Oxford University Professor Jonathan Zittrain in his new book, The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It, according to NetworkWorld, states that:

…today’s Internet appliances such as the iPhone and Xbox hamper innovation. That’s because these locked-down devices prohibit the kind of tinkering by end users that made PCs and the Internet such a force of economic, political and artistic change.

Zittrain argues that if the cybersecurity situation doesn’t improve, we will migrate to a different kind of Internet. The new Internet will have as its endpoints tethered appliances such as iPhones, which are controlled by their manufacturers, instead of open, changeable PCs attached to an open network that can foster the next round of disruptive innovation.

A bold statement. And he’s got a point.

Now these devices are innovations unto themselves, and some even are positioned as development platforms. Take the iPhone, for example. Apple just released the latest version of their Software Development Kit (SDK) and developers everywhere are coding away, looking to build the next great iPhone application.

But in classic Apple style (i.e. heavy DRM within iTunes), Apple remains the gatekeeper. Applications can only be distributed via their App Store, and will only be distributed if approved by Apple. Apple will explain that this is for security and quality-assurance reasons, but it still puts them in control of what’s available, with the ability to shut an app off if they so desire. So yes, you can be as creative as you want on their platform, but it’s up to Apple if anyone is going to see it at all, or in perpetuity.

There’s a similar situation going on with Google’s new App Engine (the preview version was launched on 4/8, then taken down on 4/9). Google’s vision is that instead of freely building apps with their API, you can develop applications using their APIs and host them on their servers, free of charge. Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud and Salesforce’s Appexchange are also providing similar opportunities for developers. Sounds great, right? But there’s a catch, as ArsTechnica reports.

Perhaps the most blatant downside is being locked into Google’s platform. Existing projects will have to be ported or written from scratch, and those that rely on traditional relational databases will probably have difficulty making the transition. Even more difficult would be transitioning your application to your own servers if you choose to leave Google’s tender embrace. Once you’ve created an established application on top of Google’s authentication service and stored all your data within the company’s datastore, removing all this code and data and moving it to another location would appear to a be fairly onerous task.

Once again, applications — and even more importantly, data — are locked into someone else’s platform. And this is precisely what Jonathan Zittrain is talking about.

This is a disturbing trend and runs afoul of what led to the creativity that yielded many of the most popular websites of the last few years. Imagine if Warhol was free to create any art he wanted, but someone else owned the canvases and could destroy or bury them at any point if his art offended someone? That’s what’s going on here.

It doesn’t seem that this is a trend that will let up anytime soon as companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon have way too much to gain by housing and hosting application engines. Doesn’t feel like ‘do no evil’ anymore does it? And a little more ‘PC’ than ‘Mac’, if you ask me.

Food for thought…

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MIT’s Technology Review just published it’s list of 10 Emerging Technologies for 2008. The one piece that resonated with me is Sandy Pentland’s exploration into Reality Mining especially in relation to social networking, new media and interactive.

Reality mining “is all about paying attention to patterns in life and using that information to help [with] things like setting privacy patterns, sharing things with people, notifying people–basically, to help you live your life.”

This becomes a hot topic for a few reasons. First and foremost is, once again, privacy issues. Data capture is part of our daily lives – credit card usage, cookies on sites, social network profiles, company swipe cards – and as technology continues to slowly infiltrate more of our lives, we become more tolerant and accepting of what information is divulged and distributed. Everyone has see the movies with the FBI trying to trace the criminals phone call with the criminal hanging up just before being caught. However, most people don’t think about that even with mobile phones being on all the time A simple Google search on his/her name would surprise a lot of people.

Reality Mining has been a reality for years. And as mobile phones become more prevalent with WI-FI, Bluetooth and GPS-type systems (ala iPhone,) in addition to the laptops we carry around and use, the continual social network is our daily life. And as mobile technology advances, our blip on the grid becomes more prominent. The Human Cyborg ideal continues to press forward. Professor Kevin Warwick first started research into this in 1998 by planting microchips in his arm for recognition of systems in his lab.

The major benefit of Reality Mining is from an anthropological standpoint. How people interact, where they are and when they are. Tying this information into disease outbreaks, advertising models (when a person sees an ad, what do they do right afterwards?) and general healthcare and “human maintenance.” Smartex in Italy is working on clothing that does just that.

It’s a bit of the God factor (being omnipotent and omniscient) that is also fascinating. Knowing where your friends are at any time, knowing what they’re doing, where to get the food your phone knows your craving. It’s bringing the idea of Facebook, Google Maps, Dodgeball and other sites into the physical space. The ultimate social network. Maybe even a step closer to SkyNet.

Real-time in real-time. Very meta.

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Mashup culture isn’t just for tech-geeks, YouTubers, and Google employees. Sometimes, it can actually enhance your life. And when two companies get together to mash their services up together, all because consumers spoke up and said it would make their lives more organized, it’s a thing of beauty.

LinkedIn and Plaxo have joined forces to allow Plaxo Members to sync their LinkedIn contacts with their Plaxo address book, effectively mashing their flagship products.

I’ve synced my two accounts, and it worked splendidly. I feel more organized and connected already.

While mashups have been around forever (Shakespeare, anyone?) the modern, corporate interpretation (Nike+Apple, TiVo+DirecTV), holds tremendous promise not just culturally, but financially.

Bonus points if you can tell me (in the comments, please) what the title of this post is a pop-culture reference to.

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Problem solved with this nifty plugin. By Microsoft of all people.

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So I installed Yahoo’s new, freshly launched Yahoo!Widgets (v.4).

First thoughts:

* It is way lighter than the previous version. Yahoo claims that it reduced it’s memory consumption by about 40%. That was my biggest complaint about the previous version, and I’m glad they addressed that - it shows.
* The widget gallery is still not very easy to navigate. Official Yahoo! widgets are not called out prominently (text links at the bottom of the page). And why can’t I sort a list by ‘most popular’? Any newcomers to the widget platform would likely love to know what their peers have found most useful.
* While these seem to be a great addition to Windows XP, once Vista really takes hold (with its native widget platform), how many people will continue to operate this Yahoo! platform?

* How come there aren’t more ad-supported/sponsored widgets? And if they are buried in the gallery, how come they are not more prominently featured?

* The numbers of individual widget downloads are typically in the low 000’s. Yahoo’s platform is obviously not a very mainstream thing - yet.

So…is Yahoo’s widget platform just biding time until Vista reaches a critical mass of penetration? Or is its third-party status just what the doctor ordered?

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