The Future of the Internet (and how to stop it)

“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. 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.”  from futureoftheinternet.org

I haven’t read the book yet, just saw someone else tweet about it so checked it out – but I ordered me a copy at Amazon as it sounds like a very fascinating book. It’s the kind of thing I’ve thought about myself off and on the last few years, but never really took the time to pull into any kind of cohesiveness. Relying on the Web, as I do, for a living, the subject is important to me. But it’s important to you too, because there’s very few people who are not directly affected by the Internet in one way or another.

Should the Internet be “free” or commercialized? (I think it can and should actually be both.) At the heart of it, most really good ideas are based on ideals. Ideals don’t happen in nature. For example, “free health care”… eventually, somewhere down the line, someone has to pay for it. Should doctors not be compensated for their time and skills? Should researches not be compensated for the years of effort that go into new medicines? To make health care available for someone with no money, do we compel the doctor to perform medicine with no pay? Do we take money from someone else, in order to pay the doctor to give services to someone with no money? It’s not a simple situation. So something that is on the face a good thing is not necessarily practical. Likewise, while it seems to make perfect sense for the Internet to be freely available to all so we can share data and information, communicate and connect, how will the technology be paid for? Do Internet Service Providers have a moral obligation to provide service? Does Microsoft have an obligation to distribute computers with email and web software? There would seem to have to be an economic component for the thing to exist. Not having read the book, maybe my soap box routine is way off topic… but I look forward to reading it and will likely follow up with more afterward.

UPDATE (7/10/2010): The book is pretty interesting, I’m about half way through. However, if you’re not the “techie” type you’ll probably find it a bit boring. The author tends to drive his points home by repeating similar ideas in slightly different ways. For anyone in an Internet related business (and what isn’t these days?) I would recommend adding it to your list.