratch. While it was possible to do with difficulty, by that skill level it would be much easier to use a protoboard and discrete components. Any level of structural control will limit the user to some degree from the freedom to create. This is actually a very good example, and a survey of the various products and their creative possibilities would make for an interesting way to explore this question of flexibility and generativity.
  posted by Peter Zelchenko on 2009-02-16
revolution
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
- PCs were always expected to run s/w written by authors other than the manufacturer ... but the PC, until the early 80s, was still considered a hobbyist toy.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
But PCs were still firmly grounded in the realm of hobbyists, alongside 75-in-1 Project Kit designs.
posted by Peter Zelchenko on 2009-02-16
- The fundamental threshold difference was the ease of transporting functionality with the floppy drive. This gave the Apple II a first opportunity to allow this kind of conspiring. Other platforms (Imsai, Altair, Compucolor, etc.) all had, or eventually supported, floppy drives, and there was some conspiracy, but the Apple's was the most plug-and-play of them all.
  posted by Peter Zelchenko on 2009-02-16
a university
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
- Corporate computing moved to the mini-computer - still a dumb-terminal system that ran entreprise specific tasks and some general buisness functions.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
no more.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
- Un-networked, hobbyist nature of PC made it particularly lax about security.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
opponent
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
- The PC started winning through its killer business apps - wordprocessor, spreadsheet and relational database, while the hobbyist uses led to the development of games.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
or the Web.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
- Business adopted the PC for cost reasons, despite its basic unsuitability to group work; homes bought the PC for one thing and discovered many things they could do with it.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
PCs can run.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
- Microsoft genuinely wanted an open PC running many companies' code, not a s/w monopoly for itself.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
installed
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
- A vast network of PCs ready to run new s/w offered a market for new s/w, a market that only grew as the Internet eliminated the cost of the transaction.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
themselves
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
- The core of Apple's and MS's business was in making attractive Operating Systems rather than in creating applications themselves, pace the MS antitrust cases of the 1990s that were precisely about such moves.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
Radio Shack’s “75-in-1 Electronic Project Kit,”
posted by Peter Zelchenko on 2009-02-16
- Abraham's new Lego-style electronic project kit is much more "controlled" than my old Radio Shack one -- and he will get less out of it, though it may be easier and more satisfying in some ways, he won't understand discrete components. Compare Ted Kilpin's e-mail about PIC controllers.
  posted by Peter Zelchenko on 2009-02-16
parties’ code
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
- The backwater of hobbyist computing environemnt was essential to the experimentation & risk-taking that made the PC.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
by others
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
- But the PC revolution went beyond the tinkerers to the non-technical user because of the ease with which PC h/w can be re-used for other purposes.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
supremacy there.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30
- Here is the typical pattern: creative amateur chaos -> successful product -> market take-over -> risk to interests from original chaos --> temptation to lock it all down.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-30

tony curzon price

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The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It » Part I: The R...

Tags: no_tag on 2008-04-29 -Cached -About Shared by:tony curzon price

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subscribers
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
- Victory of decentralised Internet not obvious in 1990s versus the centralised behemoths
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
become
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
- Ingredients of success: quiet growth out of limelight, to avoid being shut down for being too risky
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
to win.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
- Battle of Internet vs. AOL/Compuserve/Prodigy is like batlte of PC vs. Appliance; what makes the former win?
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
dead ends.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
- Openness of PC and Internet are setting the scene for a counter-revolution; we need to look at history to find inspiration for avoiding lock-down.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
access it.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
- NB - Don't forget that the end-poitn device is integral part of Net (for the user)
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
the box has come to matter.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
Internet
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
- If the tethered box wins, then heavy regulation will be possible and we will lose the amateur innovation that has delivered so much of the Net
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
stop them
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
- Net won against the centralised systems BECAUSE it assumed users would behave well, indeed contribute positive goodwill, even when bad behaviour was technically possible
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29

Ako Z°om

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

Tags: no_tag on 2008-05-09 -Cached -About Shared by:Ako Z°omand 3 member(s) first by: tony curzon price

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to the Web.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-27
- iPhone is object of desire
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-27
of its use.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
- The original PC is a blank slate.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-28
- Apple II is a user object; iPhone is a consumer object (open / closed)
  posted by Yule Heibel on 2008-04-29
very fast.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-27
- Apple II was a generative box whose success depended on others' additions to it, like VisiCalc
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-27
computer crashes
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-27
- Apple II was open for tinkerers and hobbyists, unlike the iPhone
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-27
permission
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-09
- iPhone needs Apple permission before you can tinker; Apple can remote modify it; it is a controlled system.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-27
- ahah ! - sterile the iphone ?... not so... it has now many app. done free, as the next widgetbox web2 ways - and it is a very great inspiration too, an industrial asian has produced a similar product better...and of course as usual, protections attract hackers to modify or to use free: it's done...
  posted by Ako Z°om on 2008-05-09
give up that freedom.
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-04
- The dark side of openness - viruses, spam, crashes - makes the closed philosophy of the iPhone attractive to consumers.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-27
- generative creativity = dangerous; closed consumption = "safe"
  posted by Yule Heibel on 2008-04-29
- This is a very important tension to consider, and one that will take time to work through.
  posted by Jeremy Price on 2008-05-04
network of control
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-27
- iPhone / Apple II story is representative of the Internet: it is moving form the open to the tethered, the generative to the controlled.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-27
things
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
- Boxed appliances are fine, but they endanger the NEXT ROUND of innovation --- innovation-types they themselves were dependent on in the past.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-28
- If the generative aspect is ursurped by closed appliances, the ecosystem dies as a productive source of further innovation
  posted by Yule Heibel on 2008-04-29
discover
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-28
- When there is separation of PC ownership and use, interests diverge: stability versus "wilderness"
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-28
heartbeat
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
- As long as a PC can run code it is given, and especially with broadband connectivity, the dangers are there, and are serious.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-28
- like a natural ecosystem, open and generative platforms can provide habitat for dangerous pathogens (viruses, invaders, etc.)
  posted by Yule Heibel on 2008-04-29
exported
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-29
- These dangers add support for lockdown and interference by the surveiling centre --- with all the dangers this implies in authoritarian states.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-28
- lockdowns as monoculture... safe, but sterile
  posted by Yule Heibel on 2008-04-29
groups with shared norms and a sense of public purpose
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-28
or private
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-28
- Lockdowns and box-appliances will destroy the creativity of IT, and to stop this happening we'll need new technologies, communities that sustain the right ethos and a sense of public purpose.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-28
pressure them
posted by tony curzon price on 2008-05-09
- The everlasting battle will be between open, Web 2.0 systems and services and "bottled power" as exemplified by the iPhone.
  posted by tony curzon price on 2008-04-28
- - users (vs. consumers?) stay in the generative loop via Web 2.0 applications
  posted by Yule Heibel on 2008-04-29
- free services and ...ware = battle for money may change to battle for communities influences and direct human exchanges
  posted by Ako Z°om on 2008-05-09

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