Group Read - JZ Book
Pipes Output
Updated: 1 hour 53 min ago
Tue, 2008-04-29 01:12
even the safest Volvo can be driven into a wall. - Too much power in the hands of bad users means it is tempting to tether and undermine the generative economy
the appliances. - a more tethered internet is a more regulable internet
a network. - TiVo v. EchoStar and PlayMedia v. AOL show how tethering increases the powers of regulators
A change in technology can change the power dynamic between those who promulgate the law and those who are subject to it. - Technology transforms all sides of the power equation
normal surfing. - china's simple ways of censoring -- add bumps
Comprehensive regulatory crackdowns require a non-generative endpoint or influence over the individual using it to ensure that the endpoint is not repurposed. - real regul crackdown not possible with the generative end-point
Tue, 2008-04-29 01:12
bad code - End-to-end neutrality should give way to "generativity test": control the network where it does least harm to generativity.
generative system. - Abandon the strict notions of middle and end-points once we take a "generativity maximising" view of policy (NB - this is like moving from a rights-based view to a utilitarian one .. no wonder JZ like the pragmatism of JS Mill)
Tue, 2008-04-29 01:12
technical layer. - the general story of open success that contains the seed of its closing; Wikipedia is as much at risk as the PC and Internet.
layers - Generative is delicate, it is not self-sustaining; and ignoring that by enthusiasts will endanger it more.
Tue, 2008-04-29 01:12
subscribers - Victory of decentralised Internet not obvious in 1990s versus the centralised behemoths
become - Ingredients of success: quiet growth out of limelight, to avoid being shut down for being too risky
to win. - Battle of Internet vs. AOL/Compuserve/Prodigy is like batlte of PC vs. Appliance; what makes the former win?
dead ends. - Openness of PC and Internet are setting the scene for a counter-revolution; we need to look at history to find inspiration for avoiding lock-down.
access it. - NB - Don't forget that the end-poitn device is integral part of Net (for the user)
the box has come to matter. Internet - If the tethered box wins, then heavy regulation will be possible and we will lose the amateur innovation that has delivered so much of the Net
stop them - Net won against the centralised systems BECAUSE it assumed users would behave well, indeed contribute positive goodwill, even when bad behaviour was technically possible
Tue, 2008-04-29 01:12
went wrong. - The first computer company, Tabulating Machine Company, (1890) leased machines and operated them for clients (gvt, big business) and offered a service, not a piece of equipment.
from scratch - TMC becmae IBM and retained the model; the downside was that innovation was negotiated and slow, and new vendors found it very hard to enter the market.
purposes - The threat of anti-trust forced IBM to unbundle, allowing third party and in-house software in ... but large firms mainly maintained the old model nevetheless.
Cutting and pasting different pieces of Flexowriter tape together allowed the user to do mail merges about as easily as one can do them today with Microsoft Word or its rivals. reprogram them. - '60s corporate comp[uting was IBM or single purpose appliances
problems - PCs come out of a hobbyist branch, not a corporate branch---they were "solutions waiting for problems".
tabulators - Watch and calculator are the consumer equivalent of the information appliance --- and at heart this has got to do with having someone to blame when it doesn't work.
springy posts. revolution - PCs were always expected to run s/w written by authors other than the manufacturer ... but the PC, until the early 80s, was still considered a hobbyist toy.
a university - Corporate computing moved to the mini-computer - still a dumb-terminal system that ran entreprise specific tasks and some general buisness functions.
no more. - Un-networked, hobbyist nature of PC made it particularly lax about security.
opponent - The PC started winning through its killer business apps - wordprocessor, spreadsheet and relational database, while the hobbyist uses led to the development of games.
or the Web. - Business adopted the PC for cost reasons, despite its basic unsuitability to group work; homes bought the PC for one thing and discovered many things they could do with it.
PCs can run. - Microsoft genuinely wanted an open PC running many companies' code, not a s/w monopoly for itself.
installed - A vast network of PCs ready to run new s/w offered a market for new s/w, a market that only grew as the Internet eliminated the cost of the transaction.
themselves - The core of Apple's and MS's business was in making attractive Operating Systems rather than in creating applications themselves, pace the MS antitrust cases of the 1990s that were precisely about such moves.
parties’ code - The backwater of hobbyist computing environemnt was essential to the experimentation & risk-taking that made the PC.
by others - But the PC revolution went beyond the tinkerers to the non-technical user because of the ease with which PC h/w can be re-used for other purposes.
supremacy there. - Here is the typical pattern: creative amateur chaos -> successful product -> market take-over -> risk to interests from original chaos --> temptation to lock it all down.
