Jonathan Zittrain, a law and computer science professor, writes about internet openness, net neutrality and locked-down devices, and runs the site for his book.
Commenters recommend his book and writing on generative computing and closed platforms like Apple's, and cite it when arguing against locked-down devices.
>There were certainly outlaws, but most people were there to farm or mine or provide goods and services to farmers and miners. Those businesses needed clear laws about who owned a piece of land, so a complete set of laws evolved.
Exactly. It's not just businesses, but it's also everyday people who aren't HN readers who want the Internet to work in a stable and predictable fashion. They didn't grow up developing services at the edges of the network; they are the people who use email and play Farmville and are just fine with that. They want their GMail to work without spam, they want viruses to stop, and they don't want to be spied on. These are not unreasonable demands. It's just that they happen to clash with the people who read HN and want the network to be free to grow around the edges rather than from the center.
The book Wild West 2.0 (http://wildwest2.com) talks a lot about this evolution. When we wrote it, we didn't realize that we were going to make the idea of naming worse -- we just thought it was a useful metaphor for the self-reliance and self-defense angles of the Internet. [Full disclosure, I am a co-author]
Zittrain's "The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It" (http://futureoftheinternet.org/) is also a great resource for this culture clash between open and closed frontier models of the Internet and how reasonable demands ("stop spam") lead to solutions that clash with the HN view of the Internet.
A/K/A "generative computing", which has been under attack for a long time. I believe Jonathan Zittrain's written specifically on the topic, though the closest match I'm currently finding is about the generative Internet:
<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=847124>
Also "The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It" (2008): <https://futureoftheinternet.org/>
Response: <https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2010/09/do-we-need-new-generativity-principle-%E2%80%93-comments-zittrains-future-internet-ii>
Cory Doctorow on the war against general purpose computing: <https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html> (2012)
I am the author of the piece and I agree the title is poor but the title came before the piece did so apologies that it did not go where I promised.
The title is a riff on Johnathan Zittrain's "The future of the internet & how to stop it" http://futureoftheinternet.org/ and the post was a pretty free-form exploration of the topic written with a tight deadline.
I'm glad people are enjoying it, I honestly didn't know what the reaction would be when I posted it.
How is creating a consumer electronics device evil? Because people want it to be a computer? Because it'll somehow erode the market for full-fledged computers?
Yes. Zittrain wrote a book about it: http://futureoftheinternet.org/
computers as such are a usability and maintenance disaster for 95% of the population
This can be fixed (see OLPC), but all the companies are just locking everything down rather than innovating. There's a huge lost opportunity here.
I agree with most of this analysis, and it is why, even though iOS/OSX/etc offer great stability, are esthetically pleasing, and well-designed, I won't go the Apple way (I have been using Linux for over a decade now).
Zittrain, among others have written about this as well:
"As tethered appliances and applications eclipse the PC, the very nature of the Internet — its 'generativity', or innovative character — is at risk"
http://futureoftheinternet.org/
Another great article by Jonathan Zittrain. If anyone is interested in delving deeper into the ideas expressed in the article, I higher recommend you check out Zittrain's book, 'The Future of the Internet- and How to Stop It.' Zittrain has put up an annotated html version here:
http://yupnet.org/zittrain/
He has also made a pdf of the book available here:
http://futureoftheinternet.org/download