Review by
Bill D. Herman
Department of Film and Media
Hunter College

The future of the Internet—and how to stop it, by Jonathan Zittrain, Yale University Press, 2008

The late Marshall McLuhan’s reception highlights the costs and benefits of making bold claims. Nearly all scholars "know" the medium is not really the message; media technology scholars generally huddle between "soft" technological determinism and "soft" social shaping . McLuhan serves as a deterministic punching bag, yet Understanding Media is still "an essential text—or, perhaps more properly, an essential anti-text—of media studies" .

In The future of the Internet—and how to stop it, Jonathan Zittrain takes a soft social shaping approach while still grabbing the reader’s attention. This book takes many risks, some successful, and some less so. His predicted migration away from general-purpose computers to special-purpose Internet browsing machines, while spooky, is unlikely. His proposed solutions are a mix of good ideas, questionable prescriptions, and proposals lacking sufficient detail. Yet Zittrain has written a must-read for anybody who studies the Internet, and it is far more an essential text than anti-text.

Parts 1 and 2 are fantastic. Zittrain discusses the fundamental structure and historical precursors of the modern internet, problems with internet security, the legal differences between distributed and centralized data, and Wikipedia’s success. This is an invaluable addition to the literature on the Internet and society. For readers (not to mention instructors) seeking an accessible overview of the early history and ethos of the personal computer and the Internet, as well as the accompanying social and policy choices, look no further.

Zittrain’s key theoretical contribution is the idea of generativity: the degree to which a technology serves as a platform for uninvited, unanticipated add-on innovations. The Apple II was an open platform on which Dan Bricklin built VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet software and the first "killer app" for the Apple PC, in 1979. Not only did Apple not authorize this invention, they initially failed to understand why their sales mushroomed. In contrast, the iPhone is a sterile platform, controlled by Apple. While this is great for security, it is bad for would-be inventors—and thus bad for the public, which loses out on unforeseen positive developments.

A networked, powerful computer is incredibly generative, leading to innumerable innovations. These innovations would not have happened on "centrally controlled—‘tethered’—information appliances" (p. 101), which are safer but closed to uninvited third-party innovation.

Starting with IBM’s 19th Century precursors, Zittrain discusses custom, single-vendor computing systems, and he describes the trade-offs between them and general-purpose PCs. He explains how generativity led to the PC’s triumph over these proprietary systems. Likewise, he reviews the history of Internet service providers, which made a similar transition from proprietary networks such as AOL to generative networks that just sold access to the open internet. This is couched in a sharp history of network design, as well as network design principles, that reflects untold hours of careful research and well-planned writing.

The combination of generative computers and neutral broadband networks has brought many social ills, however, including exponential growth in malware, spam, and cybercrime. In light of these threats, Zittrain fears that "consumers will increasingly abandon the PC for [information appliances], or they will demand that the PC itself become appliancized" (p. 57), sacrificing their own ability to install innovative software tomorrow for security today. He sees this trend already in tools like smartphones and networked video game consoles. We would all lose out if this transition comes to pass. Innovation would slow dramatically, and we would make our behavior far more subject to government regulation and perfect enforcement.

Thankfully, general-purpose computers are here to stay. Zittrain unintentionally highlights a failed experiment in sterility: the AMD Internet Box (p. 59). It only runs internet browsing software, and only AMD can install new code. This is sterile and safe, but unlike the iPhone, the Internet Box has inspired almost no media coverage and zero imitators. I assigned Zittrain’s book in an undergraduate course—a decision I recommend and will repeat—and asked whether students would choose this malware-proof technology. Even avowed luddites scoffed; they all want the option to add new software.

Since Zittrain wrote his manuscript, the smartphone market has also moved toward generativity. The iPhone developer’s tools were unreleased as Zittrain wrote, but now the App Store features over 100,000 third-party applications . Apple’s ability and willingness to veto new applications is objectionable, but no other major smartphone platform system requires application approval, and the latest entrant—Google’s open-source Android—is rapidly making substantial inroads in large part due to its generativity . Sterility is just not the reason for the iPhone’s success; a similarly wonderful Android phone would do quite well.

While mass migration to Internet appliances is unlikely, it is unfortunately not the only vehicle that might take us away from generativity. It is far more likely that telecom firms, media industries, and policymakers choose an undesirable future Internet. Broadband ISPs sell service in sheltered regional duopolies and have already vowed to begin favoring some online destinations or some applications over others . Concerns about these statements have helped fuel proposals to mandate network neutrality .

Further, copyright holders are pushing for mandated copyright filtering and requirements that Internet service providers cut off copyright violators. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, being negotiated in secret, seems to contain such measures . When network providers, copyright holders, and our nation’s trade representatives are all explicitly trying to reduce the network’s generativity, these concerns are far more pressing than Zittrain’s distant-if-ever scenario of a world of information appliances.

Zittrain sets aside these concerns, declaring, "if there is a present worldwide threat to neutrality in the movement of bits, it comes not from restrictions on traditional Internet access that can be evaded using generative PCs, but from enhancements to traditional and emerging appliancized services that are not open to third-party tinkering" (p. 181). General-purpose computers can reduce network control, but few users will play this cat-and-mouse game with network providers and law enforcement—and some who play will lose. Zittrain is right to be concerned about the loss of generativity, but he is quite mistaken about the most likely cause.

In Part 3, Zittrain proposes various solutions to the Internet’s problems. It is a thoughtful collection of recommendations with some hits, some misses, and some proposals that are simply discussed in too little detail. Zittrain sees Wikipedia’s success based on distributed effort and a community ethos as a possible template for solutions to problems such as malware and privacy confusion.

Zittrain, along with colleagues at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, has set up StopBadware.org, an effort to leverage the online community to fight back against malware. Their best-known project is Herdict, software that allows ordinary end users to sniff out bad software and (via HerdictWeb) online censorship. With StopBadware.org, Zittrain is getting his hands dirty trying to solve real problems. HerdictWeb is already a substantial success.

Chapter 9 presents the best short discussion of the problems of "Privacy 2.0" that this reviewer has read. Zittrain proposes an intriguing solution based on community norms: a Creative Commons-like set of licenses, allowing end users to preclude or permit certain uses of their online information. This would be imperfect, but it "could forestall many of the conflicts that will arise in the absence of any standard at all" (p. 227). While still at the formative stage, this idea is well worth pursuing.

The book also contains at least two objectionable proposals. First, Zittrain encourages policymakers to consider some degree of third-party liability for hardware and software makers, as well as ISPs, for compromised computers (pp. 163-164), though it is unclear how to impose meaningful liability without chilling innovation. A serious liability regime actually seems the most likely route toward a world of locked-down PCs. Second, he encourages ISPs to consider network management that discriminates against some content, such as viruses (p. 165), but they have the legal power now and seem not to. Only the economic payoff of content discrimination will fund the needed filtering technology, and fighting malware then serves as convenient justification.

Proposals encouraging ISPs to solve the problems of zombie computers, as well as setting up "an array of proxies … for guidance on how best to configure their PCs" (p. 167) are interesting but not fully developed. Other proposals, such as those in Chapter 8 that would clear the thickets of copyrights that slow innovation, can be found elsewhere but are well articulated here.

Zittrain’s book is insightful, thought provoking, and imminently readable. Its strengths far outweigh its weaknesses, and the author has done us all a great service. Thankfully, history will likely frown on the predicted shift away from general-purpose computers, but unlike McLuhan’s Understanding Media, the book’s core insights are spot-on. While not perfect, The Future of the Internet should be in your future.