We Underestimate The Benefits And Overestimate The Dangers Of Openness

from the a-lesson-to-remember dept

I'm in the middle of reading James Boyle's excellent new book, The Public Domain, which I'll write more about next year. In the meantime, he's got a new column up at the Financial Times (which was sent to us by Jon) where he's channeling a bit of Jonathan Zittrain's techno-pessimism about how we may be heading towards a more closed and controlled internet. While I think the fear is a bit overblown, he does make a very important point, first highlighting how, if given the chance to start anew and create the World Wide Web a second time, many people would balk at the openness, pointing out all sorts of problems with it, and all sorts of dangers that it would enable. Yet, very few people would recognize the eventual impact it would have or the overall benefits it would create. As Boyle says:

We have a bias, a cognitive filter, that causes us to undersestimate the benefits and overestimate the dangers of openness -- call it cultural agoraphobia.

I think this is absolutely true, but then I disagree with Boyle (and Zittrain) on the idea that anyone is able to stuff that openness back in a box once it's out there. It's not as easy to change those core principles as some fear. Once people have a taste for what that openness allows, stuffing it back into a box is very difficult. Yes, it's important to remain vigilant, and yes, people will always attempt to shut off that openness, citing all sorts of "dangers" and "bad things" that the openness allows. But, the overall benefits of the openness are recognized by many, many people -- and the great thing about openness is that you really only need a small number of people who recognize its benefits to allow it to flourish.

Closed systems tend to look more elegant at first -- and often they are much more elegant at first. But open systems adapt, change and grow at a much faster rate, and almost always overtake closed systems, over time. And, once they overtake the closed systems, almost nothing will allow them to go back. Even if it were possible to turn an open system like the web into a closed system, openness would almost surely sneak out again, via a new method by folks who recognized how dumb it was to close off that open system.

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