I fear the future of our technologies, but not for the usual reasons. For me, the future would bring forth solutions to our needs and wants, design that provides value in a sustainable and responsible manner. Technology that is relevant and appropriate. But what I see developing seems driven by greed and profit, resulting in restrictive business plans and attempts to enforce proprietary constraints on activity by corporate empires.
The power of my electronic computing and communication equipment is more dictated by my service provider than by the technology itself. Imagine traveling in the future and entering a new country:
Please have your papers ready. Passport, visa, customs form, medical coverage, service provider roaming agreement.
I wrote the first draft of this column from Madeira where I was attending a conference. I couldn't get on to the Internet because, irony of ironies, this was a technology conference: the 300 attendees had so overwhelmed the hotel's meager Internet that it became useless. Three hundred attendees probably meant 500 -800 IP devices, counting laptop computers, phones and all the demonstration machines, often requiring multiple IP addresses. Why not use our smartphones? We dared not. Exorbitant roaming fees imposed by the service providers struck fear into the hearts (and bank accounts) of foreign attendees. Without access to data, what was left for my smartphone to do? Almost nothing. Smart phone became stupid phone. Without a network connection, the most useful technology available in the phone was the backlit screen which meant that my smartphone was reduced to a flashlight.
I can no longer function by myself. When my smartphone becomes stupid, I too become stupid. Just as I am reliant on technology and the skills of others to clothe, house and feed me, I am reliant on my technology for my intelligence. My phone translates foreign languages, provides maps and directions, recommends restaurants and tells me the news of the day. It lets me communicate with friends around the world and in general, allows me to function. All my knowledge depends upon access to communication services: my email, my calendar, my maps and guidebooks. But all of this is at the mercy of the service provider.
Exorbitant roaming fees and a lack of adequate technological infrastructure reduce me to idiocy. My smartphone doesn't work when I need it most -- when I am in a foreign country. Why? Because of the roaming charges and greed of my service provider and the difficulty of purchasing a temporary subscription to data services when in a foreign land.
My intelligence is in the cloud. My life is in the cloud. My friends, photographs, ideas and mail. My life. My mind. Take away my cloud and I am left mindless.
Notice that my isolation is only partially the result of technological limitations. The hotel's lack of Internet access could be overcome. They had never experienced a technology conference before so they assumed that only a portion of the attendees would be connected to the Internet, and they would primarily do email. Instead, they got a taste of the future world where everyone has multiple devices requiring Internet connection, all wanting a full experience of rich sound and images. That problem, however, is easily remedied.
The much more fundamental problem is caused by the business models of the service providers, whether they be for radio or television, cable or satellite, telephone or mobile phone. Each of these providers wish to maximize their profit while simultaneously minimizing that of their competition. They try to enforce proprietary standards, locking people into their own distribution: Think proprietary digital rights management systems for music, movies and books, think locked cellular phones, think region codes on movie DVDs, think overly restrictive copyrights on content and over-inclusive patents on inventions and ideas. Each system has some basis in logic and business, each has some legitimate reason for existence. But these systems are implemented and enforced in ways that restrict them far beyond what is necessary -- even to the point of reducing creativity and hurting individuals.
More and more of our open, universal networks are becoming locked down, available only from within the walls erected by corporate interests. This is how a number of our early communication services started: they were walled gardens with all news, entertainment and information locked away inside, accessible only to members. This is the model being followed in today's television world of cable and satellite delivery -- it threatens to be the model of all service and content providers.
Years ago, when I was at Apple, senior executives from a number of computer companies met to try to agree on some open standards so that programs and systems written for one computer system would work on all systems. The Microsoft representative simply laughed at us. There already is a standard, he told the rest of us, and our problems would all be solved if we simply followed the standard. What standard? Microsoft, of course. His view was instantly rejected by the executives at Sun Microsystems, IBM and Apple (me), but it wasn't long before his view came to dominate the business. Sun no longer exists, IBM is no longer in the personal computer business and what is the most popular suite of programs for the Apple computer? Microsoft Office, of course. I write this column in Microsoft Word even though it is running on an Apple machine. That is the goal of every technology company: a domination so complete that their systems are the worldwide standard.