Tue, 2008-04-29 01:12
somehow - Everyone - even the appliance - needs a network
one another. - But imagine the cost and inconvenience of every appliance having its own network ... so the ability of th enetwork to re-purpose itself is also important to diffusion of technology.
connect to it. - Network architectures and protocols work in an environment in which certain behaviors are assumed ... and new assumptions on behavior lead to new desires for network configuration; trustworthiness is an important such behavioral dimension.
networking - Regulation, not jsut technology, made it hard to make the telephone network useful for anything apart from telephoning.
Hush-A-Phone, which was invented in 1921 as a way to have a conversation without others nearby overhearing it were sold. - ATT had control of network adn devices attached to it
The court drolly noted, “[AT&T does] not challenge the subscriber’s right to seek privacy. They say only that he should achieve it by cupping his hand between the transmitter and his mouth and speaking in a low voice into this makeshift muffler small ways. - Courts forced ATT to accept non-ATT devices on phone system
phone network. - Court principle in 1940s: "as long as network is not harmed, 3rd parties can hook up to it".
The physical layer had become generative, and this generativity meant that additional types of activity in higher layers were made possible. services business - The modem on the "open" ATT network was first generative opportunity for hobbyists and businesses
THE PROPRIETARY NETWORK MODEL themselves - Firt online services were along IBM model but consumer-facing; one company supplied the lot.
unchanged - In 10 years of business, between 1984 & 2004, Compuserve hardly changed its array of offerings.
tinkering - Compuserve piggy-backed on ATT network, phy layer generativity, but did ot itself offer 3rd party acces for generativity.
Why would the proprietary services not harness the potential generativity of their offerings by making their own servers more open to third-party coding? model prevailed. - Information service companies were charging by the minute - so why didn't they want to cultivate 3rd party apps?
shopping - Probably no one actually saw the commercial potential.
free-for-all - By early 90s, a small umber of networks offered slightly differentiated, closed, monolithic services.
who built them. - The answer is probably deep in organisational behavior: mature markets encourage exploitation of niches, not radical exploration of new models.
possible. - Hobbyist BBS encouraged the opposite incentive of proprietary netowrk: bandwidth limitation meant that users had to be as quick as possible.
Jennings’s work - FIDOnet - the original p2p file sharing system - got over some of the bandwidth limitations.
annoyed person. - FIDOnet was a great kludge, but had some real issues - like wrong numbers in the call list ... and irate humans at the end of them.
the world - FIDOnet problems were exactly the problems that ATT worried about when it wanted to limit 3rd party appliances on the network - who was to blame for quality of service.
FIDOnet - Internet offered flexibility of FIDOnet with robustness of proprietary network.
services - PC <--> Internet analogy: Internet connects to proprietary networks and eventually replaces them
message - From the first, Internet is designed to pass information along diverse computer platforms by defining protocols.
points - Internet was low level: allow 2 nodes to exchange information ... and that is all; no prejudgement of what people want to do with that information.
billion - Internet builders were academics who could devote time to the project and yet were doing it for the innate interest; $10m or so spent on Internet between 1969 and 1990 --- great return on investment, from a social point of view.
from them. - Environment of creation is critical in determining the nature of the system: Internet pioneers were trying to get the most out of existing infrastructure and diverse netwroks; contrast business logic of FedEx network.
network work. - The motto among Internet pioneers was, “We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code;” they were building it for themselves, in a sort of Kantian environment of universalisability of the user.
controlling it. - 1991, backbone privatisation context also allowed for decentralisation of network ownership and operation.
tryout period - Internet -> Windows PC link built by a single academic hobbyist
access - 1991, first opening of Internet to non-research uses; by mid 90s, proprietary networks were branding mainly as ISPs --- generative boom was gathering unbelievable speed.
code for it. - Internet was built away from commercial logic, no trying to guess what the conusmer wanted; just like the hobbyist PC.
rust that at least some third-party software writers will write good and useful code, and trust that users of the device will be able to access and sort out the good and useful code from the bad harmful code. - Basic trade-off: consistency, quality and reliability of service (closed systems) versus breadth of uses, trust of open systems.
approach - Intenret design choices made sense given a sociology, not just an negineering environment.
