The Future of the Internet and How To Review It

I finished reading Jonathan Zittrain’s “The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It” many weeks ago, and have been struggling with just what to say as far as a review. (Several folks on Twitter asked my opinion when I tweeted about it…) On one hand, it’s a terribly important book, as it gets at a critique of the direction technology is quickly moving today. On the other, I think it falls short in two ways; one that might be particular to me, and another, that’s far more important.

A google search for reviews of FOTI yields 150,000 results — apparently, the last thing this world needs is another review of this book! So, for brevity’s sake, here is the 30 second version: Because computer security has become so difficult to manage, there is a trend today pushing computer tech “safer” by making it more proprietary; unfortunately, this also makes computer tech less “generative.” In other words, we’re trading innovation for security. And that’s bad.

There are, overall, two very compelling components of this book. First, Zittrain writes a thorough history of the Internet, weaving the themes of security and innovation throughout. He spends time detailing the pre-web days, a history that is often overlooked. The “Internet,” of course, did not begin with Netscape — online pay services, such as Compuserve and Prodigy, provided the precursors to today’s distributed communities, the first time a critical mass of users were introduced to each other virtually. (Previously, online interaction had primarily been the domain of techies…) Yet these private pre-web domains also provided a model for a locked-down net — unlike today, where anyone can put up a website with relative ease, it was very difficult for users to get their content into these “walled gardens.” Fast-forward to today, and sites like Wikipedia enable user-generated content and, more importantly, a social community with guidelines and standards that have helped it become one of the most popular sites on the Internet.

Zittrain’s history of the net is certainly important for anyone not familiar with this subject matter. The problem, though, is for anyone who has studied this history, or — ahem — may be of a particular age, as — ahem — I am, may have actually lived through this history. For anyone who remembers the sound of a modem dialing up into their college’s bank of access numbers (some readers at this point may be asking, “What’s a modem?”), or remembers the feeling when they first entered a place like LambdaMOO and saw people interacting with people — and bots(!), or surfed the text-only web with Lynx, Zittrain’s version is somewhat, dare I say it…bland.

While this text could certainly serve as, for example, a college course’s text as a means to guide students through the early days of the net, there are much richer, more compelling texts that get at this period of time — Rheingold’s “Virtual Community” and Dibbell’s “My Tiny Life” immediately come to mind.

And while providing a more compelling narrative of the net’s history wasn’t at all Zittrain’s goal, it made the book somewhat, again, dare I say it, boring, only because so much of that history was already known to me. Throughout the first half or so of the text, I just kept wanting to fast-forward, to get something that was new. (It also did not help that I had seen JZ speak twice before reading the book, so I generally knew his argument going in.) So, while this may be particular to me and my personal knowledge of the subject matter, much of FOTI felt like a familiar history review.

The second compelling component of this book is, of course, the thesis itself. Zittrain’s warning is an important one. The trends we see today in computer tech — the popularity of devices such as the iPhone, the success of “cloud computing” and “SaaS,” the Facebook Terms of Service fiasco — all point in the direction of a less innovative, more controlled Internet. His notion of less-generative, “tethered” connections are similar to the central theme of Nicholas Carr’s “Big Switch,” in which Carr compares the Internet to electricity. Just as we get power from a monopoly, and the service is essentially unhackable, one day we may find ourselves using centrally-managed, completely unhackable software and hardware.

Yet, just as I agree with the importance of Zittrain’s message, I find myself less enthusiastic about his solution to this problem. Whether or not you agree his book falls short here may depend on just how optimistic or pessimistic you feel about human nature in general, for the future of the Internet, according to Zittrain, depends on our ability to pull together, to find common cause in an ethical approach to technology:

…we must figure out how to inspire people to act humanely in digital environments that today do not facilitate the appreciative smiles and “thank yous” present in the physical world. This can be accomplished with tools—such those discussed in the previous chapter and those yet to be invented—to foster digital environments that inspire people to act humanely. For the generative Internet fully to come into its own, it must allow us to harness the connections we have with each other, to coordinate when we have the time, talent, and energy, and to benefit from others’ coordination when we do not. Such tools allow us to express and live our civic instincts online, trusting that the expression of our collective character will be one at least as good as that imposed by outside sovereigns—sovereigns who, after all, are only people themselves.

