Either way, the point is hackability isn’t something that’s inherent in a “tethered device” platform, like it is with PCs. It’s a feature that can be granted and denied by the manufacturer each time they release a product. You may think you’re pretty clever for hacking your XBox to run linux, but if Microsoft doesn’t like that you can be damn sure the next XBox can be made to thwart your hack. Not so with open standards architecture.

Going to be interesting, for sure.

Actually, the freaks were already there and always had been. That’s like blaming the telephone for heavy breathers and prank callers.

My problem with the whole theory is that, I think, the world includes and will continue to include both generative and nongenerative options. Even as Tivo, Microsoft and others, with or without the government’s help, limit user customization, the marketplace provides alternatives. Your grandma gets her Comcast box – easy to set up and run – and you get your Linux-based media center PC – which takes a little more work. There is no reason that customization won’t be available for those that want it.

But great review – I’m ordering the book right now.

I agree that a hackable appliance is better than a locked-down appliance, but gadget-makers need to understand that being hostile to those who want to leverage the features of their products is counterproductive.

Ahhhh, but the telephone had legitimate uses too.

Recommended reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)

Gn cntrl dsrms vryn nltrlly – I suppose the UK’s knife-crime rash would be the unpleasant equivalent of illegally backdooring into phone switches and other tethered devices, from a purely meme-equivalence viewpoint.

I guess it all comes down to the simple fact that you can’t stop people from abusing things just by regulating them.

(I’m not pretending to have any answers here, I’m just riffing thoughts).

Please do not post any more comments about gun control in threads that are not about gun control.

Italy had some very large issues with compromised monitoring services a couple years ago.

http://www.tscmvideo.com/News/cellular-wiretapping-phone-taps-news.html

Or google “italy vodaphone eavesdropping”. I see later speculation was that it was the NSA.

Most exciting is the one with a group running an open annotation project using the Diigo system.

I like this! It really seems to me the next logical step in book publishing, where your work basically becomes the framework for a wiki.

I am finding Zittrain’s concept of generativity most interesting; same for the way he visualises layers of networks. I’d like to see people do more of this kind of analysis in relation to, for example, the music industry and the excesses of copyright. Zittrain touches only lightly on the content and social layers of the network (as far as I have read), but I’m sure his conceptual frame will be very useful there.

My rating: essential, thought provoking reading.

I disagree also, but if you substitute “perceived security” for actual security, Zittrain’s claim stands. I’d also add to that the perceived simplicity of tethered/dedicated devices for the average user.

Sure, I enjoy setting up a Linux-based media center PC, but my mother-in-law is perfectly happy to have Time-Warner come out and install her set-top box for her.

I say, let it burn.

“… but I disagree … I think it’s being driven by the same authoritarian urge that gave rise to all the other spying and control laws that have been passed for centuries.”

Yes, of course. But certainly that urge is driven by fear in the first place ~ fear of identity thieves and spyware hackers, for two things, and many other things available for activating a hair-trigger fight-or-flight response (if not an actual paranoid abreaction) …

Call me optimistic about human nature (What? Nevar!), but I reckon that most authoritarian types get that way through fear (at least originally) rather than through some basic, twisted love-of-squashing-freedom. Note that I do say “most,” and suggest that in any case it’s, well, it’s too fucking bad that some people are so easily motivated by (validly triggered or not) fear. Especially when they’re in a position to affect the rest of us.

However: Hell of a fine short review, sir. Always good to read a piece where the reviewer disagrees with the author in places and yet still makes one want to read the book.

The original X-box and the TiVo are considered to be hacker’s paradises. There is an entire cottage industry surrounding modifying the TiVo for more capacity and adding devices to it. Yes, that’s because TiVo encourages such behavior (or used to and now just tolerates it, instead). But Microsoft had no idea how far people would mod their box and subvert it. Even a device like a Roomba can and has been hacked for other purposes.

There may be additional steps, but once the genie is out of the bottle, technology-wise, generative behaviors begin.