The basic rule of business for any new technology is that all the followers want open standards; the leader sees no need for them. Yes, Linux tries valiantly to exist as an open system for personal and business computers, available to all, but the world depends upon the offerings of the few major players, especially the applications provided by Microsoft Office. Linux simply cannot compete.
But what about the Internet, an open system, with open standards where any browser has instant access to all of its delights? Isn't this the wave of the future? Yes, but this future is in danger of becoming one of walled gardens, where different services are contained within the bounds of subscriptions. Want one group of television shows? Join this garden. Want another? Join that garden. Want news articles, there is yet another garden to join. Want to buy a book or magazine for your electronic reader? You might have to match the item to the reader, the service provider and perhaps even the device. Different items will be sold through different distributors and not all will work on your particular brand of reader. We will all have to purchase multiple brands of readers.
Are tablets and smartphones the future means of accessing Internet services? Perhaps, but each software infrastructure provider and each service provider may impose their restrictions on what will work on their particular tablet. The power of the tablets and phones lie in the applications that run on them, and those are likely to be tightly controlled. Even where they are not controlled, the different operating systems and closed standards for these devices means that a book, game, or application publisher has to develop multiple applications of a single product, one for each different platform, a requirement that the small, independent providers will be unable to meet.
The supposed freedom of the Internet works only if one can gain access. Browsers promise to allow access to the world of Internet sites, but only if the browser will work on the device, and only if the device will allow the media tools that provide the rich textual, graphics, photographic, musical and video formats to operate. Service providers will impose their own tariffs and restrictions. Will communication applications work properly, or will they, too, be restricted by the combined forces of the device manufacturers and the service providers? Current trends are not reassuring.
Tim Wu's book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, demonstrates how this process works. Wu's major theme is the inevitability of proprietary controls as large corporations discover the market value of exclusivity. All of our modern communication and transportation industries started off in similar ways -- whether telephone or film, radio or television, video or websites, Internet conferencing or blogging. At the outset, technologies are deployed to anyone who can be both providers and recipients of the powers of the medium. For example, the first phonographs could both record and play back. Telephone systems proliferated, run by cities or small companies. Radio amateurs and university groups freely developed radio stations. On YouTube, people can both produce and view streaming video. Amateurs and innovative inventors expanded the horizons. Then, as the business potential became obvious to corporate warlords, they struck, buying up small businesses, getting willing governments to enact rules, regulations and laws to protect corporate interests and turning the experimental two-way publications into one-way broadcasts within closed walls. The stories are remarkably similar whether one talks about the phonograph or movies, the telephone or radio, television or newspapers, music or book publishing. (For more, see Wu's interview with the New York Times.)
Why do we all meekly allow the speed at which we access the Internet to be much slower when we send than when we receive? Service providers will claim it is because, on average, people receive more than they generate. So what? Why would it harm companies to provide equal access? Or perhaps, is it because they want us to be consumers, consuming material sent to us rather than producers, creating our own content -- whether text, voice or visual? This asymmetry reinforces the view of the service and content providers; that we consume whatever they produce. All this in the face of great creativity by amateur musicians, photographers and videographers: Where would YouTube be without the everyday creator? Oops, that might be a good question but it might be too late. Where will YouTube be in the future when corporations decide to dominate?
I fear the Internet is doomed to fail, to be replaced by tightly controlled gardens of exclusivity. The Internet has extended beyond the capabilities of its origins: the trusting, open interactions among a few research universities. Today it is too easy for unknown entities to penetrate into private homes and businesses, stealing identities and corporate secrets. Fear of damaging programs and the ever-increasing amount of spam (some just annoying but more and more deadly and malicious), threatens the infrastructure. And so, just as previous corporate warlords used the existence of real inefficiencies and deficiencies in other media to gain control, equipment, service and content providers, large corporations will try to use the deficiencies of the Internet to exert control and exclusivity. All the better, they will claim, to provide safe, secure and harmonious operation, while incidentally enhancing profits and reducing competition. Similar arguments will apply to governments as well, invoking the fears of the existing Internet in order to exert control for the benefit of the existing ruling parties.
