The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog

A number of very interesting books have been released over the past year or two which debate how the Internet is reshaping our culture and the economy. I've reviewed a couple of them here but I have been waiting to compile a sort of mega-book review once I found a sensible way to conceptually group them together. I'm not going to have time to cover each of them here in the detail they deserve, but I think I have at least found a sensible way to categorize them. For lack of better descriptors, I've divided these books and thinkers into two camps: "Internet optimists" versus "Internet Pessimists." Here's a list of some of the individuals and books (or other articles and blogs) that I believe epitomize these two camps of thinking:

Adherents & Their Books / Writings

Internet Optimists	Internet Pessimists
Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks	Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur
Chris Anderson, The Long Tail and "Free!"	Lee Siegel, Against the Machine
Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody	Nick Carr, The Big Switch
Cass Sunstein, Infotopia	Cass Sunstein, Republic.com
Don Tapscott, Wikinomics	Todd Gitlin, Media Unlimited
Kevin Kelly & Wired mag in general	Alex Iskold, "The Danger of Free"
Mike Masnick & TechDirt blog	Mark Cuban

And here's a rough sketch of the major beliefs or key themes that separate these two schools of thinking about the impact of the Internet on our culture and economy:

Beliefs / Themes

Internet Optimists	Internet Pessimists
*Culture / Social*
Net is Participatory	Net is Polarizing
Net yields Personalization	Net yields Fragmentation
a "Global village"	Balkanization
Heterogeneity / Diversity of Thought	Homogeneity / Close-mindedness
Net breeds pro-democratic tendencies	Net breeds anti-democratic tendencies
Tool of liberation & empowerment	Tool of frequent misuse & abuse

*Economics / Business*
Benefits of "free" ("Free" = future of media / business)	Costs of "free" ("Free" = end of media / business)
Increasing importance of "Gift economy"	Continuing importance of property rights, profits, firms
"Wiki" model = wisdom of crowds; power of collective intelligence	"Wiki" model = stupidity of crowds; errors of collective intelligence
Mass collaboration	Individual effort

So, what to make of this intellectual war? Who's got the story right?

Well, I actually didn't exactly get a chance to say quite enough for this to qualify as much of a "debate," but I was brought in roughly a half hour into this WBUR (Boston NPR affiliate) radio show featuring Jonathan Zittrain, author of the recently released: The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It. Jonathan was kind enough to suggest to the producers that I might make a good respondent to push back a bit in opposition to the thesis set forth in his new book.

Jonathan starts about 6 minutes into the show and they bring me in around 29 minutes in. Although I only got about 10 minutes to push back, I thought the show's host Tom Ashbrook did an excellent job raising many of the same questions I do in my 3-part review (Part 1, 2, 3) of Jonathan's provocative book.

In the show, I stress the same basic points I made in those reviews: (1) he seems to be over-stating things quite a bit in saying that the old "generative" Internet is "dying"; and in doing so, (2) he creates a false choice of possible futures from which we must choose. What I mean by false choice is that Jonathan doesn't seem to believe a hybrid future is possible or desirable. I see no reason why we can't have the best of both worlds--a world full of plenty of tethered appliances, but also plenty of generativity and openness.

If you're interested, listen in.

I swear I'm not trying to pick on Jonathan Zittrain, but I continue to find examples that create problems for his thesis from The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It that the whole world is going to hell because of the rise of what he contemptuously calls "sterile, tethered devices." Again, in his provocative book, Zittrain argues that, for a variety of reasons, the glorious days of the generative, open Internet and general-purpose PCs are supposedly giving way to closed networks and closed devices. In my lengthy review of his book, I argued that Zittrain was over-stating things and creating a false choice of possible futures from which we must choose. I see no reason why we can't have the best of both worlds-a world full of plenty of tethered appliances, but also plenty of generativity and openness. In a follow-up essay, I pointed out how Apple's products create a particular problem for Zittrain's thesis because even though they are "sterile and tethered," there is no doubt that the company's approach has produced some wonderful results. As I said..

Personally... I prefer all those "general purpose" devices that Zittrain lionizes. But, again, we can have both. Let Steve Jobs be a control freak and keep those walls around Apple's digital garden high and tight if he wants. There are plenty of other wide open gardens for the rest of us to play in.

In my original review, I briefly mentioned another problem for the Zittrain thesis: old people! I was reminded about this when I was reading this New York Times article today entitled, "At a Certain Age, Simplicity Sells in High-Tech Gadgets," by Alina Tugend. Tugend argues:

[Note: You might want to first read my review of Jonathan Zittrain's book to give this essay some context.]

Jonathan Zittrain must have been smiling as he read Leander Kahney's excellent Wired cover story this month, "How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong." In a sense, the article vindicates Zittrain's thesis in The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It.

Again, in his provocative book, Zittrain argues that, for a variety of reasons, the glorious days of the generative, open Internet and general-purpose PCs are supposedly giving way to closed networks and a world of what he contemptuously calls "sterile, tethered devices." And Apple products such as the iPhone, the iPod, and iTunes serve as prime examples of the troubling world that await us. And Kahney's article confirms that Apple is every bit as closed and insular as Zittrain suggests. Kahney nicely contrasts Apple with Google, a company that "embraces openness," trusts "the wisdom of crowds," and has its famous "Don't be evil" philosophy:

It's ironic, then, that one of the Valley's most successful companies ignored all of these tenets. Google and Apple may have a friendly relationship -- Google CEO Eric Schmidt sits on Apple's board, after all -- but by Google's definition, Apple is irredeemably evil, behaving more like an old-fashioned industrial titan than a different-thinking business of the future. Apple operates with a level of secrecy that makes Thomas Pynchon look like Paris Hilton. It locks consumers into a proprietary ecosystem. And as for treating employees like gods? Yeah, Apple doesn't do that either.

I had planned on blogging from the Tech Policy Summit out here in Los Angeles this week, but Andrew Feinberg is doing an amazing job of it over at the Capitol Valley blog that I don't need to. Andrew Noyes of National Journal also has good coverage over at the Tech Daily Dose blog.

I'm heading off to the Tech Policy Summit shortly. It's taking place from Wed-Friday out in LA. Very impressive agenda of speakers and topics, ranging from privacy law, copyright policy, child safety, broadband and spectrum issues, and international competitiveness. I am speaking on a panel on day 2 of the event, but I might try to do some live blogging out there if I have the time.

One of the books I had planned to review next was True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society by Salon tech & media blogger Farhad Manjoo. Manjoo argues that new communications technologies are loosening our culture's grip on what people once called "objective reality." Truth, he argues, is becoming a relative thing in a world of information overload.

But I'm not sure I need to review Manjoo's book at all now since my comments would mostly repeat everything Steven Johnson had to say in his exchange with Manjoo on Slate last week. Here's one clip from Johnson's sharp response:

Saying that the Web amplifies deception is, to me, a bit like saying that New York is more dangerous than Baltimore because it has more murders. Yes, in absolute numbers, there are more untruths on the Web than we had in the heyday of print or mass media, but there are also more truths out there. We've seen that big, decentralized systems like open-source software and Wikipedia aren't perfect, but over time they do trend toward more accuracy and stability. I think that will increasingly be the case as more and more of our news migrates to the Web.
That's why I think it's important to note that many of your key examples are dependent on old-style, top-down media distribution. You talk about the American public's continuing belief in a connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein; the Swift Boat Veteran ads that distorted the truth of Kerry's record; Lou Dobbs ranting on CNN. These are all distortions that speak to the power of the old mass-media model or the even older political model of the executive branch.

Anyway, read their entire exchange. I certainly think Johnson gets the better of it.