Zittrain points to Wikipedia as a model of this collectively ethical and humane behavior. And while it’s true that the Wikipedians have helped to build a useful system that manages to somehow pull order out of the chaos that is a completely open and editable website, at the same time, Wikipedia is vulnerable to a very fair critique that, rather than being an encyclopedia of human knowledge, it has become a repository of “things that can be verified by CNN and other corporate-owned media.”

The Wikipedia Art project helped raise this critique. For another example, one I found somewhat at random, look at the discussion page for media theorist Joshua Meyrowitz in Wikipedia, whose entry was nominated for deletion on January 2, 2008. It was flagged both because, to the wikipedians, it seemed to be written be the author himself (“vanity” violations), and also failed for a lack of “reliable sources.” Now, the fact that his wikipedia entry stands today is perhaps a testament to how well Wikipedia works. But reading through the discussion page, I get the sense that if different, more adamant wikipedians were involved, Meyrowitz’s page may have been deleted. In any case, the point remains that “reliable sources” really means, “what we can find in a google search” — making Google the determining factor in Wikipedia’s usefulness.

Zittrain’s FOTI, then, left me feeling somewhat divided at the end. His message is a significant achievement in distilling the dangers of where we’re headed — I don’t think there’s any doubt we’re moving into uncharted territory when it comes to personal data being handed over to this “cloud” of a small number of corporate, profit-driven entities who may or may not protect our data, depending on whether or not it makes financial sense. And I don’t think there’s any doubt that making Apple the gatekeeper of what is “good” software and what is unacceptable (as they do for anything that gets onto the iPhone) is counterproductive.

At the same time, I worry that figuring out how to “inspire people to act humanely in digital environments” is an insufficient solution to this trend. While we can build tools and put our faith in the kinds of communities created on sites like Wikipedia, it may not be enough to stop the juggernaut that is the corporate entity. What’s most worrisome is that people seem to have no inhibitions about turning over their lives to Facebook and Google. That people are willing to submit themselves to becoming marketing fodder for the “free” use of a website. That people don’t know, and don’t seem to be interested in, even the basics of computer security and safety. (You sent me a link? Sure, I’ll click it!) And that these things are done day after day, without self-reflection, without questions.

The future of the Internet is unknown, but if it depends on people becoming more conscientious users of technology, I have my doubts.

Your Liberal Media

Dan Froomkin, columnist and blogger extraordinaire, fired:

Washington Post Media Communications Director Kris Coratti tells POLITICO that “our editors and research teams are constantly reviewing our columns, blogs and other content to make sure we’re giving readers the most value when they are on our site while balancing the need to make the most of our resources. Unfortunately, this means that sometimes features must be eliminated, and this time it was the blog that Dan Froomkin freelanced for washingtonpost.com.”

The Politico story has reaction from across the blogosphere, and it ain’t pretty.

And the “mainstream media” wonders why no one takes them seriously these days?

Tweeting The Revolution Is Not Without Risks

The biggest story about Iran, besides the protestors themselves, is the protesters’ use of social networking sites, especially Twitter, to help perpetuate the images and stories of what is happening on the ground.

But these same sites that can fuel a revolution can also be misused, as noted here in a recent SANS ISC diary:

From an information security perspective, the threat is leading people to malicious websites. Set up a blog with an archive of posts on the issue, “borrow” a few pictures of the conflict and post them. Tweet a message that says “live images of protestors being shot at” and point to your blog that also includes pre-tested malware that is known to be not detected by AV vendors. Twitter and social networking tools provide another mechanism to lead people to the cyber-threat where only e-mail was used before. Twitter has no “anti-spam” features, everyone talking about a subject shows up.

So while the use of twitter and other tools provide for a means to breach censorship rules of foreign regimes, it does not come without risks. Is the information valid? Is it leading you to malware infecting your machine?

Simple precautions should be taken when viewing these sites — at the very least, make sure your AV is up to date, and use Firefox with the NoScript add-on.

We’re only at the early stages of this kind of political “hacktivism,” and as our lives turn increasingly digital, the tools and technologies we use are simultaneously connecting us to others as well as putting us at risk.

Oh Good, The Power Grid Will Be Hackable

A new security hole has been found in utility smart meters:

New electricity meters being rolled out to millions of homes and businesses are riddled with security bugs that could bring down the power grid, according to a security researcher who plans to demonstrate several attacks at a security conference next month.

