The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It

Mr. zittrain must have an inflated view of his worth. 18 dollars for the Kindle version is greedy and stupid.

This is not a bad book, contains lots of information - but oh, so well known. I tried to keep on reading but to no avail.

The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It is a major work of business, legal and policy research that will be less accessible to most people, but important to those looking to understand the future direction of today's ecommerce world. Zittrain is both a technologist and a lawyer and he appears to be writing this book more to influence policy and thinking rather than proposing a specific solution.

This is fine, in my opinion, as Zittrain provides two important frameworks that define new ways of thinking about the net and its impact: the notion of generative technology and the idea that the value of that technology is moving from the network to the endpoints. The book describes these ideas and develops them into a range of policy and technical decisions facing business, political and judicial leaders.

In the Future of the Internet, Jonathan Zittrain provides a detailed analysis of the development of the Internet, the nature of networks, and the evolution of technology. This book concentrates on the central elements of what Zittrain calls "generative" solutions. A generative solution is one that provides a basis for innovation, new products and new sources of value through experimentation and individual innovation (ala Cheesbourgh's open innovation). Zittrain sees the Internet and the PC as generative technologies, which the clearly are. However he sees generative technologies go through a pattern where the openness and high levels of trust that made them generative and attracted new solutions soon fall prey to fraud, abuse and outright criminal activities.

Zittrain argues that this is what the Internet is going through now as SPAM, Malware, Phishing and other forms of cyber crime and mischief are eroding the value of the Internet as a generative platform. The book makes this argument in a very logical way with good examples. This takes up the first part of the book and is perhaps the best part.

Zittrain's idea is that as these generative technologies become compromised, the value potential moves from the network that connects devices to the devices themselves. Here is where he introduces the notion of appliance devices that are purpose build, not readily programmable at the functional level and give the consumer more protection and the provider more control. The notion that the value is moving away from the network is very intriguing; particularly interesting give the recent warm reception of appliances such as the iPhone, Wii, Tivo and others.

Overall this book is not for the faint of heart, nor for the casual reader of business and technology books. The text is well written, loaded with examples and details that will make for good cocktail party stories, but it is more of a policy book and a scholarly work than a business text.

CIOs should read the first half of the book with great interest as it lays out a new way of thinking about the network.

Corporate development officers at technology companies should read the whole book as it describes a possible legal, regulatory and economic framework for the future of technology.

Business leaders should read the first part of the book to understand the true nature and exposure they have in the current generative Internet era.

I had great expectations for this book. I wa somewhat disapointed. At least for me his writing style was difficulut. And he really could have made his points with 50% fewer pages.

Kudos to Jonathan Zittrain for producing a book accessible to both a lay audience as well as his technorati crowd. His blending of history, early digital anecdote, and his strong analysis make this an academic book that transcends the blogosphere and onto both main street and wall street. A remarkable accomplishment.