I have seen the future, and if it turns out the way it is headed, I am opposed. I fear our free and continual access to information and services is doomed to be replaced by tightly controlled gardens of exclusivity. It is time to rethink the present, for it determines the future.
Don Norman claims his goals in life are to make a significant difference, but to have fun while doing so. he established the Design Lab at the University of California, San Diego which he grew to become a major center for design with a focus on the application of human-centered design principles to complex sociotechnical systems, such as healthcare and automation. He is both a businessperson (VP at Apple, Executive at HP and a startup) and an academic (Harvard, UC San Diego, Northwestern, KAIST). As co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group he serves on company boards and helps companies make products more enjoyable, understandable, and profitable. He is an IDEO Fellow and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He gives frequent keynotes and is known for his many books including "The Design of Everyday Things," "Emotional Design," and "Living with Complexity" (which argues against simplicity), and a completely revised, updated edition of "Design of Everyday Things." He has now retired from that position (his 5th retirement, the 2nd from UCSD), and is hard at work reforming design education and, of course, writing a book.
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I Have Seen the Future and I Am Opposed
name is carol and I live in USA, My life is back again... After 5years of Broken marriage, my husband left me with kids .I felt like my life was about to end and I almost committed suicide, I was emotionally down for a very long time.Thanks to a spell caster called dr. ovia, which I meet online, On one faithful day, as I was browsing through the internet and I came across a lot of testimonies about this particular spell caster.Some people testified that he brought their Ex boyfriend back, some testified that he restores Womb,Cure Cancer and Herpes Virus and HIV Cure,diabitis hapatitis b, and other sickness, some testified that he can cast a spell to stop divorce and so on. I also come across one particular testimony and it was about a woman called jenni, she testified about how he brought back her Ex lover in less than 2 days and at the end of her testimony she dropped Dr. ovia email address: droviaspiritualtemple@gmail.
name is carol and I live in USA, My life is back again... After 5years of Broken marriage, my husband left me with kids .I felt like my life was about to end and I almost committed suicide, I was emotionally down for a very long time.Thanks to a spell caster called dr. ovia, which I meet online, On one faithful day, as I was browsing through the internet and I came across a lot of testimonies about this particular spell caster.Some people testified that he brought their Ex boyfriend back, some testified that he restores Womb,Cure Cancer and Herpes Virus and HIV Cure,diabitis hapatitis b, and other sickness, some testified that he can cast a spell to stop divorce and so on. I also come across one particular testimony and it was about a woman called jenni, she testified about how he brought back her Ex lover in less than 2 days and at the end of her testimony she dropped Dr. ovia email address: droviaspiritualtemple@gmail.
name is carol and I live in USA, My life is back again... After 5years of Broken marriage, my husband left me with kids .I felt like my life was about to end and I almost committed suicide, I was emotionally down for a very long time.Thanks to a spell caster called dr. ovia, which I meet online, On one faithful day, as I was browsing through the internet and I came across a lot of testimonies about this particular spell caster.Some people testified that he brought their Ex boyfriend back, some testified that he restores Womb,Cure Cancer and Herpes Virus and HIV Cure,diabitis hapatitis b, and other sickness, some testified that he can cast a spell to stop divorce and so on. I also come across one particular testimony and it was about a woman called jenni, she testified about how he brought back her Ex lover in less than 2 days and at the end of her testimony she dropped Dr. ovia email address: droviaspiritualtemple@gmail.
There is a strong need for a new business model. Technology companies has to be more responsible to the users.
I do not understand how people can not imagine if all the technologies are at the hand of one company in one day, who can prevent them to control your access to your personal data?
thanks for your insightful article, Don Norman.