The so-called smart meters for the first time provide two-way communications between electricity users and the power plants that serve them…There’s just one problem: The newfangled meters needed to make the smart grid work are built on buggy software that’s easily hacked, said Mike Davis, a senior security consultant for IOActive. The vast majority of them use no encryption and ask for no authentication before carrying out sensitive functions such as running software updates and severing customers from the power grid. The vulnerabilities, he said, are ripe for abuse.

What perhaps adds a more dangerous element to this story is Google’s recent plans to hook into the power grid, via free software that customers run:

In a move to connect the emerging smart energy grid with the Internet, Google on Wednesday announced partnerships with eight national and international energy companies to allow consumers to access data about their energy usage through Google’s PowerMeter gadget.

Google PowerMeter is a software application that can be embedded on the company’s iGoogle personal home pages. It displays data about home energy usage, data provided by the new generation of network-ready smart power meters that are being installed by various utilities around the world.

While the vulnerabilities aren’t related to Google’s software, the fact that they are in this game, using the same free software model that made their other gazillion products popular, means there is a good chance this type of smart metering will take off. Under the guise of “informing the consumer,” the cool factor of monitoring your electricity bills over the net might cause the underlying software risks to be ignored, or pushed to the side.

Facebook Goldrush

Last week, Facebook introduced “vanity URLs,” where users could address their FB pages with a well-known site name. The result? A bunch of name-squatters:

Nearly 6 million members of the popular social networking Web site have registered a custom name since the feature became available late Friday night…The next step: people hoping to profit with the names. For example, on Assetize, a marketplace for Web domains, Twitter and Web accounts, multiple Facebook vanity URLs have gone up on the auction block, including Facebook.com/Nasa, Facebook.com/iPhones and Facebook.com/HPComputers.

…Many Facebook users found their actual names were unavailable by the time they went to register them…Although the company said it was taking steps to prevent the cybersquatting of popular names and companies, some celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, George Bush, Kanye West, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sergey Brin still found themselves with Facebook doppelgangers.

From the early days of the net, the practice of grabbing domain names in order to sell them to the highest bidder was prevalent, as chronicled in this 1994 Washington Post article:

To reach Jim Cashel on the Internet, just drop him a line at his e-mail address “cashel@esquire.com.”

You can’t call him at Esquire magazine, though. He doesn’t work there and never has, according to the company. Try some of his other 17 e-mail addresses, including “hertz.com” and “trump.com,” and you’ll get the same result. He doesn’t work for those companies either, spokesmen said.

But Cashel does own the words they might want to use in their cyberspace addresses.

…The rush by Cashel and others to register potentially valuable names may cost businesses millions. As more companies venture on-line, they may find their name of choice already has been registered by a speculator, a competitor, an employee or even a company in a different industry with a similar name. At stake is corporate identity in the information age.

Some things never change.

Why Does Amazon Hate Lefties?

From Wired’s review of the new GIANT Kindle:

The reader’s appearance is further streamlined by its absence of buttons on the left-hand side of the unit; the controls to turn pages have migrated exclusively to the right side. Even though I’m a righty, and do most of my page turning from that side, I do miss the Kindle 2’s Next page button on the left, which I use when reading in bed, head propped up by my right arm. With the DX, I find myself reaching across the page with my left hand to turn the screen, giving me a sense of the difficulties that southpaws may face with the DX. Amazon’s suggested fix is using the DX’s controls to invert the page image, and flipping the unit so the keyboard is on top. But that gives lefties an upside down QWERTY.

Not that I was going to buy one anyway, but, as a person of the left-handed-ness persuasion, I find this an outrage! An outrage I say!

Seriously, this seems very odd Amazon would not only build something in this manner, but also recognize that mistake through a clumsy “fix” of turning the Kindle upside down, which, from a user interface perspective, still would not work.

Bad design.

CNN: Leave No Idle Speculation Unspeculated

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Now, we asked Airbus for a briefing on possible causes on the electrical warning system, what protections are built in for lightning strikes. An Airbus spokeswoman said it’s way too early at this stage, and the company does not want to engage in speculation, Wolf. Of course, that’s the responsible thing to do.

The one thing known from the start about the tragic plane crash earlier this week was that we knew absolutely nothing about what happened. No black box, no mayday. But that, though, did not prevent CNN from “engaging in speculation” about the crash, even after its reporters acknowledged it would be irresponsible to do so.

Following are many examples of CNN’s irresponsible, tabloid-style approach to the news.