Re: Generativity and other abstract concepts to think about...

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Jim Morris [jim.morris () west cmu edu]
Sent: Saturday, June 21, 2008 12:10 AM
To: David Farber
Subject: Re: [IP] Generativity and other abstract concepts to think about...

1. I'd like someone (Zittrain?) to relate control and generativity in the computer world to those phenomena in the 
political and economic world. Maybe I'm missing something, but I think the tension between these properties have been 
with us forever. Currently, with globalization and the fitful progress of liberty and open economies, I'd say that 
generativity is winning. Furthermore, generative political systems should nurture and make space for generative 
computer systems. Clearly, the internet and PC designers adopted some of their design principles from the surrounding 
culture.

2. Just as the open internet stomped the earlier walled gardens, note that the IBM PC, as an open hardware design, 
stomped many others, including many at IBM. Don Estridge and his team in Boca Raton were renegades within IBM which was 
more of a controlling corporation than Microsoft ever was. They launched the product and its open nature plus IBM's 
logo made it boom. IBM tried to put the toothpaste back in the tube with PS2 and some proprietary channel, but they 
couldn't stop it.

3. The story of VHS vs. Beta is somewhat similar. The open VHS alliance ganged up on Sony's better concept. They simply 
overwhelmed it by banding together for R&D and manufacturing.

4. Maybe Franz de Waal has the answer as to why generativity eventually wins: a group of beta chimps can unite to bring 
down the alpha chimp. In any industry, the leader will try to monopolize and control and the followers must pursue an 
open strategy to bring him down."


On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 12:34 PM, David Farber <dave () farber net<mailto:dave () farber net>> wrote:

________________________________________
From: willmcclure () comcast net<mailto:willmcclure () comcast net> [willmcclure () comcast net<mailto:willmcclure () 
comcast net>]
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2008 3:23 PM
To: David Farber
Subject: Generativity and other abstract concepts to think about...

As a receiver of the IP emails for 5 years now, I have noticed one thing above all else about the Internet:

It is now beyond the control of any one entity (public or private), any one country, any one or any combination of 
governing groups, and most likely, any one continent.

At this point in time, it is still possible to partially control how one person accesses the Internet in their part of 
the world. But as long as that one person has the desire, knowledge, and means to pay for it, that person will be able 
to access the Internet.

The choice of picking generativity over open systems or closed systems or brutally closed systems or impossibly closed 
systems is no longer in the hands of the academic community, the governing community, or even the providers - it is 
directly in the hands of the vast user community.

Some obvious examples:

- DVD security encoding was defeated within weeks of its introduction.
- Napster was brought down, but now there is an exponential amount of file sharing going on everywhere.
- The iPhone was hacked and all its secrets were on display on the Internet within days, and the only way Apple was 
able to stop it was to make it financially expensive to tamper with their phone.
- China has been frustrated in its attempt to control all connections to the rest of the world with its firewall.
- Microsoft has put enormous amounts of money, time, and human resources behind getting everyone to switch to Vista, 
even putting out a Service Pack as bait.
- The RIAA is now suing printers and dupes because it can't properly distinguish who is actually downloading illegal 
music.
- Estonia was brought to its knees for one day by Russian hackers, but that's probably all they could afford to do, 
since it took away from their lucrative spam revenue.

These are but a small percentage of the well-documented misfortunes that are occurring every day when anyone or any 
company tries to force its will on the user community.  The future of the Internet already relies on free, highly 
functioning software and moderately priced, highly functioning hardware - the wild card for now being the fickleness of 
the users and what they are trying to achieve.  At some point, not even connectivity will matter, since the Internet 
continues to flourish even with restricted or slow connections everywhere.

All that will matter is whether an idea will appeal to someone, somewhere in the world, and whether they have the 
resources to develop it or can pass it on to others.

(Remove name)


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--
James H. Morris
Professor of Computer Science
Dean, Carnegie Mellon West
412 609-5000
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jhm/


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