The Future of the Internet

Jeremiah Owyang posted this morning a question, whether the reader was a corporatist or a purist in regard to the corporate impact of social media. There is a nice discussion in response to this in his comments section which you can read or participate in here.

In my comment, I mentioned the book, The Future of the Internet, which takes a big picture view of the internet as it matures due to the impact of trends like social media, and technological developments (heres a more in-depth review of the book). Zittrain considers whether the trajectory will be shaped more by tethered appliances rather than the generative approach of its first decade. Since I tend toward pessimism when it comes to technologys role in society in general (yeah, I just said that), my sense is that we are headed toward a more lock-down oriented phase (corporatist) of the internet, though Ill be happy to be proven wrong.

What do you think?