Yes companies believe in profit. They have to be profitable to continue to exist and to do so, they have to serve customers and markets, which means offering products and services at prices that the customers can afford. If they charge too much, they can't sell their products and competitors will come in and eat their lunch. If they charge too little, they fail to make a profit and can't sustain themselves and their employees.
Norman comes off as some cranky, spoiled curmudgeon who can't access the web on his smartphone at a conference and so goes crying to his loyal followers about the evils of the corporate world and his fear of the future.
Get a grip, Don.
The only real threat to the high-tech future comes from governments that want to restrict and limit what free men and women would otherwise do.
Information will be free...but still dependent...
It would be free, it would use a standard that all devices can tap into, and it would be fast enough for basics but slow enough to make it the last resort.
That way governments cannot turn off the internet during times of strife, that way you will always have connectivity no matter where you are in the world - if you can't sort out a better arrangement.
and it dosent take a genius to see (via classifieds) that UNLESS you use CS3?5? whatever you Dont even use Photoshop in any commercially valuable way today..:)
And yes, the redefining of all media back to "intermediate" publishers is the real joke of the Apple revolution that most designers bought lock stock and barrel by 1999.
Technology makers only want 2 things from their "users".. to devalue all content so that their PIPES offer the only valuations... or to convince you that the only value of your content comes from their tools/services.
some balance would have been nice... but after 20 years of the religion of tech and unfettered consumption of "feelings".. "evangelist" wasnt an accidental term... designers are finally now being dragged into the reality they created.
media machine technological systems... are fundermentally about repeating the past and appearing to move forward..
like waves.... but really. waves dont move forward, only up and down in place.
It also encourages impressions of content via iTunesU, whereby Universities are basically granting license to Apple to publish their content when it is just NOT necessary to do this. They all host it themselves and iTunes acts as a portal.
Now the e-book will grant another dimension to this proprietary web-browser that takes the internet infrastructure and subverts it to the use of a closed, commercial system.
really.
20 years ago I was really excited about the the possibilities that technology granted us; instant access, global communication, intelligent information gathering and analysis. But all of that innovation and technology is continually being hampered by the previous century's legal and business structures. Legal, intellectual property and business development must restructure themselves to adapt to the changing environment.
I foresee a backlash in "subscriptions", the public is being nickel and dimed to death by old business models in a digital, IP based economy.
This turns out to be incorrect.
My iPhone and iMac both have entirely music that was not bought via itTunes. They have no images bought via iTunes. My iBooks bookshelf contains a few items downloaded for free from iTunes and a bunch of books downloaded free off the net generally - in most cases from Baenbooks.com as it happens. I performed no strange hackery to achieve this apparently magical state. I just used those evil Apple tools in their normal manner.
You say "I can no longer function by myself" when you lack connectivity, yet you judge the roaming fees exorbitant.
If the service is that valuable to you, your willingness to pay (subjective use-value) should be high. If you choose not to pay, then I can only conclude that it is not that valuable to you.
Note that this does not mean that the price (exchange-value) of the service will be necessarily high. After all, our collective willingness to pay for food is high (life-saving good), but food has become more plentiful and cheaper over the last centuries.
You want to be free, which is commendable, but you sound like you to want to restrict the freedom of those who serve you. Instead, I encourage you to look at what is truly restricting freedom and innovation, namely government interventions (spectrum licensing, reserved spectrum, telecom regulations, government control of laying of new cables under roads, etc.).
[EDIT] This comment is so true : <<
Eagle JacksonFebruary 16, 2011 11:31 AM
The great irony is that Dr. Norman's former employer, Apple, is the biggest and most dangerous offender, yet he does not call them out. The Apple walled garden is a gulag where Apple controls all aspects and collects a toll. By contrast, the Microsoft garden is fully open. There may be a standard API, but no permission is required, no toll to be paid, no gates to be locked, to write software for the Microsoft platform. Anyone who wants to can build a PC. >>
I think the situation you describe is of a transitory nature - in that, as commented above - the "walled garden" model will persist for a time, but forces are moving that will undermine the viability and credibility of centrally managed infrastructure, weather government or private.
