There is much to love about TiVo, but there is also much to hate and even fear about the vision of technology that it represents.

See also this video:

Jonathan Zittrain proposes a theory about what lies around the corner for the Internet, how to avoid it, and how to study and affect the future of the internet using the distributed power of the network itself, using privacy as a signal example.

See also this paper:

The generative capacity for unrelated and unaccredited audiences to build and distribute code and content through the Internet to its tens of millions of attached personal computers has ignited growth and innovation in information technology and has facilitated new creative endeavors.

It has also given rise to regulatory and entrepreneurial backlashes.

A further backlash among consumers is developing in response to security threats that exploit the openness of the Internet and of PCs to third-party contribution. A shift in consumer priorities from generativity to stability will compel undesirable responses from regulators and markets and, if unaddressed, could prove decisive in closing today’s open computing environments.

This article explains why PC openness is as important as network openness, as well as why today’s open network might give rise to unduly closed endpoints. It argues that the Internet is better conceptualized as a generative grid that includes both PCs and networks rather than as an open network indifferent to the configuration of its endpoints.

Applying this framework, the article explores ways -- some of them bound to be unpopular among advocates of an open Internet represented by uncompromising end-to-end neutrality -- in which the Internet can be made to satisfy genuine and pressing security concerns while retaining the most important generative aspects of today’s networked technology.

From a bit in Wired earlier this year:

Q: You really think the sky could be falling?

JZ: Yes. Though by the time it falls, it may seem perfectly normal. It’s entirely possible that the past 25 years will seem like an extended version of the infatuation we once had with CB radio, when we thought that it was the great new power to the people.

See also my post about CNA and the Hundred Years' War.