Debating Zittrain’s “The Future of the Internet”

Jonathan Zittrain’s crystal ball does not paint a pretty picture. In The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It, the author and professor of law at Harvard Law School explores a world ripe with possibilities yet riddled with controversy. Where the Internet succeeded in changing the way we communicate, Zittrain says it no longer functions as originally intended. It’s far too easily taken advantage of, he says, and the risks are beginning to outweigh the rewards. The “future” he is trying to stop is not merely one of open source ideals and generative technology, but of regulation, legislation and reform. “The solution,” he says, “is not to conscript intermediaries to become the Net police,” (Zittrain, p. 195). But what is the solution? Zittrain, who co-founded the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, does not fully explore possible solutions in The Future of the Internet. Instead, he wrestles with the possibility of a closed-network society that willingly sacrifices the freedom to innovate for security and peace of mind.

Though the generative qualities of the Internet initially gave way to stunning insight and earth-shaking innovation, it also spawned viruses, spam, hackers and worse. According to Zittrain, the government and/or corporate intermediaries—both of which loosely regulate the Internet nowadays—will move to strengthen the Net’s regulability and, thus, wield more control over it. This, he says, will destroy the generative Net as we know it. An “appliancized network” is a term Zittrain uses to describe technologies or networks that discourage or disallow tinkering. Generative technology, on the other hand, invites or allows modification. The latter, Zittrain says, is what makes the Internet function. He believes in the Net’s openness and feels we can preserve its generativity if we simply act fast.

To solve the problem, Zittrain proposes a “latter-day Manhattan Project, not to build a bomb but to design the tools and conventions by which to continuously diffuse one,” (Zittrain, p. 173). Essentially, he wants to make subtle changes to the Net’s so-called operating agreement and hold those accountable who would use it for ill intent. But it may be too late, as Zittrain himself points out at various points throughout the book. “Any comprehensive redesign of the Internet at this late stage,” he says, “would draw the attention of regulators and other parties who will push for ways to prevent abuse before it can even happen,” (Zittrain, p. 245). If governments and corporations enact legislation to preemptively stop bad things from happening, it will lead to a closed network and less innovation on the part of end users. This is not the future Zittrain wants to see.

Why He’s Right

Change is coming, whether we want it to or not. Yochai Benkler, who is Zittrain’s colleague at Harvard Law School, points out in The Wealth of Networks that a cultural shift of epic proportions is under way. The incumbent industrial information economy (businesses) is giving way to the networked information economy (people), and our society enjoys stronger social connections and a more democratized society as a result. But the powers that be are not taking this change lightly. In fact, they are fighting back through legislative efforts such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which upholds and even extends existing copyright law and strengthens intellectual property rights, (Benkler, p. 415). The ability to access information is a precursor to generativity, Zittrain says, and the government’s actions amount to an ankle bracelet for innovation.

Lawrence Lessig, a founding member of Creative Commons and a well-known critic of copyright extension in the U.S., says the changes taking place at a cultural level are threatening the power of those in power. Like Zittrain, he believes in the free access to information. It’s what fosters creativity in our society, he says. In The Future of Ideas, Lessig lays down a call to action—we must stand up for what’s right because the appliancized future Zittrain fears is on its way to being enacted into law. “We need not stand by idly as the Internet is changed,” Lessig says. “Even if this is ‘only business’ to them, that does not mean it should be ‘just business’ for us. … There is reason to resist the changes,” (Lessig, p. 145).

Zittrain feels we are losing control and that the Internet is too easily taken advantage of, end users too easily targeted. “The state of the hacking arts is advancing,” he says. “Web sites can be compromised in an instant, and many visitors will then come away with an infected PC simply for having surfed there,” (Zittrain, p. 245). The tipping point may come in the form of a devastating virus that infects millions of computers worldwide, the impact of which pushes users to adopt safer alternatives and more Net regulation. This would lead to an economic demand for appliance-like technologies. Much or all of the user’s ability to innovate would be stripped away or put exclusively in the hands of the manufacturers. “The future is not one of generative PCs attached to a generative network,” Zittrain says. “It is one instead of appliances tethered to a network of control,” (Zittrain, p. 3). The Net, he says, is quite literally what we make of it. Regulation and oversight is not the trump card some expect it out to be.

