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A Shared Digital Future? Will the Possibilities for Mass Creativity on the Internet Be Realized Or Squandered, Asks Tony Hey

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A Shared Digital Future? Will the Possibilities for Mass Creativity on the Internet Be Realized Or Squandered, Asks Tony Hey NATURE|Vol 455|4 September 2008 OPINION A shared digital future? Will the possibilities for mass creativity on the Internet be realized or squandered, asks Tony Hey. The potential of the Internet and the attack, such as that dramatized in web for creating a better, more inno- the 2007 movie Live Free or Die vative and collaborative future is Hard (also titled Die Hard 4.0). discussed in three books. Together, Zittrain argues that security they make a convincing case that problems could lead to the ‘appli- we are in the midst of a revolution ancization’ of the Internet, a return as significant as that brought about to managed interfaces and a trend by Johannes Gutenberg’s invention towards tethered devices, such as of movable type. Sharing many the iPhone and Blackberry, which WATTENBERG VIÉGAS/M. BERTINI F. examples, notably Wikipedia and are subject to centralized control Linux, the books highlight different and are much less open to user concerns and opportunities. innovation. He also argues that The Future of the Internet the shared technologies that make addresses the legal issues and dan- up Web 2.0, which are reliant on gers involved in regulating the Inter- remote services offered by commer- net and the web. Jonathan Zittrain, cial organizations, may reduce the professor of Internet governance user’s freedom for innovation. I am and regulation at the Univ ersity of unconvinced that these technologies Oxford, UK, defends the ability of will kill generativity: smart phones the Internet and the personal com- are just computers, and specialized puter to produce “unanticipated services, such as the image-hosting change through unfiltered con- An editing history of the Wikipedia entry on abortion shows the numerous application SmugMug, can be built tributions from broad and varied contributors (in different colours) and changes in text length (depth). from generic ‘cloud’ components audiences”, a concept he defines as available through the Internet. ‘generativity’. He describes how networks that Zittrain believes that the generativity of the Like Zittrain’s book, Clay Shirky’s Here offer centralized, subscription-based services Internet and the computer is under threat from Comes Everybody and Charles Leadbeater’s We- — such as CompuServe, AOL and Prodigy — viruses and other malicious software, or mal- think highlight Wikipedia as an example of the have lost out to the Internet, which is open to ware. The first Internet virus was created in power of mass collaboration. Zittrain goes into modification by the user. Surprisingly, the brain 1988 by Robert Morris, then a graduate student most detail. All three books credit Ward Cun- behind the Internet, J. C. R. Licklider, is not at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In ningham as the creator of the Wiki in 1995, but mentioned in any of these books. those days, hacking was regarded as an intel- Jimbo Wales and Larry Sanger are given varying Zittrain identifies two core values of the lectual challenge rather than a serious threat. amounts of credit for the creation of Wikipedia. Internet that originated in the computer sci- Today’s network is a specialist system that has None of the authors thinks Wikipedia is per- ence research community. The ‘procrastina- been scaled up for use by hundreds of millions fect: two cite the examples of John Siegenthaler, tion principle’ occurs because the network of non-experts, and is still open to exploita- who was wrongly cited in a Wikipedia entry as was designed to carry tion. Zittrain explains being involved in the Kennedy assassinations, data between two end The Future of the Internet: that there is now a viable and that of the Wikipedia administrator Ess- points, at which all other And How to Stop It business model for mal- jay, who resigned after it was discovered he had features could be imple- by Jonathan Zittrain ware. Bespoke viruses falsely claimed to be a professor with a graduate mented. The ‘trust your Allen Lane/Yale University Press: can be developed that degree. Zittrain sees Wikipedia as a new model neighbour’ approach 2008. 352 pp. £20/$30 compromise and com- for interpersonal relations that goes beyond a worked well before the Here Comes Everybody: The Power of mand a computer, per- traditional business–customer relationship, and 1980s when few expert Organizing Without Organizations haps to act as a source for as the epitome of ‘netizenship’; Shirky compares users were connected, by Clay Shirky the distribution of spam Wikipedia to a Shinto shrine and concludes that making abuses of the Allen Lane/Penguin: 2008. 