Avoiding a Cliff Dive

摘要

The image on the cover of Jonathan Zittrain's The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It depicts train tracks that fork at the edge of a cliff. One branch falls off a cliff to the left; the other heads off safely into the distance. Like the artwork, this compelling book starkly presents an impending decision: essentially the choice (of grand social consequence) between two futures for the Internet and the information, computing, and communications ecosystem it has generated. Zittrain (a professor at Harvard Law School) contends that we are approaching rapidly the junction where a choice-really, a series of choices-must be made. And there are many obstacles to choosing the path to salvation. We need to recognize that we are on the train and see where it is heading. We next need to identify the correct path, and then we must make the appropriate decisions that will allow us to follow it. Failure to do so means heading off the side of a cliff to our doom. Though perhaps a bit exaggerated, Zittrain's framing is powerful.