by Tony Curzon price at the iCommons summit 2007
You know the argument -- in the post-copyright world, musicians will find other revenue sources, like live performance. Well, if the same will apply to academics, you can be sure that Jonathan Zittrain will find his place in that economy. Try to get to see Jonathan live: as a scholar/showman cross between Seinfeld and Jeremiah, he creates a great event.
In his keynote on Friday, he recounted the epic of the witches that have been slain on the digital road to Oz. Closed systems, which grow only through central control, are out - success requires decentralisation.
Or does it? JZ flashed up Steve Jobs' comments on the iPhone: we don't want it to be a computer, with all the vulnerabilities that implies, says Jobs. The whole system should be under tight central control, else how can we bring you the services that you want: music, banking, payments, communications without eavesdropping -- or at least only ``trusted'' eavesdroppers.
The closed system is returning under the weight of malware. The attacks are destroying trust. We are fast depleting our innocence, and the world after the fall will be hard. SMTP will go like Usenet went.
The solutions? A moderation of the unbridled individuality of our behaviour. The iCommons has ``i'' and ``commons''. Making sure that we do become a herd that filters, shares and supplies micro-effort to the commong good. If we can do it for SETI, we can do it against malware ...the details are in Jonathan's the forthcoming book.
