Its salvation, Zittrain argues, lies in the hands of its millions of users.
The Internet’s current trajectory is one of lost opportunity. As tethered appliances and applications eclipse the PC, the very nature of the Internet-its “generativity,” or innovative character-is at risk. New Web 2.0 platforms like Google mash-ups and Facebook are rightly touted-but their applications can be similarly monitored and eliminated from a central source. These “tethered appliances” have already been used in remarkable but little-known ways: car GPS systems have been reconfigured at the demand of law enforcement to eavesdrop on the occupants at all times, and digital video recorders have been ordered to self-destruct thanks to a lawsuit against the manufacturer thousands of miles away. IPods, iPhones, Xboxes, and TiVos represent the first wave of Internet-centered products that can’t be easily modified by anyone except their vendors or selected partners. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation-and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control. This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity-and reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. Jonathan Zittrain’s new personal website is accessible at
This site has been archived and will not be updated further. His book The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop It, predicted the end of general purpose client computing and the corresponding rise of new gatekeepers, and his co-edited paper Don’t Panic – Making Progress on the “Going Dark” Debate, represented views from government officials, academics, and civil rights proponents on how surveillance through popular consumer devices will be effected and might be appropriately restrained. He was the Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Federal Communications Commission, and previously chaired the FCC’s Open Internet Advisory Committee. Jonathan is a member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Board of Advisors for Scientific American. His research interests include battles for control of digital property and content, cryptography, electronic privacy, the use and abuse of technology for public discourse, and ethics and governance in artificial intelligence.
Jonathan Zittrain is the George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Director of the Harvard Law School Library, and co-founder and Faculty Director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
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