By Peter Griffiths
academic
Professor Jonathan Zittrain says the latest must-have
devices are sealed, "sterile" boxes that stifle creativity and
turn consumers into passive users of technology.
Unlike home computers, new Internet-enabled gadgets don't
lend themselves to the sort of tinkering and collaboration that
leads to technological advances, he says.
The mix of gadgets, over-regulation and Internet security
fears could destroy the old system where mainstream technology
could be "influenced, even revolutionized, out of left field."
"I don't want to see a two-tier world where only the
experts can survive ... and the non-experts are stuck between
something they don't understand and something that limits
them," Zittrain told Reuters in an interview.
Zittrain, professor of Internet governance and regulation
at the Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University, says the
Internet's simple, open architecture is key to its enormous
success and also its flaws.
Amateur enthusiasts have come up with scores of new ideas
by tinkering with the Internet on home computers. However,
hackers have caused huge disruption by exploiting its loose
structure.
Zittrain contrasts one of the first mass-produced home
computers, the Apple II from the 1970s, with Apple's latest
gadget, the iPhone. He says the iPhone is typical of what he
calls "tethered appliances."
"They are appliances in that they are easy to use, while
not easy to tinker with," he writes. "They are tethered because
it is easy to for their vendors to change them from afar, long
after the devices have left warehouses and showrooms."
They are a world away from the "generative Internet," a
term Zittrain uses to describe the open, creative, innovative
approach that helped build the Internet.
The rise of viruses and fraud has also led to tighter
controls on PCs, particularly those in schools, universities,
offices and public places, Zittrain says.
People are often blocked from experimenting with shared
computers and their input is severely limited.
There is still time to save the Internet, he believes,
although the answer lies in social rather than technological
changes.
Society should resist more regulation and place its trust
in the Internet's users. The success of Wikipedia, the online
encyclopaedia written and edited by its readers, shows how
self-governance can work.
Internet users should see themselves as "netizens," active
participants in the online world rather than passive consumers.
"The community itself exercises a form of self-restraint
and policing," he said. "You see it in Britain when you try to
jump a queue, you see it on Wikipedia when a page is
vandalized.
"The challenge to the technologists is to build
technologies to let people of good faith help without having to
devote their lives to it."
(Editing by Steve Addison and Paul Casciato)
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