Zittrain thinks we're seeing the end of the freewheeling Internet and PC era. He calls the technologies of today "tethered"

items like iPhones or many brands of DVR -- they're sterile to their owners, who aren't allowed to build software that runs on them. But they're generative to the companies that make them

worse than plain old sterile technologies. They allow for abuses undreamed of in the IBM mainframe era.

Zittrain's solution to the tethering problem is to encourage the existence of

people who work together to create open, untethered technologies and information repositories. They are the force that pushes back against companies that want to sterilize the Internet and turn it back into something that spits information at you

this is a good start, but there are a lot of problems with depending on communities

to fix a system created by corporate juggernauts

companies can create an incredibly oppressive tethering regime while still allowing users to think they have control.