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Does the iPhone Mean the Internet Will Lose Innovation?

The death of the PC and the rise of the iPhone and other devices could pose grave danger to Internet innovation.

By Network World Staff

April 29, 2008 — Network World — Jonathan Zittrain is an internationally known cyberlaw scholar and technologist with a giant resume. He is Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford Internet Institute and also teaches at Harvard. Zittrain is co-founder of the Chilling Effects Web site (a watchdog site) and holds patents on wireless and network devices. Zittrain has been making headlines with his latest book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It , in which he argues that closed-systems devices like the iPhone are potentially harmful. In a live Network World chat, Zittrain explained how he feels about the iPhone and the dangers posed to the Internet as a whole.

Moderator-Julie: Welcome! We are ready to begin.

Jonathan_Zittrain: Hi there -- I'm pleased to be here today. Thanks for coming out. Let debate + discussion begin! (Longer and more nuanced answers are likely in the book -- apologies for signal loss as we compress.)

Nakshatram: The iPhone is transforming the user interface - making Internet usage even simpler. This comes with a price: a closed system. Isn't the price worth it? And for how long will it stay closed?

Jonathan_Zittrain: I want to see us (and that means the market) avoid a dichotomy between the generative but now-dangerous PC-style platforms on the one hand, and the iPhone's gated community on the other. I'd prefer to work inward from the current Internet/PC rather than start with a closed system and pry it open.

Moderator-Julie: Pre-submitted question: Why do you think that "adding stress to the Internet" is something that would harm it? It would seem that it works more like the highway system. The roads are capable of carrying heavy loads from trucks and those loads have forced the builders of the roads to architect them to handle the stress of all forms of traffic. "Stress" has the potential to benefit all users of the infrastructure. If something like the iPhone could "break" the Internet, then it is already broken. 

Jonathan_Zittrain: The stresses I emphasize in the book aren't just load -- I'm as amazed as many network engineers that the Internet has scaled as beautifully as it has. (Many have the same view about 802.11 wireless technologies; they're behaving far more reliably under heavy loads than many expected.) Instead, there's reason to worry that the open technologies of the Net and the PC now have much more reason to be subverted and exploited by bad guys, and that without action we'll see a market response to this abuse that puts us that much more into the iPhone zone -- or that of Facebook and Google apps.

 

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