Since we have an opportunity through open source to change how we adopt innovation, a movement against currency, and a broad "de-centralist" impulse wending its way through society, it feels (to me - and thousands more) that a phase change in our perception of what truly represents value is under way - and it leads AWAY from the corporate dominated future your describing.
Primarily, if people make an effort at "localizing" their priorities and establish a higher degree of independence through:
Small scale digital fabrication,
Aggressively open sourcing Hardware and essential technology, Local food systems, etc
Then, a dependence on Central "anything" becomes less relevant, losing influence and social value proportionally.
I would also expect a lowered tolerance for manipulation by a people who live by that value system as well - in that, any extortionate effort on the part of o corp or government to extract more money/authority/influence will engender a proportional backlash zeroing out it value proposition.
My small effort in this direction is at http://www.cubespawn.com the thinking being:
If people have access to the tools to make their own stuff, some of them will.
If those who do, contribute to a system that enables non-technologist to also have that capability, it becomes generally useful.
If its generally useful it may be widely adopted.
If its widely adopted it changes a broad range of things.
all of which make people more independent and less "controllable"
If our free Internet is under attack by corporations and governments, then we citizens must build a new one, structurally forever free of their control, using open source distributed P2P technology. Some thoughts here:
http://spacecollective.org/giulio/6633/We-must-protect-the-Internet
I can't agree more with you. It's so unfortunate that Hong Kong is already all dominated by large businesses (in particular Richard Li). It seems almost impossible to penetrate the market by small businesses. This is a broken city in my opinion.
On the other hand, I think US is still a place where ordinary people can still make an impact. Look at all the great startups (to name few, GroupOn, Pandora, etc) in the past few years that provide service to different aspects of lifestyle in America. I believe with more emphases on entrepreneur/startup upbringings, this sad future that you mention could perhaps be pushed back a little bit.
You can buy a factory-unlocked Google Nexus S for about $600. If you travel to Canada or France (or a number of other countries) with any regularity, you can buy a factory-unlocked iPhone for a similar price. There's a wiki that tells you how to get data SIMs in most countries in the world. I was able to get one in China when I visited recently.
Here's how to get a data SIM in Portugal: http://paygsimwithdata.wikia.com/wiki/Portugal
I don't blame you for your pessimism, but if you want to change the future, the way to do it is to be the change you want to see, and not just accept things as they appear to be.
There are many ways to be greedy. Most of them are good like History shows.
If you look at the history, what happened was that Ma Bell was given a monopoly by the US Government. Why? Because no other company could provide the good-enough amount of service. The barriers to entry in telecommunications are, and always have been, extremely steep. To get the entire nation wired with phones was too much for small-potatoes competition to get it all done, in the timeframe desired.
A book that will do justice to this is here: http://www.silicon-flatirons.org/digitalcrossroads/
Let them refuse to honour 'net neutrality'; Anonymous will develop the slow lane such that speed[slow, t]> speed[fast,t] for all t>1.
Let them rape the stupid with their insecure bloatware - that is why the stupid exist. Without idiots there would be no iCult.
We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We ♥ internets.
Expect Us.
Apple's App Store comes to mind
Only *while you are uploading*. If I have net connection capable of 15Mb/s it is very unlikely I will be saturating it all the time for downloads. If I want to upload something, why shouldn't it go up at whatever fraction of my bandwidth is available? If I'm downloading something that comes from a server capable of sending me 7Mb/s, why shouldn't my upload go at 8Mb/s? If my machine can't push that fast, tough luck on me - but it ought not be a policy decision by a purported 'service provider' that limits me.
Want to use an app? You have to go through Apple. Want to write an app? Apple again.
Want to browse the web? You can only browse it the way Apple wants you to. If Steve jobs doesn't like flash, guess what? You don't get flash.
Want to read an e-book? Not unless the book was sold to you via iTunes. Same for music and other content.
Based on Linux, Google is trying to free up phones and tablets with the Android OS. Of course, most carriers there are being evil but at least Google is trying, unlike Apple.