Terry Fisher, another of Zittrain’s colleagues at Harvard Law School and director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, has written extensively about people’s ability to use the Internet creatively. Fisher argues in Promises to Keep that “semiotic democracy” offers many opportunities to blur the boundary between producers and consumers, and that certain risks threaten the “personality” of creators as well as the public’s cultural stability. “The potential benefits of the new technology seem endless,” he says. “Sadly, that’s not the end of the story. Full exploitation of the logical opportunities could also have serious social costs,” (Fisher, p. 31). An example of this trend is the digital video-mixing software that allows users to “mash up” the copyrighted works of artists and professionals into something entirely new. Stephen Spielberg, when commenting on pending litigation related to the digital mixing of copyrighted work, said, “Every film represents a truth which is morally and exclusively the right of the writer and director. No one is authored to impose their truth on top of ours despite how strongly they may disagree with it,” (www.christianitytoday.com).

Just as advances in generative technology are challenging artists’ rights to own copyrighted content, the right to privacy is fighting for its life as well. Zittrain argues that, as we move our “most comprehensive and intimate details” online—where it’s stored on third-party servers by third-party providers—our privacy is diminishing. In certain situations, it’s already gone. For example, providers are not as protective of information as we would be, and they aren’t going to protect it should they be subpoenaed. “Entrusting information to third parties changes the ease of surveillance,” Zittrain says, “because those third parties are often willing to give it up, and typically the first party is not even aware the transfer has occurred,” (Zittrain, p. 186). There’s a risk in letting governments and corporations regulate the Net, he says, because there’s just too little trust between a government and its people and, for that matter, businesses and their consumers. If we don’t make changes before the incumbents do, Zittrain says, “the most direct solutions will be lockdown that cuts short the Net experiment, deprives us of its fruits, and facilitates a form of governmental control that upends a balance between citizens and sovereign,” (Zittrain, p. 245).

In The Cluetrain Manifesto, a set of 95 theses directed at businesses operating in the new networked information economy, authors Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, David Searle and David Weinberger take aim at the notion of change. “Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech about human concerns,” they say. “Just about all the concessions we make to work in a well-run environment has to do with giving up our voice. … Our business voice is virtually the same as everybody else’s,” (Levine, Locke, Searle, Weinberger, p. 42). Zittrain feels that if the Net loses its generativity we, in turn, will lose our voice. Appliancized networks, he believes, stymie our creativity and resourcefulness. “The same qualities that led to their successes are causing the Internet and the PC to falter,” Zittrain says. “The pieces are in place for a wholesale shift away from the original chaotic design that has given rise to the modern information revolution. The counterrevolution would push mainstream users away from a generative Internet that fosters innovation and disruption, to an appliancized network that incorporates some of the most powerful features of today’s Internet while greatly limiting its innovative capacity—and, for better or worse, heightening its regulability, (Zittrain, p. 8). This future, full of regulation and requirement, is already on its way. Zittrain says we can stop it. We’ll see if he’s right.

Why He’s Wrong

Released in 1977, The Apple II epitomized early generative technology by inviting people to tinker with it. The iPhone, however, is sterile. Released to much fanfare in 2008, Zittrain says, “The iPhone comes preprogrammed. Its functionality is locked in. … Whereas the world would innovate for the Apple II, only Apple would innovate for the iPhone,” (Zittrain, p. 2). It’s an appliance, Zittrain says, and he believes tethered machines such as this hamper the utopian values of the generative Net. By locking consumers in to devices that stymie innovation we sacrifice a part of our creative culture, Zittrain says. But it comes down to what consumers ultimately want. If they want more security, they may be willing to sacrifice. It’s not accurate to say that everyone wants to modify code. Most people don’t even know what that means. Locking down a system won’t ruin everything as Zittrain fears. In fact, the appliancized networks he rails against are the very ones connecting people the world over. Now more than ever, information is being shared at a revolutionary pace. It’s exciting, and it has little do with generativity.

