Will the Web break?

What is the Web? What makes it work? And is it dying? This paper is drawn from a talk delivered by Prof. Zittrain to the Royal Society Discussion Meeting 'Web science: a new frontier' in September 2010. It covers key questions about the way the Web works, and how an understanding of its past can help those theorizing about the future. The original Web allowed users to display and send information from their individual computers, and organized the resources of the Internet with uniform resource locators. In the 20 years since then, the Web has evolved. These new challenges require a return to the spirit of the early Web, exploiting the power of the Web's users and its distributed nature to overcome the commercial and geopolitical forces at play. The future of the Web rests in projects that preserve its spirit, and in the Web science that helps make them possible.

Ubiquitous human computing.

Ubiquitous computing means network connectivity everywhere, linking devices and systems as small as a drawing pin and as large as a worldwide product distribution chain. What could happen when people are so readily networked? This paper explores issues arising from two possible emerging models of ubiquitous human computing: fungible networked brainpower and collective personal vital sign monitoring.

Saving the internet.

The Internet goose has laid countless golden eggs, along with a growing number of rotten ones. But it's the rotten ones that now tempt commercial, governmental, and consumer interests to threaten the Internet's uniquely creative power. The expediently selected, almost accidentally generative properties of the Internet - its technical openness, ease of access and mastery, and adaptability - have combined, especially when coupled with those of the PC, to produce an unsurpassed environment for innovative experiment. Those same properties, however, also make the Internet hospitable to various forms of wickedness: hacking, porn, spam, fraud, theft, predation, and attacks on the network itself. As these undesirable phenomena proliferate, business, government, and many users find common cause for locking down Internet and PC architecture in the interests of security and order. PC and Internet security vulnerabilities are a legitimate menace. However, the most likely reactions - if they are not forestalled - will be at least as unfortunate as the security problems themselves. Consider the growing profusion of "tethered appliances" - devices whose functions cannot readily be altered by their owners (think TiVo). Such appliances take Internet innovations and wrap them up in a neat, easy-to-use package, which is good - but only if the Internet and PC can remain sufficiently in the center of the digital ecosystem to produce the next round of innovations and to generate competition. People buy these devices for their convenience or functionality and may appreciate the fact that they are safer to use (they limit the damage users can do through ignorance or carelessness). But the risk is that users, by migrating to such appliances, will unwittingly trade away the future benefits of generativity - a loss that will go unappreciated even as innovation tapers off.