dusty6649: As the net becomes overly crowded do you think it will become a pay-as-you-use program?

Jonathan_Zittrain: I hope not -- there's still several billion more people to go. I'd rather they join the Net than, say, mobile telephony networks that do indeed have the pay-as-you-go mentality. That's why current work in ad hoc networking (and projects like one laptop per child that try to have this built in) will be such interesting bellwethers.

stever: So where does IBM's (bought into I forget the name) early entry before AOL stand?

Jonathan_Zittrain: I think IBM and Prodigy teamed up, but I wouldn't swear it. IBM had lots of cash but was hamstrung by being... IBM. Not a lot of whimsy there. Chapter Four of the book pulls together some of the v. interesting literature on this topic, where firms in general are not able to innovate, but individuals can. Eric von Hippel has some great stuff along these lines.

Moderator-Julie: Pre-submitted question: I was surprised by your findings of how appliances can be used by law enforcement -- for example, that the FBI could use OnStar to record conversations in a car or a cell phone could be turned into a microphone. Is this risk well known or understood?

Jonathan_Zittrain: I'm amazed at how little attention cases like TiVo v. EchoStar, and The Company v. The United States, have gotten. They certainly trouble me, and Chapter Five of the book tries to explain how our market choices are, in an uninformed way, leading us to results we will rue.

ptrawles: It seems like we're headed toward a multi-tiered Internet. For corporate users the company locks their environment down. For home/independent users the less tech-savvy adopt appliances/closed systems while more tech-savvy stick with PCs and "open" systems.

Jonathan_Zittrain: Yes, plausible and I'd count that as a very bad outcome. That's a future we should want to stop.

stever: Prodigy...used to use it a lot and forgot⬦ yes you/we are correct about IBM. Thanks for reminding me and I am off to buy your book. I thank you for your time!

Jonathan_Zittrain: :)

dstevens: What about Internet II? Isn't that already an answer to frustration?

Jonathan_Zittrain: Internet II means different things to different people. To the extent that it's just about fast protocols -- and some versions are just that -- I don't see it solving any of the generative problems covered in the book. E.g., viruses and worms could spread that much faster! Other initiatives, like the Stanford Clean Slate Initiative and a project undertaken by Net luminary David Clark at MIT, try to rethink the Net from the ground up -- now that we know how important and central (but not centralized) it is. I've participated in some of the associated meetings and found them fascinating, but they're naturally marred by self-consciousness: it's all about remaking a Net that can be all things to all people while avoiding a bunch of problems we now know to be true, some internal to the Net and some more socially/legally constructed, like IP theft. I haven't seen those knots cut yet and would in the meantime like to buy some more time for our venerable Net and PC platforms.