I decided a while ago to protest. I am just one man, but I have boycotted Apple until it is more open. Don Norman, you are an important person - why don't you publicly boycott Apple? That will be heard louder.
I'm with you on this. I'm tired of paying people for their time, effort and property. It's time for us to stand up and take what's theirs!
The truth lie's one question. If The Future of Business is Internet Dependent, what happens when the Internet is gone?
With all these NET Neutrality and Metered Bandwidth war's going on, either we the people will win the war, or the Internet will yet once again be for the Military & Universities only, or for those with rediculous amounts of money.
My fear is, you are on to something and the rest of the world is not really paying close attention, or public pressure will counter offer a solution.
Either way, it's about the money makers making money rather than the money makers making the world a better place.
Thanks for your post.
Owen
this wonderful state of being, did not require any technology at all.... and has been in fact, what technology designers have been accepting as the "smart future" for over 2 decades now.
and Apple as others have sold it to us in spades...
Designers and creators have given up ownership of their tools for almost 20 years now. We are "trying" to function at machine scale, not human scale, and only have our inability to see the medium from the tool to blame.
technology does not make better men, its only a system to make better technology.
maybe this is worth a read... its from 1995. when some of us very early digital tool designers/users... had already seen this future.:)- we did try to tell others about it..glad many are now listening.
http://cubicspace.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/more-non-meta-ideas-from-1995-cubic-speaks/
Device-manufacturers: 0
Jailbreakers: Infinity
We just need publicize the fact that (at least for now, in the US) removing the manufacturer's proprietary controls on your machine is completely legal and incredibly beneficial. Spread the Gospel!
Regarding provision of the service itself. We may be boned here in the US. However, I think open networks will probably survive the test of time in the rest of the first world. The Korean model is a pretty good one. Only after a few decades of demonstrable economic losses due to poor broadband access and infrastructure will the openness lobby have any kind of ammunition to fight against the telecom lobby, unfortunately.
Word looks like overkill for a column like this. Switch to TextEdit?
Stephan
As we're starting to see, hackers and open platforms are becoming incredibly important against malicious governments and corporations, and these two should not underestimate the power of social networks.
The loss of privacy also means there is starting be more transparency and I think consumers and common people are starting to gain power. I hope soon there will be an inflection point when open platforms and hackers will provide better systems and access to technology than voracious service providers.
Regarding cellular data services, there is no real mechanism for complex service negotiation within the existing protocols. Had GSM been designed by the IETF instead of the ITU, then perhaps there would be a greater capacity for individual mobile users to negotiate service when turned on in a new environment (eg: landing at a foreign airport). Whilst this limitation has been known for some time, it is not in the interests of monopolistic cellular service providers to further commodify their offering by allowing mobile users to negotiate lowest tier pricing. In fact, they make stupid money from roaming data precisely because they can: their captured audience, international business people, require connectivity on the same telephone number they usually use, thereby forcing them to pay whatever they are charged when using roaming data. It is an amusing admission of this practice that for some years a standard smart phone feature has been the capacity to disable roaming data services in real time, using the phone's own software stack. Second, consider that these operators are purveying yet more obvious vendor lock-in in western markets: that insidious feature of the 'provider locked handset'. Playing on the stupidity of consumers and credit culture, consumers are offered handsets for '$0' in exchange for pledging their future income to the provider. After a period of one or two years, they are given ownership of their 'own' device, by which time it is obsolete.
Next, old media distributors are rapidly learning that they need to price down content and provide viable digital distribution models with multi-device support if they wish to compete against piracy. However, while there are still people going to the cinema and paying for DVDs, they will continue to resist change as long as possible as it's more profitable to do so. It is worth noting that the problem of multi-device digital media distribution is not an easy one to solve: today no Hollywood studio (be it audio or video) is going to release a plethora of high quality, globally marketable content without DRM, and the number of DRM systems is huge (many of which are in fact multiple, mutually incompatible systems under the same banner with differing version numbers).