Its origins can be found in a 1984 paper by Internet architects David Clark, David Reed, and Jerry Saltzer. requirements - Procrastination principle: 1984 Internet engineer academics formuilate argument that only universally useful features should be built into the network, with other specific work being done at the end-points.
The people using this network of networks and configuring its endpoints had to be trusted to be more or less competent and pure enough at heart that they would not intentionally or negligently disrupt the network. persists today. - Internet design assumed basic trustworthiness and competence.
Yet the assumption that network participants can be trusted, and indeed that they will be participants rather than customers, infuses the Internet’s design at nearly every level. an outsider. - Banks are built for robbers, airports for terrorists ... the Internet was built for colleagues.
the IDs. - AOL/CompServe had identity management built-in: wanted to know who you were for marketing purposes ... good for accountability, too.
User identification is left to individual Internet users and servers to sort out if they wish to demand credentials of some kind from those with whom they communicate. contents - On Internet, identity-management was left to specific service providers or apps to choose.
regulation - There's good and bad in internet's anonymity -- can't pursue bad behavers, but can't get the freedom fighters against oppressive governments either -- but an engineering decision has ended up havign huge social impacts.
The person at the endpoint must instead rely on falling dominos of trust. The Internet is thus known as a “best efforts” network, sometimes rephrased as “Send it and pray” or “Every packet an adventure.” - Internet as "network of networks" loosely cobbled together entails the inability to develop quality of service, or bandwidth agreements, that apply between any 2 points.
chapter - "bit egalitarianism" is assumed in the network, and fixes have been found along the way (eg Akamai & network caching).
environment - Crucible of development - collaborativ academis -- strangely made something that thrived beyond it and gave world this wildly generative environment.
dead end. - Is the appliance and the proprietary network an evolutionary dead-end?
ignore - The generational pattern of generative technology: small-world success, big-world expansion through commercial forces, limitations of the model; limitations now may threaten the ethos that amde it so good, but limitations are real.
Tue, 2008-04-29 01:12
three layers. - The Network = physical layer + protocol layer + content layer
hierarchies - Network layer separation is a condition of polyarchy --- "ordered independence".
principle at work - IP protocol is the "Natural Monopoly" in the system --- that AND NO MORE
Generativity is a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences. - JZ defines generativity:
Generativity is a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences.
and says open, free and communal don't quite capture it.
consumers - Generativity requires unfiltered inputs and unexpected outputs; this requires contributors and participants, not just consumers to animate the system.
f code. - Conditions of generativity:
1. Leverage, meaning that it makes hard work easier.
(sounds like the opposite would not be much use in any context...) This might also be called a productivity advantage - it increase output per relevant unit input.
specialized - Conditions of Generativity: adaptability-
Can the same equipment be put to new, un-anticipated tasks? Plastic, AC electricity, PC ((How does a musical instrument do here? Does just one thing - produce notes -- but in an infinite variety))
training - Conditions of Generativity: Ease of mastery. Many code masters got there without formal training. They allow a certain level of use (lik cars) that falls short of mastery.
accessible - Accessibility - the easier it is to get mass adoption, the more likely to become generative.
generative - Transferability - or viral nature (/?) -- is it easy for copies to propagate?
frequently generativity at one layer is the best recipe for generativity at the layer above. - Frequent link btwn generative tools and generative systems - a question of culture?
generates - Accessibility of Free Software is key to its viral generativity
Free software satisfies Richard Stallman’s benchmark “four freedoms”: freedom to run the program, freedom to study how it works, freedom to change it, and freedom to share the results with the public at large generative - Generativity is different from Stallman's 4 freedoms: Windows is generative, but not free to examine or distribute; and Linux in TiVo is free but not (technically) accessible.
platform - Subjective affordance maps the possibility space of an object -- greater affordance probably implies greater generativity ... but not if it leads to over-functionalism.
detail - Is there a public good aspect to generative systems?
Generative systems facilitate change. breakthrough - The non-generative encourages change that is conceived of by the single controlling orgnaisation of change
compete - Generativity and disruptive change ... generativity helps with the process of creative destruction.
market model. - Generativity gives the amateur a chance
initial spark - The venture capital model, the amateur, the long tail and generativity all come together - VC picks up once a generative experiment has hit a big seam.
They represent tinkering done by that one person in a hundred or a thousand who is so immersed in an activity or pursuit that improving it would make a big difference—a person who is prepared to experiment with a level of persistence that calls to mind the Roadrunner’s nemesis, Wile E. Coyote. - The type case of the use-innovator -- like Auden's: "caveman who first forgot his supper".
