A Consuming Experience

I previous blogged about Prof Jonathan Zittrain's very interesting and witty talk at the launch of his book "The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It", which is available to buy in hard copy, or you can get it as a free PDF download under a Creative Commons licence (see my previous post on Zittrain's The Future of the Internet for links).

I've now managed to convert the PDF to an ebook for reading on my Nokia N95 smartphone, as I didn't want to carry the book around with me - it's heavy (hardcover) and it also has some value of the non-monetary kind to me (he signed it with a personal message).

Please feel free to download the eBook (PRC format) of Zittrain's "The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It" (for those not familiar with electronic books, try downloading and using the free e-book reader software from Mobipocket which is available in many formats e.g. Blackberry, Windows Mobile / PocketPC, Symbian i.e. many Nokia or Sony Ericsson phones, and Palm PDA, you can install it through your computer or over the air - there's even a Windows XP / Vista version and you can manually install it on Mac or Linux too. Tip: on my phone, after launching the MobiPocket Reader, I couldn't figure out how to open the PRC file that I'd stored on my microSD card - where's the File Open menu? Answer: you don't need one. Just find and select the PRC file via your File Manager and it'll automatically open in MobiPocket Reader. I also tried QReader but it didn't work, with this particular file anyway).

It is of course also licensed on the same Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 3.0 terms - free for personal use, basically.

However, it took me the best part of a day to convert and correct it including the images (no kidding - some characters just didn't translate properly so there was a lot of search & replace, otherwise it would have taken 2 days) and I just didn't have the time to do all the fixes, so please note that it's a rough & ready adaptation - while the main substance is there the formatting isn't perfect, and in relation to the footnotes note that:

• Some of the footnote links are weird - the link text should just be the superscript number for the footnote, but sometimes it extends to other text before or after the footnote number. I fixed the first few, then realised it would take forever to do the rest so I stopped. They're still clickable though, obviously.
  
  
• Some of the footnote numbers, when clicked, don't take you to the right footnote. I suspect this is because links were based on the location of the footnotes in the original PDF and on conversion it kept that, so they take you to the page the footnote was on in the PDF version. Given how many footnotes there are, it would have taken me another week to fix all those. So I didn't. Just bear in mind you may have to scroll down further, even a few pages, when you try to read a footnote - at least you know the number so you can find it.

I still haven't finished reading it (obviously!) so no review from me yet, but I'll put one up as soon as I can. Looking very good so far, which isn't surprising judging by his talk (recording available, see my previous post).

Here's the download link again: eBook (PRC format) of Zittrain's "The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It".

Labels: eBook, free, internet, vision

Recording of talk by Prof Lawrence Lessig at the Institution of Engineering & Technology, London for the Society for Computers & Law (free download under a Creative Commons licence, of course!) - just click the arrow to play it online:
Prof. Lessig on Corruption 2.0 (see the main page with links to the intro speech etc):

"In this lecture, Professor Lessig builds upon the work of Oxford Professor Jonathan Zittrain to identify a critical dynamic in policy making affecting the Internet, and how technologists have become central to that dynamic. The threats to privacy, security, and the proper protection for copyright are not technical, but political. The remedies to those threats will not just be political, but in an important sense, also technological. Professor Lessig describes this dynamic, and describes the emerging movement in the United States to address it."

"The essence of what he concludes is that the Internet is under threat from those with special interests to protect or those, especially in government, who seek increased control... One of the elements that underpins the argument is the considerable evidence that supports the view that government decision makers are either stupid or corrupt. Not blatantly corrupt in a Third World bribe way but ready to do what one US politician was advised to do - ‘lean to the green’, ie towards the source of campaign funds. Subtle corruption arises too from the acknowledged effectiveness of lobbying – Mickey Mouse has better funded lobbyists than open source and it shows. With the odd exception, one tends to concede that politicians are not stupid so how does one explain the worldwide trend towards retrospective extension of copyright terms when there can be no conceivable advantage to the wider public interest – it won’t, as Professor Lessig observed, persuade George Gershwin to write more music nor will it turn Cliff into Elvis. Or how to explain the US’s Federal Nutrition Board embrace of 25% sugar as being consistent with a balanced diet?.." (from Eastham writeup)

See also Laurence Eastham's report of the lecture. I'm still listening through it myself, but it sounds excellent.

You can buy or download Prof. Zittrain's book "The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It" book which sets out the ideas referred to in the quote above and in the talk.

Labels: digital rights, internet, speech, vision

Jonathan Zittrain virtually needs no introduction: world-renowned expert and visionary on the internet and the law / society, professor at Oxford's Oxford Internet Institute and co-founder of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, his book "The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It" just came out on 1 May.

I was lucky enough to be at the book launch in London, chaired by ORG head Becky Hogge, last week at the RSA. His lively, witty and informative talk at the launch was superb - and you can now play or download the MP3 audio podcast of Zittrain's talk at the launch of "The future of the internet". The webcast will be out in a week or two, I gather (unless the RSA people were meaning just the podcast). Watch it if you can, if only for the fun slides of happy Bill Gates mugshots and a hamster-powered shredder, and of course what Prof Zittrain said in relation to those slides - but you can hear all that on the podcast. I'd not come across Cats That Look Like Hitler, though I'd heard of couch surfing before! More seriously, see the BBC report on the talk, which sums it up well.

(Digression: another reason to catch the webcast - for anyone who has to do public speaking or lecturing, viewing it should be de rigeur. This is the way to use slides in a talk, instead of inflicting death by PowerPoint on the audience.)

You can:

• download the book (alternative download site where you can even get the book emailed to you; HTML version) - NB 351 pages, nearly 3 MB PDF. It's free for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 3.0 license, or


• buy the book:
  
  

A full review will follow once I've finished reading it, but he makes very good points, clearly and entertainingly. I'll just quote from the synopsis for now:

"...IPods, iPhones, Xboxes, and TiVos represent the first wave of Internet-centered products that can’t be easily modified by anyone except their vendors or selected partners. These “tethered appliances” have already been used in remarkable but little-known ways: car GPS systems have been reconfigured at the demand of law enforcement to eavesdrop on the occupants at all times, and digital video recorders have been ordered to self-destruct thanks to a lawsuit against the manufacturer thousands of miles away...As tethered appliances and applications eclipse the PC, the very nature of the Internet—its “generativity,” or innovative character—is at risk.

The Internet’s current trajectory is one of lost opportunity. Its salvation, Zittrain rgues, lies in the hands of its millions of users. Drawing on generative technologies like Wikipedia that have so far survived their own successes, this book shows how to develop new technologies and social structures that allow users to work creatively and collaboratively, participate in solutions, and become true “netizens.”"

And, while I shouldn't gloat, I managed to get a signed copy of the book, with a little personalised message, yay! Ultra-intelligent, sharp, funny, a fab speaker as well as writer, and a lovely man too - don't you just want to hate him? (/fan mode).

Go read the book and join the group annotation of the book!

Tags: generativity, generative, sterile, sterility, tethered appliances, Zittrain, The Future of the Internet, Improbulus, A Consuming Experience

Labels: book, internet, vision