In terms of broadband service providers, symmetric data services are not a good fit for most users. That's just a fact. Whilst it'd be nice to think that little Johnny's latest video could go viral from the camera he shot it on, whilst riding the subway home, in fact some degree of centralisation can be useful and we are not yet at the era of ubiquitous always-on, P2P-capable connectivity that will engender such a model. Because we want 24/7 availability, instant playback, comments, categorisation and fast search, decentralised systems are simply not going to take off except for niche segments (eg: pirated or banned content).
In terms of democratising information flow, IPv6, MANET are crowd-sourced funding are three timely innovations that offer hope. IPv6 removes the NAT barrier and offers a return to proper connectivity with a plethora of additional features (Mobile IPv6 with fast handover algorithms to allow seamless roaming between physical or wireless networks, more efficient processing by routers, better facilitation of personal area networking, etc.). MANET (mobile ad-hoc networking) is a great working group from the IETF who are looking at the personal area networking / localised ad-hoc network scenarios that IPv6 will engender. They are making great progress and balancing great knowledge of radio-level networking with IP protocol suite design wisdom. The possibility is that in future when governments shut down connectivity, MANET could step in, in real time, to offer person to person routing to restore connectivity to protesting masses.
It is important not to get bogged down in the negatives. Yes, the present situation sucks in a number of ways. But how can we solve that?
Here are some ideas:
- Startup to develop GSM extensions to facilitate service negotiation
- Simply boycott DRM enabled services until they become both cheap and useful or die off entirely, or try to develop a decentralised P2P media sharing service with fast search and instant playback built in to the protocol
- Move to IPv6, tell your friends, lobby your organisation
I am not afraid of the future. I have glimpsed it. I embrace it. It is getting better.
It is very easy to miss the fact that technical innovation has been consistently driven forward in opposition to the innovate/market/profit-take/regulate cycle described by Tim Wu and cited above. Innovation comes in each of the steps of the cycle, usually in response to pressures from the other steps. There is a counter-cycle that runs in opposition. Attempts to stifle innovation only cause new innovations to blossom. The motivations behind those who want to bridle and harness technologies are particularly important as a practical matter, because the attempts to stifle invariably fail, often quickly.
Let me illustrate with some examples.
A new technical innovation might require a different sort of marketing strategy. Every hear about the satellite-transmission protocol that was sold to thousands of independent truck drivers? For a very brief while, PocketMail was the only technology that really allowed you to get your email anywhere on the road (this was in the days before everyone had a cell phone and practically nobody had wireless Ethernet.). It was clunky by today's standards, but by holding your PocketMail device or Palm Pilot up to an acoustically-coupled telephone, you could trade text-only email (and a lot of it) in about 2 minutes. This innovative technology had it's roots in the burst transmissions used by satellites. It was marketed to truck drivers, and for several years, in a niche market, it was the king. The root marketing innovation was the marketing of a satellite radio protocol, and proprietary hardware to handle it, to truckers. You'll be at NASA Ames in a few days, ask the guys there about it. Probably, someone will remember.
Profit-taking can be innovative, too. In the old old days of software, you contracted with big shops to write code or developed your own in-house. Then we got shrink-wrapped software, thanks to a lot of mass-produced computers with standardized operating systems. Today, many add-ons for open source products are produced by very small shops of programmers who sell their work & support based on a subscription service. The innovation? The willingness to work for a fixed-fee/fixed-period contract. The fees are often quite low while the results are very often much, much better than the home-hacker can achieve. I can buy very elaborate software for web content management systems, accounting, CRM, etc., and get all the features and support I need for a low, fixed price. Innovation empowers the little guy. Amazon.com had a great profit-taking strategy a decade ago - take no profits until you've conquered the world. Remember how many years Amazon lost money of every single sale? But they kept selling themselves at a loss until they became the elephant in the room. That's profit-taking innovation.
