What you’ve expressed above touches perfectly on some of the ideas and assertions that bother me the most. Along with the artificially elevated sense of alarm/doom (at least in the language he uses) and, sometimes, plain old hyperbole (’Macs get viruses too’ - which is extremely hyperbolic and sensationalist and just there to grab attention) that the whole ‘Zittrain manifesto’, including to some degree the whole ‘badware’ thing, still concerns me.

Adding you to my must-read list.
Maggie

Zittyranny?
Zitttrainization?
Zittrainia?
Zittmania?
Zittmegalomania?

I think he’s trying to give “programmability” a new name, and in doing so misses several vital points. All devices need not be programmable by all users for creativity to find a way into the gizmo arsenal. Code is mainly written by experts, after all, and “closed devices” are open to experimentation by experts with adequate specifications and proprietary APIs. And many of the cherished pieces of the “open Internet” are rarely modified, such as TCP, UDP, and IP. While these elements of the Internet reside on end-user systems, they’re so much a part of the Internet’s plumbing that nobody alters them in any meaningful way.

There’s a design cycle or two that we find in general purpose computers where systems that may begin as software algorithms running on the CPU and controlling add-on hardware are eventually reduced completely to hardware for performance and cost reasons. Ethernet used to be a card you plugged into a computer but it’s become part of the basic circuitry of the PC or handheld. Some systems commit TCP to hardware for speed as well. We find a similar cycle in graphics.

Handhelds represent an interesting set of challenges for the designer because of the conflicting demands of battery life, radio quality, size, weight, flexibility, and reliability. It’s necessary to reduce system flexibility in these devices to get decent parameters for the rest of the device, and most users understand these trade-offs at some level. It’s downright silly to pretend that Blackberries have to be end-user programmable to have any utility.

I doubt that Professor Zittrain has ever programmed a computer. That doesn’t disqualify him from pontificating about the benefits of programmability, but it does suggest that his perspective may be a bit skewed and romantic.

These ultra-simple dichotomies the Berkman people like to make are seldom useful in the sense of generating fresh perspectives or real insights.

I don’t mind sterile technologies in principle — I like the idea of taking the rough-hewn innovations that spring from the Internet and packaging them into cleaner, more reliable forms. I love my TiVo. (Indeed, that used to be the first sentence of the book. Then I went with the iPhone.) I even appreciate that sterile technologies can come about without having to emulate the products of generative ones — not every toaster comes from nerds experimenting with heating elements.

My worry, though, is that we’ll lose a sense of equilibrium between the generative and sterile spheres, and that the emergence of contingently generative technologies — platforms that are open to third party innovation at first, but then close off selectively — will squeeze out fully generative technologies, to the detriment of innovation and enhancement of exquisite regulatory control. This is in part because the amateur nerds that drive innovation here rarely read the fine print; teenagers will code for the Facebook, iPhone and Google platforms without thinking about the ways in which their advances can be eliminated or proprietized.

Again, I guess I just don’t see how all of us would “lose a sense of equilibrium between the generative and sterile spheres,” or that “platforms that are open to third party innovation at first” will “close off selectively” and “squeeze out fully generative technologies.” Perhaps some will; but I just don’t see the entire future of the Internet unfolding in that fashion. The momentum is too great in the direction of open, interactive, generative platforms and devices. Head over to “Go2Web2.0.net” and tell me how all that progress is going to be reversed. I just don’t see it happening.