Walled gardens not about to take over net

THE internet may be slowly choking books, newspapers and perhaps even some traditional concepts of what reading involves, as many argue, but a surprisingly large number of its ideas, memes and controversies still begin their lives as ink on dead trees.

End users want to benefit from the faster progress and better systems they encourage

The most recent example is a book by prominent internet lawyer and Oxford professor Jonathan Zittrain: The Future of the internet and how to stop it.

Zittrain has been a key figure in several of the most contentious legal battles over online file sharing and copyright, and was one of the authors of a landmark study that showed that spam email stock tips actually do influence stock prices (a disheartening result that encouraged spammers everywhere).

His new book has prompted heated debate across the technology industry. It argues, on the one hand, that open (rather than proprietary) technologies and platforms are best for consumers because they encourage faster innovation. On the other hand, it says the current dominance of open technologies is fragile and under threat.

By open platforms Zittrain means a broad group of technology: TCP/IP and later http in networking, Unix in software, and the mostly open x86 architecture that dominates desktop and server computing hardware, which during the 1990s crushed incumbent closed approaches peddled by vendors such as IBM and AT&T.

There is certainly merit to Zittrain's argument that the former are all what he describes as generative technology: systems that are open and present fairly low barriers to entry, encourage competition and create ecosystems of companies that can build on each others' work, delivering a cycle of self-reinforcing and rapid innovation to end users.

This is how these systems managed to overpower closed rivals, which once dominated their markets because they simply worked better.

This is not exactly a novel analysis of the past 20 years, but Zittrain neatly makes the case for open standards and platforms, and contrasts the speed of progress in these with the staid proprietary models that typified the first few decades of IT.

More controversial is Zittrain's argument that the current dominance of open generative technology is little more than a fortuitous accident and under dire threat from resurgent closed platforms such as Apple's iPhone and General Motors' in-vehicle OnStar. This resurgence of closed systems is because more open platforms and environments are increasingly perilous due to spyware, malware, viruses, and the destruction of user privacy intrinsic to so many Web 2.0 business models.

Zittain's rather unconvincing conclusion is that only a rapid spread of collective online citizenship, as embodied in the likes of Wikipedia and several anti-malware projects, can save the generative internet from a more regulated, tame and less innovative future.

There is certainly a superficial case that recent success for firms selling end-to-end systems - from Apple's computers, phones and digital music offerings to the resurgence of IBM and Hewlett-Packard in high-end corporate IT environments - goes against the grain of openness, but, beneath the surface, the story is more subtle.

Almost all of these closed platforms and systems are built on top of open standards (or using open components), and will continue to use any generativity that occurs in lower layers of the stack.

It may at times benefit companies such as Apple and Google to deliver parts of their offerings as closed systems, as most IT vendors are well aware that the recent history of the industry is one where the biggest rewards flow to the players most able to exploit openness. Companies selling more closed platforms - from AOL to Microsoft, in more recent times - have tended to struggle.

That open technologies and platforms have triumphed is not accidental - end users want to benefit from the faster progress and better systems they encourage. If that continues to be the case, and there is no reason to believe it won't, open technologies will remain dominant.

Certainly the challenges that Zittrain points to are important and not easy to solve, but the view that the internet is on the verge of turning back into a series of walled gardens, halting innovation, is overstated.

Still, it makes for a vigorous debate among both obsessive and more casual followers of technology and proves that the power of one of the oldest open platforms - ink on paper - has not entirely been eclipsed.