Eric Von Hippel is an economist and professor at MIT who is best known for developing the concept of user innovation. In Democratizing Innovation, he explains why lead users—users of a product that experience needs still unknown to the public—are responsible for many product enhancements. Manufacturers, he says, actually look to these users to find new ideas. “There is now very strong empirical evidence that product development and modification by both user firms and users as individual consumers is frequent, pervasive, and important,” (Von Hippel, p. 2). Zittrain argues that lockdown of any kind will bring creativity like this to a crashing halt. But he also counters that point by confronting the reality of the Net’s dark side. In a statement that resembles political flip-flopping, Zittrain argues for a limited form of lockdown that creates “gated communities that must frisk traffic arriving from the outside,” (Zittrain, p. 165). He pitches the idea of locking in parts of a PC and not others. “In it’s simplest implementation,” he says, “we could divide a PC into two virtual machines: ‘Red’ and ‘Green,’ “ (Zittrain, p. 155). Splitting the difference between lockdown and openness, he says, allows intermediaries to protect users while still giving them the freedom to develop code. The “Red” side of the machine would have barriers to entry and no generative qualities, whereas the “Green” side would allow for open development and the free sharing of ideas. Sounds great, but it also sounds a lot like the future he’s so keen to avoid.

Not everyone wants to make changes to the code. Zittrain’s argument may speak to the computer crowd but it rings hollow for everyday users who “boot their PCs each day and expect them more or less to work,” (Zittrain, p. 245). Even on tethered machines such as the iPhone or Playstation 3, the Net is full of possibilities. It takes us places we’ve never been, teaches us things we’ve never learned, and connects us with family and friends across the globe. Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody is full of ways to make wonderful use of the Net, from meeting up with fellow stay at home moms to organizing flash mobs via Twitter. Shirky says the Net allows people to, “come together and accomplish things on a scope and longevity that were previously impossible; they can do big things for love,” (Shirky, p. 142). Social production, he says, is what the Internet is all about. That won’t end with lockdown, and it won’t end because the programmers can’t rewrite every bit of the generative code. If “each PC is a precious guinea pig,” as Zittrain says, then we as users need to take more care of our playpen.

Benkler, in The Wealth of Networks, says the Net’s generativity gives us greater insight into our culture. But the puzzle of PC security, Zittrain says, is fundamentally the same as the puzzle of keeping Wikipedia honest. “It is the puzzle of empowering people to share and trade stories, photos, and recommendations without losing their identities as they become not only the creators of distributed scrutiny and judgment, but also their subjects,” (Zittrain, p. 241). Zittrain proposes a toolkit that runs “unobtrusively” on a machine and measures the data that comes in and out. These toolkits, he says, report back to the computer and to other computers on the network, sharing information that leads to a deeper understanding of the networks’ stability, (Zittrain, p. 159). “It’s easy for Internet users to see themselves only as consumers whose participation is limited to purchasing decisions. … But with the right tools, users can also see themselves as participants in the shaping of generative space—as netizens,” (Zittrain, p. 161). Would a toolkit such as this adequately address issues of privacy and Zittrain’s own dreaded loss of openness? Potentially, but it’s another example of flip-flopping. A program that reads users’ every click and reports back to a centralized hub is precisely the “future” Zittrain so passionately opposes.

When Bill Gates announced that Microsoft would enter the gaming industry, he insisted the Xbox video game console was not just for gamers. “It was about strategically being in the living room,” he said in 2000, (Zittrain, p. 184). In The Future of the Internet, Zittrain argues that every platform, including Xbox, should be open to modification. Instead, many of today’s technologies are developing tethered machines he calls “appliances.” These machines destroy the fundamentals of the Internet, which he believes is generative in nature. To combat this future, Zittrain feels we must leapfrog the governments and intermediaries who control seek to regulate the Net. He says we must act before it’s too late. “The pieces are in place for a wholesale shift away from the original chaotic design that has given rise to the modern information revolution,” Zittrain says. “The counterrevolution would push mainstream users away from a generative Internet … to an appliancized network that incorporates some of the most powerful features of today’s Internet while greatly limiting its innovative capacity—and, for better or worse, heightening its regulability,” (Zittrain, p. 8). Change is coming. Whether that leads to the prison-like future Zittrain fears—well, that remains to be seen.

Bibliography

Zittrain, Jonathan. The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It. Yale University Press, 2008.

Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press, 2006.

Fisher, William “Terry” W. Promises to Keep: Technology, Law and the Future of Entertainment. Stanford University Press, 2004.

Lessig, Lawrence. The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. Random House, 2001.

Levine, Rick. Locke, Christopher. Searle, David. Weinberger, David. The Cluetrain Manifesto. Perseus Publishing, 2000.

Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Penguin Books, 2008.

Von Hippel, Eric. Democratizing Innovation. MIT Press, 2005.

Film Forum: Adventures in Poetry and Surfing, 2002. Accessed from http://www.christianitytoday.com.