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Dr. Generative Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Iphone
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Grimmelmann, James Ohm, Paul |
| Copyright Year | 2010 |
| Abstract | In The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It, Jonathan Zittrain argues that the Internet has succeeded because it is uniquely "generative": individuals can use it in ways its creators never imagined. This Book Review uses the Apple II and the iPhone - the hero and the villain of the story as Zittrain tells it - to show both the strengths and the weaknesses of his argument. Descriptively and normatively, Zittrain has nailed it. Generativity elegantly combines prior theories into a succinct explanation of the technical characteristics that make the Internet what it is, and the book offers a strong argument that preserving generativity is vital for the sake of future innovation and creativity. Unfortunately, while Zittrain calls for compromises to preserve generativity, he doesn't provide a roadmap for distinguishing good compromises from bad. These tradeoffs, however, are essental. Restricting generativity in one place (for example, by building computers with fixed circuit boards rather than a tangle of reconfigurable wires) can massively enhance generativity overall (by making computers cheap and usable enough that everyone can tinker with their software). We use this obervation to offer a series of corollaries to aid policymakers and system designers in optimizing generativity in the real world: Generativity is only one value among many, generativity is never absolute, and generativity is a systemic property, not a local one. |
| Starting Page | 910 |
| Ending Page | 910 |
| Page Count | 1 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Volume Number | 69 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://james.grimmelmann.net/files/articles/dr-generative.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3436&context=mlr&httpsredir=1&referer= |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://works.bepress.com/james_grimmelmann/33/download/ |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
