Professor: The iPhone will destroy the Internet!
- April 10th, 2008
- Read 548 times
- 9 Comments
I’m an expert when it comes to cellphones and wireless devices of all kinds. I write about them and the technologies they utilize every single day. That being said, I’m no professor. Jonathan Zittrain is, though, and he says that devices like the iPhone are going to be the death of the Internet.
It’s easy to say, “No way, they’re innovation,” but he argues the opposite. What’s scary is he might be right.
Zittrain argues that closed devices like the iPhone or Xbox 360 or other devices that aren’t PCs prohibit end-user tinkering that’s always been the strength of the Internet. He says that the average user has started accepting the limitations of their Internet-connected devices and thus don’t work to make them better.
For the most part, that’s accurate, though there is a strong and numerous group of people dedicated to hacking these devices. Sadly, it’s just not as easy as it is with a computer.
I must say that I personally think that the idea of these devices killing the Internet is a little knee-jerk, though I will agree that they’ll change the Internet forever. If that’s good or bad we’ll have to wait and see.
LastGiantRobot (Who am I?)
2 months ago
What exactly is “better”? What this professor calls a limitation may simply be a streamlining of ergonomics and interface. I do not need to be able to access Google Apps from my xbox and I am perfectly happy not having to pay for that extra capability to be built into it. I think the professors opinion may simply be an elitist fear of the worlds greatest sandbox no longer being so prolific and available. For him, since he has the skills and leisure time that most of the worlds populations does not, the internet is the goose that lays the golden eggs. He can use it to write innovative programs that in order to program his tivo from work or make awesome lol catz pics. But to a farmer in the middle of rural India, he does not need to be able to edit javascript or display his leet photoshop skillz, he just needs a dumb console that displays wheat and rice prices and weather reports, or better yet, just have it beamed to his cellphone if he has one.
CTI97 (Who am I?)
2 months ago
I still search for a phone with a good enough display and full internet browser, like a PC has. Didn’t find one yet, but didn’t givve up the hope that maybe, one day …
Whiskey (Who am I?)
2 months ago
The farmer in India cannot afford an iPhone. Most informative websites have RSS feeds that can be accessed from some phones…
Cloud-only apps are not that great, not even with Gears and/or Prism. They are really useful and cool, just not at the iPhone (or any other phone for that matter).
Webmasters can (and should) make their APIs available so a developer could make a program that interfaces directly to them (you know, like youtube).
I would also like to point out another closed product that’s a headache to develop for because most of the time it gets things wrong… IE is still a PAIN to work with but this hasn’t stopped development of the Internet.
The important thing is that clever people always find a way around limitations.
Christian Decker (Who am I?)
2 months ago
Sad as it is I have to agree with your professor because I see so many iPhone/iTouch specific websites that won’t work on other browsers, as nice as they are it makes maintaining an website a really hard issue for a growing, yet small community of users.
sent from: fav.or.it [FID248709]
m (Who am I?)
2 months ago
update: professor also says those dang bee gees are ruining music, and get off my lawn
Alasdair Allan (Who am I?)
2 months ago
That’s just nonsense. What about cheap microprocessor boards like the Arduino? Getting embedded devices to talk to each other is getting much, much, easier. Not harder. You’re making the mistake of thinking that the Web is the Internet, it isn’t. Web sites will die off in the exact same way Gopher did, unlike Gopher they’ll probably hang around in a half life existence like FTP as “just part of the infrastructure” but they won’t be seen as the Internet anymore. The Web is just one more passing thing, the Internet will live on…
Danno Bonano (Who am I?)
2 months ago
Come on. I need to code different for IE/Firefox/Safari. I would say the “professor” is being closed minding by closing off the internet to mobile devices.
And the Safari browser isn’t closed off. Duh professor. It just requires a new interface for using it (touch). Come on. This is drivel and crap. It’s just like saying Vista will destroy the PC world. Or fuel cells will destroy the automobile world. Seriously man!
These things only make it better. Please use that noggin of yours!
Danno Bonano (Who am I?)
2 months ago
By the way, how does the iPhone being “closed” off (which it now ISN’T thanks to the SDK) affect the internet?
For Pete’s Sake, WINDOWS is CLOSED off. How does that affect the Internet? Safari’s webkit is open to all. I just fail to see any material point to this story.
Please think before you write about something like this. At least make some form of argument for your subject.
PLUS, the iPhone has OPENED the mobile world to the real Internet. GEEZ MAN, please think. Please.
JZ (Who am I?)
2 months ago
Danno - I see it as the opposite! The iPhone SDK only lets the software people create to be distributed through the iPhone Apps store. Steve Jobs reserves the right to reject any software, and can retroactively kill apps. (This has its benefits — but it’s not very open/generative.) Windows, like other PC OSes, allows any software to be written and distributed without any intervention or permission from Microsoft. Google’s Android platform promises to be different — much more like a PC. We’ll see how it does. …JZ