Internet guru Tim Wu says innovation in technology and communications business is fostered by openness, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON
TECHNOLOGY AND communications industry innovation tends to happen in “open” environments with few technology or cost barriers, and one in which a certain amount of lawbreaking happens, says Columbia University law professor Tim Wu.
Wu, co-author of the 2006 book Who Controls the Internet? and a leading scholar in internet law, spoke on Monday at the Institute of International and European Affairs in Dublin on how these sectors fluctuate between openness, with numerous competitors, and the flipside tendency towards having a dominant monopoly in control.
Far from believing the internet is a unique place which introduces a business environment never seen before, he argues that history offers repeating models of what to expect – for example, in the telephone and film industries just decades ago.
In an interview, he notes that such industries do not tend to be either open or closed. “I think there will be fluctuation back and forth. The longer lasting phases are the hegemonic or imperial domination phases – they tend to last decades,” he says. “Whereas the open periods tend to be these brief, 10- to 20-year periods.”
His own preference is for openness and for making the technological medium for the development of content, services and products neutral and open. This, he says, throws open the door to entrepreneurs and creates new businesses.
“I think there’s a lot that is attractive about the open phases. There’s a sense of opportunity in that people can start businesses and change things, there’s a lot more cultural experimentation, and it’s a forum for all types of innovation and experimentation and different voices.”
Not that openness is without its downsides, he adds: expect a tendency for vulgarity, lawbreaking, and disorganisation – in a word, the internet. “Either you revel and celebrate that or . . . some people would probably be happier in the media phase of the 1950s”, of monopoly television networks and film studios.
A period of monopoly and industry domination tends to be very attractive when it arrives, “because it fixes a lot of things.” When myriad small phone companies with wildly varying levels of service were crushed by a single dominant player in the US in the 1920s and 1930s, people got a reliable national phone service.
But the longer that dominant players dominate, the more stagnant their industries become, he says. And that is where law-breaking often comes in. Lawbreaking is often a flag that “something is going on – innovation is under way.”
“I think that some amount of lawbreaking is actually part of the healthy legal system.” When long-standing laws are challenged, “it might indicate that people want to do things that the law is preventing them from doing” and that the laws need to be changed.
As an example, he cites the broad issue of “piracy”, which many see as particularly fraught on the internet. Not so, he says. “In the history of communications and of the media there are regular instances of piracy. When the recording industry was born in America they were considered pirates. When the radio industry was born they were considered pirates; when the cable TV industry was born they were considered pirates, when the internet industries were born they were considered pirates. There are consistently periods of outlaws and then piracy that accompany industry succession.”
Hence today’s internet piracy is shaping tomorrow’s new services and businesses. He does, however believe that the technology industry views information and content in a different way than other communications media, an industry ideology that is shaping business in that sector.
People in the sector “come with a set of beliefs, which can’t be proven or disproven, that prefer open systems, easy to use codes, all the conveniences they take for granted on the internet, ease of access to information, a sense of openness, the ability to ask questions, all of which really came out of the 1960s and 1970s and the origins (of the ICT industry and internet).
Are there certain technology companies that embody openness versus domination? “Google’s trying to be on the side of openness, but some of their allies seem much shakier on this question. Yahoo, for example, seems a lot shakier. On the net neutrality battle, (to keep internet standards open), they’re not a clear backer on the position. Microsoft is a monopoly and has always run a halfway open platform.”
He says there was no certainty that the net would go for general openness. A decade ago, he notes, it seemed very possible that the net was going to be dominated by just two companies – Microsoft and AOL – “and these (would) be gigantic, vertically integrated empires that would do everything NBC did or Paramount.
“Now that didn’t happen, and I think the reason that didn’t happen was network neutrality. In other words, the network itself had this radical design that destroyed AOL/Time Warner. I believe it’s because of the seeds planted by the internet’s founders.
“Because of that history you could have a company like Google come out of nowhere, and the internet industry remained independent.”
Still, he warns, that could all change again. He argues that the internet itself will not remain as we know it now – it will evolve, or be replaced by some other communications medium, perhaps an evolving form of television or mobile phone. And those “long cycles of history” are what fascinate him.
Listen to the full interview podcast at: www.techno-culture.com/ podcasts
