Thanks to iCloud and other services, the choice of a phone or tablet today may lock a consumer into a branded silo, making it hard for him or her to do what Apple long importuned potential customers to do: switch.
Category Archive: Jonathan Zittrain
The Internet’s distinct configuration may have facilitated anonymous threats, copyright infringement, and cyberattacks, but it has also kindled the flame of freedom in ways that the framers of the American constitution would appreciate – the Federalist papers were famously authored pseudonymously.
When I worry about privacy, I worry about peer-to-peer invasion of privacy. About the fact that anytime anything of any note happens, there are three arms holding cell phones with cameras in them or video records capturing the event ready to go on the nightly news, if necessary.
The Internet is a collective hallucination: one of the best humanity has ever generated.
Citizens identify with something larger than themselves – if one’s country is attacked, it can feel like a personal attack in a way that a fellow bank customer’s account theft does not feel like a personal invasion.
How an individual’s reputation is protected online is too important and subtle a policy matter to be legislated by a high court, which is institutionally mismatched to the evolving intricacies of the online world.
Enterprising law-enforcement officers with a warrant can flick a distant switch and turn a standard mobile phone into a roving mic or eavesdrop on occupants of cars equipped with travel assistance systems.
Purchasing and downloading a book on to your e-reader won’t necessarily protect it from disappearing.
Digital books and other texts are increasingly coming under the control of distributors and other gatekeepers rather than readers and libraries.
The Internet works thanks to loose but trusted connections among its many constituent parts, with easy entry and exit for new Internet service providers or new forms of expanding access.