the fourth place

JZ is having a productive chat with the Groklaw community, which I used to follow obsessively and like many people began to forget about as each issue got debated to death.

Anyway, its about the way the Internet is becomming less open in the Open PC Open Network sense and is becoming more controlled both at the network level and at the device level. JZ examines these trends and appears to have identified many shades of grey between closed and open.

I am worried about the "appliancization" of the Internet. I see a possibility that the physical devices that mainstream Internet users commonly use to access the network will be much more limited in the outside code that they can run, and more directive to users about what to do or where to go online. In other words, the Internet will become as boring as television, and as limited in the audiences who can contribute to it. [...] for example, a box can be built using free software that is not readily modifiable by mainstream users (TiVo is a good example), while PCs running proprietary operating systems can be nearly completely reprogrammed and repurposed with a click or two, or a CD-ROM. The more that mainstream users access the network using information appliances, the fewer opportunities there will be to easily deploy innovative new applications

The discussion touches on IPv6, which is interesting. There is a lot of discussion from folks like Adriana Cronin-Lukas and Glenn Reynolds about how cheap pod- and video-casting is revolutionising society and creating less conformity and more cultural diversity. One commenter places IPv6 centrally in this revolution:

multicast is built into IPv6. This means that a broadcast to 1000 people does not use 1000 times the bandwidth required to deliver the data to 1 person. In fact, it requires exactly the same amount of bandwidth as that required to deliver the data to 1 person. [...] This means that anybody can broadcast. Cheaply. This could bring about as large a social change as that which occurred when the Internet became popular. If anybody can broadcast, then people will want the freedom to do so, and will want all the flexibility that goes along with it.