oD Opinion - Future of the Internet Annotation

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

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

contribution

eccentric

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.

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: 123 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

Internet

the Internet.

responsibility

attack

the Internet.

considered

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.

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.

connect to it.

networking

Hush-A-Phone, which was invented in 1921 as a way to have a conversation without others nearby overhearing it

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

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.

services business

THE PROPRIETARY NETWORK MODEL

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

who built them.

possible.

Jennings’s work

annoyed person.

the world

FIDOnet

But none seemed prepared to budge from the business models built around their mainframes

services

message

points

billion

from them.

network work.

controlling it.

tryout period

access

code for it.

harmful code.

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

approach

requirements

Its origins can be found in a 1984 paper by Internet architects David Clark, David Reed, and Jerry Saltzer.

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.

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.

an outsider.

the IDs.

contents

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.

regulation

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.”

chapter

environment

dead end.

ignore

tabulators

springy posts.

revolution

a university

no more.

opponent

or the Web.

PCs can run.

installed

themselves

parties’ code

by others

supremacy there.