The free PC..
The Harvard Business Review has an interesting article about the merits
of the internet and PC’s generally in the role of innovation.
Some interesting quotes.
“what some have applauded as Web 2.0—a new frontier of peer-to-peer
networks and collective, collaborative content production—is an
architecture that can be tightly controlled and maintained by a central
source, which may choose to operate in a generative way but is able to
curtail those capabilities at any time.”
“A shift to smarter appliances, ones that can be updated by—and only by—
their makers, is fundamentally changing the ways in which we experience
our technologies. They become contingent: Even if you pay up front for
them, such appliances are rented instead of owned, subject to revision by
the maker at any moment.”
“the idea that for the generative Internet to save itself, it must
generate its own solutions. The more we can maintain the Internet as a
work in progress, the more progress we can make.”
The last quote smacks of simplicity, it does however contain the essence
of the story. The internet is a largely unregulated and uncontrolled
environment, this anarchistic space is a haven for the creative as well as
the destructive. That’s the nature of such a beast, controlling the
internet in the names of safety and certainty will inevitably also
diminish the creative element.
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http://www.qednet.biz