Law professor discusses ‘civic tech.’ in lecture
Law professor Jonathan Zittrain lectured on "civic technologies" on Monday.
By Greg Berger, The Dartmouth Staff
Published on Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Wikipedia is always only 45 minutes away from total destruction, Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain said in a lecture held in the Haldeman Center on Monday. In his speech, "Civic Technologies and the Future of the Internet," Zittrain explained that "civic technologies," such as Wikipedia, survive because users identify and fix flaws in the system.
Civic technologies are interactive services that depend on users to prevent accidental and deliberate damage, Zittrain said.
The Internet was originally created as an open network to compete with subscription networks like Compuserve and America Online, Zittrain said.
Although the Internet gained widespread dominance because of its accessibility, it relies heavily on "a lot of faith, trust and neighborliness among its users," Zittrain said.
Because the Internet is not centrally organized, one change to the network may have unexpected and far-reaching ramifications that can cause the entire system to collapse, Zittrain said. Since many users continually monitor the system, he said, problems are constantly identified and corrected.
Zittrain cited the Pakistani government's February 2008 attempt to block YouTube as an example of the Internet's vulnerability.One Pakistani Internet service provider blocked YouTube in a way that rendered the web site inaccessible to all users worldwide within 20 minutes.
"That's weird, right?" Zittrain said. "One of the most popular web sites in the world, run by one of the most powerful companies in the world, and there was nothing [Youtube and Google] could do to prevent the hijacking."
Minutes after the web site block became international, users found a way to reroute the code and fix the problem for free, Zittrain said.
This example demonstrates that the Internet relies on highly informal processes "to keep [its] infrastructure going," Zittrain said.
"This isn't just the case with the Internet, but for all civic technologies," he said.
Civic technologies rely on users to seek out and solve problems, Zittrain said, stressing that users who fix web sites' problems work voluntarily and without compensation.
Wikipedia, Zittrain said, owes its existence to users who remove inaccuracies and spam from the encyclopedia.
"If they were to move on to something else, Wikipedia would be dead within 45 minutes," Zittrain said. "Wikipedia only continues working because there are several thousand people committed to keeping it going at all times."
Zittrain expressed concerns that restrictions on users may be detrimental to civic technologies. In corporate, educational, cyber cafe and library environments, the institution has control over which programming codes Internet users may run, potentially impeding their ability to monitor and correct civic technologies, he said.
"If Wikipedia had to go through any form of the slightest amount of gatekeeping, it would not survive," he said.
Zittrain has launched stopbadware.org and the OpenNet Initiative, which he said will render controls on civic technologies unnecessary.
These initiatives, Zittrain said, will arm users with the needed information to safely run computer programs.
The speech was part of the Dartmouth College Institute for Security, Technology and Society's ongoing lecture series.
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