The genius behind such innovations is truly inspiration rather than perspiration, a bit of tinkering with a crazy idea rather than a carefully planned and executed invention responding to clear market demand. - In the young internet, innovations like wikis are inspirational, low effort, out of the blue innovations; lots of bang for buck.
Web service - Generative systems can accommodate many models of production - market, amateur etc
Generativity, then, is a parent of invention, and an open network connecting generative devices makes the fruits of invention easy to share if the inventor is so inclined. - Generativity as a medium of invention - it makes me think of a market place - 2nd Century Palmyra, say - as opposed to a market or a trade.
He then noted the innate value of being able to express oneself idiosyncratically We are seeing the possibility of an emergence of a new popular culture, produced on the folk-culture model and inhabited actively, rather than passively consumed by the masses. makers - Benkler: particpation and transparency potential of new networks changes us deeply as cultural co-creators.
policy issues - Benkler, contd: free culture makes us citizens, market cutlure makes us consumers.
innovation - An economy of "sharing nicely" has created great wealth and internet allows it to increase in scope.
The divide is not between technology and nontechnology, but between hierarchy and polyarchy. In hierarchies, gatekeepers control the allocation of attention and resources to an idea. In polyarchies, many ideas can be pursued independently. Hierarchical systems appear better at nipping dead-end ideas in the bud, but they do so at the expense of crazy ideas that just might work. Polyarchies can result in wasted energy and effort, but they are better at ferreting out and developing obscure, transformative ideas. More importantly, they allow many more people to have a hand at contributing to the system, regardless of the quality of the contribution. - Polyarchy is ... what allows parallel, uncoordinated action to nevertheless produced orderly wholes
contribution - Hierarchy and Polyarchy - who forages better? (is this intrinsic or extrinsic)?
eccentric - Intrinsic bebefits are not just there for the technically enclined - there is recursion in generativity, allow all sorts of activities to become generative.
Internet - Internetworled PC makes group coordination much simpler than it used to be.
disruption - Generativity encourages mutations
economic harm. - How much harmful mutation are we prepared to put up with from Internet - especially social harm?
But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences. The generative Internet and PC were at first perhaps more akin to new societies; as people were connected, they may not have had firm expectations about the basics of the interaction. Who pays for what? Who shares what? The time during which the Internet remained an academic backwater, and the PC was a hobbyist’s tool, helped situate each within the norms of Benkler’s parallel economy of sharing nicely, of greater control in the hands of users and commensurate trust that they would not abuse it. - The general cycle of generativity, at every level. (NB How does the market avoid these? what is the role of free-riding and externalities?)
surfing - Spam and malware are like Mill's notion of individuality having got too far ahead of the collective power to discipline it.
Tue, 2008-04-29 01:12
complex social phenomenon - Institutional info + info by amateurs + transclusion = Privacy concerns, associated data might be unusual or unwanted
Tue, 2008-04-29 01:12
computer - Nov 2nd 1988 - First Internet Worm launched from Princeton ... just looked through directories on a machine for addresses to send itself to and do the same... Internet almost crawls to a halt.
count digital nose count. - Morris' code contained a bug that made it proliferate - the intent had been the harmelss one to count machines on network.
from afar. - worm shows danger of generativity: ease of reprogramming could be dangerous.
and less-skilled users. - Situation is worse today than in 1988 - network bigger and faster, processors more powerful and users less skilled.
threats - Public reaction to worm: other Interent engineers thought it was a challenge; govt set up an enquiry and a program at Carnegie that still today is a clearing-house for info on network security, viruses, etc.
at MIT - Fairy story ending to the fate of Morris, the first worm-maker, dot com millionaire, and now tenured professor at MIT.
Internet - The Internet Engineering Task Force, the de facto UNIX gods of the Internet, published a report ("The Helminthiasis of the Internet" :) describing the technology of the worm, and recommending some ethics training for new comers on the Net. ..
retool them. - Naivety of Internet's response has to be understood in relation to logic of computer architectures.
Urging users to patch their systems and asking hackers to behave more maturely might, in retrospect, seem naïve. operations - Original ATT crack at 2600Hz : ATT, because it controlled a centralised network, could change the architecture to close-down the backdoor.
enforced - Compuserve similarly adopted post Cap'n Crunch rule: "do not let the paths that carry data also carry code."
