The Pendulum Swings, Again

Whilst the article mentions how countries like China restrict access to communication networks we should be under no illusions that nearly all major communication networks are ultimately still under the control of central government wherever you live. For the pendulum to permanently swing in favour of "freedom and democracy" we need a genuinely open network. Without an open network open devices, operating systems, software, etc could easily be neutered, if albeit in a rather draconian fashion by hitting the "off" switch. This can seem unlikely in any "free" nation, however this was almost a reality last year during the London riots. As those in power openly lamented the use of Blackberry's BBM network by the rioters (and various other communication networks) it was clear that the government came very close to ordering the service shutdown and I have no doubt it would have been had things deteriorated any further. Perhaps the great next swing might be those attempting to create decentralized mesh networks? One can hope.

well, sounds about right: Facebook is the radio station, and the users are participating in their call-in show.

And for some demographics, the internet isn't much more than Facebook and Wikipedia for their homework (as data source, not to contribute).

you can't call android a monopoly. thats like saying server is monopolized by GNU/linux.

so basically, this points out the fact that a higher quality piece of software beats out openness. And therefore, you have the reason for which the mainstream chooses the closed garden instead of the open ecosystem.

The masses aren't stupid - they in fact chooses very carefully, according to parameters that are more wide ranging that the narrow viewpoint the tech community focuses on.

The relative ubiquity of the internet is an important consideration here. In previous swings of the pendulum, computing (and/or the internet) was concentrated among a much smaller base of users, many of whom had strongly vested interests in the side to which the pendulum was swinging.

These days, the internet is certainly ubiquitous, and "smart" mobile devices are basically ubiquitous, if not yet entirely so. And the vast majority of today's users don't seem to care about privacy, open vs. closed ecosystems, etc. The sheer volume of users who either don't know, or don't care, about these things shifts a LOT of power into the hands of the current power players in the status quo. Hackers and power users are still major forces for change, and always will be. And, in time, they may prevail by offering better solutions to the masses. But the weight of the masses is heavier than it ever has been.

I submit that the fulcrum on which the hackers will tilt the masses isn't security, privacy, or anything of that nature. It's openness, and by proxy, IP management. It's the free transmission (or lack thereof) of ideas, information, and content. It's the interoperability (or lack thereof) of all of these things between devices and systems, outside the restrictions or central control of one or two major parties.

But the force currently arrayed against the growth of openness is a powerful one. It's convenience. And convenience is, arguably, THE most powerful driver in human psychology. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, telecoms, and other players in the content space are making plays to become total-solution providers. And the appeal of a one-stop, total solution (the Walmart Effect, if you will) is quite powerful to the masses. To overcome this appeal, the next great disruption will need to equate openness with convenience. Open must = easy. More precisely, open must be more highly correlated with ease than walled gardens are correlated with ease.

An historical side note:

AOL's monopoly in the ISP game, which lasted for so many years, came about because AOL offered the easiest, most idiot-proof, and most convenient internet experience. It was a walled garden, but beyond the wall, the typical user just saw a massive, untamed jungle full of complex systems, wonky communities, and seemingly insurmountable technical difficulties. AOL fell when people figured out how to make the world outside the wall more ordered, more appealing, and more uniformly approachable. Open standards had a lot to do with this. So did the appearance of portals, which represented a less daunting half-step between the Great Untamed Wild and the AOL garden. And search engines continued this evolution, making the point of entry into most users' internet experience very centralized, orderly, and convenient without walling everything up. Search engines created the subconscious appearance of a walled garden without actually erecting walls.