Red & the Green: The Future of the Internet & How to Stop It

Jonathan Zittrain believes that gadgets such as iPhones and Xbox’s threaten the future of the internet. His book, entitled The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop it, has stirred up fierce discussion across the internet.

In his book, Zittrain, an American and a fervent hater of anything regulatory, believes that there should be two types of computers, or more to the point, two types of operating modes: red and green. In the green zone the system is locked down, and users would be unable to run programs that weren’t previously approved.

In the red zone though, everything would be open and thus if you were to download a movie from the internet, and it contained a virus, you’d be in it by yourself. However he noted that there should be a restore function, so that even in the red zone you can go back to a time before being infected.

The latest to comment is Bill Thompson, technology critic and writer for the BBC. In an article entitled “Staying Safe and Taking Risks” Thompson advocates an extension of Zittrain’s idea: two zones of internet.

Thompson suggests that, similarly to Zittrain’s safe and unsafe zones of computing, there should be a safe and unsafe internet: two separate internets. One would be the safe and locked down version, where viruses and the like don’t exist, and websites and programs are locked to all hell and back, the other, the freedom that many of us would want.

But both men propose interesting ideas, because not everyone is a geek like me. Not everyone desires the full open access to the internet that I do. Some literally do just want to check their mail, maybe check a website or two, chat to friends, and then leave.

Zittrain however puts a little too much trust in the “community” of the internet. As mentioned, Zittrain is an American and is subsequently naturally predisposed to dislike the government having any involvement in anything. However Thompson doesn’t have the same problem, coming from England, and sees a certain level of governmental oversight and involvement as an OK thing.

One need only look to eBay, as Thompson examples, or to communities such as the Digg or Wikipedia communities, to realize that online groups of people are not always the most helpful and useful. Thompson is aware of this, and subsequently states that there should be “…space for subversion, for activism, for stuff that is not approved, not countenanced by the state, not strictly legal,” on tomorrow’s network.

The desire for a safer and stronger internet is growing, and not surprisingly as technology becomes more and more accessible to the masses. The iPhone isn’t just being sold to geeks and nerds, and though Linux is still pretty much the geeks tool of choice, companies such as Dell are making an effort to put it out there in the mainstream.

Either way, with continued access and accessibility being granted, there is going to come a point when governmental oversight is needed; or at least, deemed necessary, and it is then that the rest of us must put our thinking caps on and provide a solution that suits everybody, and simultaneously doesn’t rob us of any and all security.

Posted by Josh Hill.