Internet - the networks evolved slowly and with few surprises either good or bad. This made them both secure and sterile
the Internet. - Security = slow to change, sterile
responsibility - 1988 internet had no ways to control spread of morris worm
attack - endpoint machines were disparate and open - no single way to secure them against morris attack
the Internet. - Insecurity of Internet - allowing code to be run on end-poitns, eg, - is critical to its creative potential
considered - Post Morris, no one really offered to solve the problem, because there was no non-transforming solution ,,,
The decentralized, nonproprietary ownership of the Internet and the computers it linked made it difficult to implement any structural revisions to the way it functioned, and, more important, it was simply not clear what curative changes could be made that did not entail drastic, wholesale, purpose-altering changes to the very fabric of the Internet. Then it stalls. - generative is good: great products, and also great opportunities for self-expression.
generativity - generative systems require trust; trust gets abused; if it is abused enough, people choose security over generativity.
password security. - Remarkable scalability of Internet, especially given new demographic of users in 1990s
a set time. - hacker non-malevolence has slowed the issue of bad code from getting out of hand.
syndicates - graffiti vs. drugs trade - where is the pay-off to bad code ... we can now see one
happening - organised crime apparently controls 1 in 10 home pcs through botnets.
money - spam, ddos ($50k per day), gaming passwords, private infrmation -- all are biz model for malware
orbit - malware has become very sophisticated, with recovery essentially impossible against the worst infections
Internet - generativity is put at risk - either from death by 1000 cuts, or by watershed security moment.
globe - Wipe the world's drives - the watershed scenario.
starts - Badware subterfuge examples
compromised - Badware or not is subjective, in the eye of the installer - see VNC
appliancized - Frustrated consumers, their machines getting infected and mis-performing, will go for appliances
decisions - consumers will increasingly to use the XBOX that works over the PC that crashes.
device - appliances clip the wings of invention
the fore - Vital function of PC is to keep the appliance honest - it is general purpose, and so can be reconfigured into the appliance; but this insurance policy is not WHY the PC is bought, it is unintended social benefit.
gatekeeper - PCs that are shared are getting appliantised by various restrictions.
f the user is allowed to make exceptions, the user can and will make the wrong exceptions, and the security restrictions will too often serve only to limit the deployment of legitimate software that has not been approved by the right gatekeepers.
Tue, 2008-04-29 01:12
to the Web. - iPhone is object of desire
of its use. - The original PC is a blank slate.
- Apple II is a user object; iPhone is a consumer object (open / closed)
very fast. - Apple II was a generative box whose success depended on others' additions to it, like VisiCalc
computer crashes - Apple II was open for tinkerers and hobbyists, unlike the iPhone
permission - iPhone needs Apple permission before you can tinker; Apple can remote modify it; it is a controlled system.
- ahah ! - sterile the iphone ?... not so... it has now many app. done free, as the next widgetbox web2 ways - and it is a very great inspiration too, an industrial asian has produced a similar product better...and of course as usual, protections attract hackers to modify or to use free: it's done...
give up that freedom. - The dark side of openness - viruses, spam, crashes - makes the closed philosophy of the iPhone attractive to consumers.
- generative creativity = dangerous; closed consumption = "safe"
- This is a very important tension to consider, and one that will take time to work through.
network of control - iPhone / Apple II story is representative of the Internet: it is moving form the open to the tethered, the generative to the controlled.
things - Boxed appliances are fine, but they endanger the NEXT ROUND of innovation --- innovation-types they themselves were dependent on in the past.
- If the generative aspect is ursurped by closed appliances, the ecosystem dies as a productive source of further innovation
discover - When there is separation of PC ownership and use, interests diverge: stability versus "wilderness"
heartbeat - As long as a PC can run code it is given, and especially with broadband connectivity, the dangers are there, and are serious.
- like a natural ecosystem, open and generative platforms can provide habitat for dangerous pathogens (viruses, invaders, etc.)
exported - These dangers add support for lockdown and interference by the surveiling centre --- with all the dangers this implies in authoritarian states.
- lockdowns as monoculture... safe, but sterile
groups with shared norms and a sense of public purpose or private - Lockdowns and box-appliances will destroy the creativity of IT, and to stop this happening we'll need new technologies, communities that sustain the right ethos and a sense of public purpose.
pressure them - The everlasting battle will be between open, Web 2.0 systems and services and "bottled power" as exemplified by the iPhone.
- - users (vs. consumers?) stay in the generative loop via Web 2.0 applications
- free services and ...ware = battle for money may change to battle for communities influences and direct human exchanges
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