Regulation can be innovative, although some regulation comes from the bench as well as the legislatures. The Ma Bell break-up engineered by Judge Green has essentially been eclipsed by the rebirth of AT&T from the collective maneuverings of Ed Whitaker and the former SBC corporation. Both were innovations of regulation, the first in imposition, the second in evasion. FCC buffs can tell you just how closely each new rule is scrutinized by engineers for a loophole for innovation (as well as for protection of precious bandwidth.) Copyrights protect the producer, fair-use protects the consumer. Open source is the innovation in regulation that
successfully navigates the perilous waters between the two. Richard Stallman probably most deserves the credit as the big innovator in open source & free software.
The toughest part is the root technical innovation, but these are the ones that are driven by all of the factors preceding. The closed nature of the Bell system gave root to MCI. The cost of big iron like IBM, Burroughs, Sperry, et. al., opened a door for innovators like Ken Olsen at DEC. The closed nature of proprietary systems like Ken Olsen's VMS operating system opened the door for applications on more open operating systems innovations like Unix. The closed nature of software applications like Microsoft Word and Excel gave birth to innovations like StarOffice and OpenOffice.Org. You can buy cheap iron these days and free software these days.
You say you couldn't get the Internet and so you felt "dumb"? Innovate!
The Internet isn't a walled garden. But if it ever becomes one, a few guys will start to lease some big pipes and create their own protocol stack, and end-up selling it cheaper and faster than anything AT&T or Verizon can glom together. Protocols become too restrictive? Some engineer or wannabe will cobble together something that will blow the doors of your Fire Wire-based connection, probably in her college dorm room, in order to stream the holographic videos her roommate is developing across campus.
Yes, the present does determine the future, but stress and opposition are necessary forces to create innovation, creativity, and collaboration. Victory only comes when there is a threat of failure. For myself, I say to the marketers, regulators, and big corporations, "Bring it on, do your worst!"
Innovation is the guerrilla warfare of the engineering mindset, and a few smart people who can think their way around or through a problem will never be stopped by the tightly-formed ranks of corporate minds. You cannot fight a guerrilla war and win (haven't we learned that yet?) And the Internet, like the information systems domain, is nothing more or less than the biggest guerrilla battlefield we've seen in America.
I'm betting on the guerrillas.
Rev. Roger Baker, OSL
Theologian, Software Developer, and Philosopher
Burke, VA (USA)
Download and upload both use bandwidth. With X bandwidth available, more download means less upload. It's an engineering tradeoff, not a plot for world domination. And even creative people download more than they upload, because the world outnumbers each of us.
Karl Marx predicted the formations of 'gardens of exclusivity,' as a natural progression of capitalist systems in the 'Communust Manifesto' in like the mid-19th century? He actually thought that revolutions would happen in the most advanced industrial states of the day like England and Germany.
Just wanted to point out, you guys aren't the first to talk about this stuff, but great post.
If you look at the past twenty years, the trend has been towards more information access, at dramatically cheaper prices every year. I see no reason for that to stop.
You can see that very easily in the current market for ebooks and ereaders. We already had a perfect, almost open, standard for ebooks: it is called PDF. Everybody can make PDFs for cheap or even for free. But that, of course, is not acceptable for content providers and their unholy alliances with device makers.
And at the same time, one should question the interest of the customer for openness. After all, we already know that the average customer does not care much about quality e.g. in images. Resolution and colorspace do not compare to in-camera effects for attractiveness.
Perhaps customers, users, people are just happy to be prisoners and buy the same content over and over at every change of platform, as long as it is convenient and comes with a cute and shiny exterior.
I design green products and a "big dream of mine" is a regulated system of acceptable materials for manufacturing and quality standards. I am not a traditional designer, I am new!
Free markets cannot deliver these things. We need to bring the Egyptian protestors to North America and get things straight.
But, like every smart human, if access to knowledge, science or education is blocked on the "web", humanity will find a way to communicate.
We will hack it. We will change it.
For me, climate change is not an option, but, we can make all our processes and products more natural and adaptive to our ecosystems.
I am an optimist.
When you say you see restricted access, I am seeing someone making it free.
These are the new rules.
Enjoy!
Thanks for this article, although would have been nice to hear some proposal of what can we do about it.