Joho the Blog
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December 10, 2004
JZ is giving a talk in his masterful way. I can't convey the humor and the graphics, but the basics of the idea are (sort of): With a platform, you can't predict what people will do with it. that's what we got when PC's met the network. That enables tremendous freedom for people to innovate. He calls it "the generative Internet." But innovation disrupts. Entrepreneurs who succeed at the platform (e.g., Microsoft) then want to close it off. Now general purpose PC is giving way to devices that do something addictively well but not open to third party apps — Tivo, Blackberries, XBox. The insecurity of the Internet will not stand. That's why we're seeing gated communities within the network. And the warning from XP that says that an app isn't certified will expand so that your computer (especially if it's your business' or the library's) simply won't run "insecure" apps. And won't we require licensing of sw developers so they can't produce apps that destroy entire industries? The Net's getting closed, JZ says. We'll see a comeback of the "appliance" model: closed tech. The young nerd's need to tinker with stuff is under siege. In the hopeful future, there's a unified Internet and the freedom to tinker. It's not just neutral in the middle but the endpoints are free also. (He points out how much damage you could do if you hacked the Microsoft auto-update server.) It's about the experts vs. the amateurs, Jonathan concludes. Posted
by D. Weinberger at December 10, 2004 11:58 PM
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Comments
YYyyyyyy....
...No.
I mean: We're just bustin' into web-apps.
We're continuously pulling intelligence out of your computer, and onto some server somewhere.
We're headed for the Grid. The only thing that's really going to sit on your desktop, is whatever code must be on your computer. That is, your 2D, 3D, sound rendering, and sound recognition code. The rest is just communicating signals to some server some where, where the actual work is going on. Could be your grid cube, could be part of some giant cube in some desert somewhere.
Your platform is near irrelevant, once you can talk with the Internet.
Gated communities: The gated communities are there because it's easier to add integrative functionality when you control both ends. The way it works is: Someone gets a cool idea. They implement it in a gated community. People agree it's cool, and make a general protocol for it. The protocol is implemented, and it's no longer the gated communities thing. Then people get new ideas. Which is easier: Convincing everyone it's a good idea, and get everyone to write it into their tools? Or is it easier to just implement it, and let them see it? You get a new gated community. And then people think it's cool. And then they make open protocols...
Posted by: Lion Kimbro | December 11, 2004 04:14 AM
Along this same line, I recommend you take a look at a paper by my colleague (and one of the true wise old heads of the Internet) Terry Gray, titled Security in the Post-Internet Era.
It's available at http://staff.washington.edu/gray/papers/netsec2003.html
sample quote:
"What will the future bring? Is it likely that the trend toward isolation and "closed" networks will be reversed? If not, the open Internet utility paradigm is history. That paradigm allowed users, system admins, and network operators to assume that if connectivity between any pair of Internet-connected hosts wasn't working, it was unintentional and something was broken. That paradigm is in fact over, never to return. We can no longer make any assumptions about connectivity between Internet hosts. The best we can hope for now is conditional openness in certain subsets of the Internet. This is a big change, with dramatic implications for innovation and network operations."
Posted by: Oren Sreebny | December 12, 2004 11:53 PM