336 pp. e-mails, unbeknownst it exists because enough people love it and are network rare. In 1994, £20/$25.95 to the owner. The book willing to defend it. Leadbeater uses Wikipedia Peter Tattam of the states that in 2006, zom- as the prime example of the concept that gives University of Tasmania We-think: The Power of Mass Creativity bie computers generated his book its title: “We-Think”, he says, describes wrote the Trumpet Win- by Charles Leadbeater more than 80% of the “how we think, play, work and create, together, sock program that ena- Profile Books: 2008. 256 pp. £12.99 world’s spam, and spam en masse, thanks to the web”. bled home computers to accounted for more than Like others, I admire Wikipedia and find connect to the Internet. He gave his software 80% of global e-mail. In 2007, as many as 150 it a useful starting point for finding informa- away, asking only for a voluntary donation of million computers were involved in these ‘bot- tion, but I am concerned about its reliability. A US$25. When Microsoft bundled the software nets’. Zittrain sees this ‘death by a thousand cuts’ respected mathematician friend recently asked into its Windows 95 operating system, the scenario by many individual hackers as a more a Wikipedia administrator to delete the spuri- Internet began its astonishing expansion. serious threat than a coordinated grand-scale ous names of some equations. To his surprise, 31 OPINION NATURE|Vol 455|4 September 2008 the administrator retorted “We don’t care if the the digital age” and characterizes one of its key Leadbeater’s We-Think is the least convincing theories we write about are right, wrong, seri- features as allowing “failure for free”. Software book. He gives interesting examples of social ously flawed, downright ignorant or otherwise companies need to be conservative and to networks and a fascinating survey of the origins really, really bad. We only care that the subject is minimize risk; by contrast, the open-source of ‘We-Think’, attributing the idea to pioneers notable.” As someone who believes passionately community can explore a vast landscape of such as Doug Engelbart, inventor of the compu- in the value of scholarship, I find this disdain for different ideas. Leadbeater believes the com- ter mouse, the electronics enthusiasts of Silicon expert opinion alarming. One hopes that this is munity behind development of the Linux oper- Valley’s Homebrew Computer Club and radi- an isolated incident, but it does make one won- ating system is “the most impressive example cal philosophers such as Ivan Illich. Leadbeater der whether Google’s Knol project or Sanger’s of sustained We-Think”, claims that the web has Citizendium, which are collecting encyclopae- although he acknowledges “I would like to think that the the potential to “spread dic articles contributed by named experts, may the paradox of companies web will change the world, but democracy, promote free- eventually generate sufficient critical mass to such as Google, IBM and dom, alleviate inequality compete with Wikipedia. HP making money using it seems naive to think that it and allow us to be creative Zittrain’s book contains more of interest, nota- open-source software. All will change human nature.” together” and claims that bly his discussion of ‘Privacy 2.0’, which includes three authors subscribe to “community and conver- Scott McNealy’s famous quote: “You have zero the idea that open-source software is produced sation are the roots of creativity”. Yet I find it privacy anyway. Get over it.” However, I fear that by an unpaid army of volunteers from around difficult to take seriously his basic premise that his concluding example of the One Laptop Per the world. The situation is not so simple. mass participation will generate collaborative Child project as embodying “both the prom- Open-source projects can be divided into creativity. I concede that collaboration between ise and challenge of generativity” could prove two clusters, ‘money-driven’ and ‘community- specialists will become more important as we unfortunate if it fails to live up to expectations. driven’, according to a 2006 paper by Marco attack challenging global problems. In my He quotes Nicholas Negroponte, the project’s Iansiti and Gregory L. Richards of Harvard experience, creativity and inspiration are the founder, as saying “The hundred-dollar laptop Business School. The first type has received rare gifts of individuals, following much schol- is an education project. It’s not a laptop project.” billions of dollars in investment from vendors arship and hard work. Although I would like Negroponte is quoted as saying exactly the over the past decade; for example, more than to think that the web will change the world for opposite in the recent ‘resignation’ blog of Ivan 70% of the Linux kernel development is car- the good — and I am sure that it will in some Krstic, one of the project’s early supporters. ried out by professional software developers. ways — it seems naive to think that it will cause Shirky’s enjoyable book Here Comes Every- Community-driven open-source projects a fundamental change in human nature.
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