The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It Jonathan Zittrain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. 342 pages. $30.00.Jonathan Zittrain's book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, discusses the tension between generativity, the "capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from a broad and varied audience" and the security problems inherent in today's personal computers and Internet system (70). This generativity, Zittrain argues, is the greatest strength of personal computers and the Internet and had led to great innovations, including creative software, peer-to-peer networking, blogs and content sites such as Wikipedia, and even the Internet itself. Yet this same generativity has also spawned security, legal, and social problems that may lead to the demise of personal computers and the Internet as they exist today (101). If we do not find solutions for these problems, Zittrain warns, we will be faced with government or corporate control of personal computers and the Internet, similar to current controls of cellular telephones and cable converter boxes, which will effectively shut down the innovations that personal computers and the Internet currently enable (245). Personal computers, according to Zittrain, will become nothing but appliances programmed by the manufacturer, capable only of limited tasks, and stripped of the tools and capabilities necessary for innovation.The first part of the book traces the history of personal computers, mainframes, proprietary servers, and the Internet. This section highlights how differences in technology and administration fostered generativity in personal computers and on the Internet and prohibited innovation on the mainframes and proprietary networks. Yet the innovations made possible by the generative nature of the Internet and personal computers also created its vulnerabilities: viruses, worms, malware, and spyware. Despite his obvious support of generativity, Zittrain admits that the current situation is "not sustainable" (43), but warns that the obvious solutions-such as limited functionality, governmental controls, and censorship-completely undermine the creativity made possible by personal computers and the Internet. The sec- ond part of the book defines generativity and explores its benefits and detriments. Here, Zittrain proposes that information technology functions best when generative, while admitting that we cannot ignore the problems caused by generativity (64), and warns equally of the dangers of controlled appliances: censorships, surveillance, forced legal compliance, and unannounced changes in machine functions. Chapter 6 in this section considers Wikikpedia as a self-regulating generative system that functions imperfectly but well. Part Three proposes technological, legal, and social solutions to the problems discussed earlier in the book.The Future of the Internet intertwines its analysis of current personal computer/Internet problems with current and historical examples from business, law, culture (Internet and otherwise), and technology. These examples, often worthwhile and interesting in and of themselves, underpin Zittrain's analysis rationally and support his conclusions. The examples show that the kind of sledgehammer solutions that Zittrain predicts are not merely possibilities or potentialities, but already have been and are being employed by various companies and governments. Perhaps best of all, Zittrain's use of these historical and current examples avoids the sensationalism often seen in other works that predict governmental and corporate control of options, behavior, and creativity. …

The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It

Journalism researchers have tended to study journalistic roles from within a Western framework oriented toward the media’s contribution to democracy and citizenship. In so doing, journalism scholarship often failed to account for the realities in non-democratic and non-Western contexts, as well as for forms of journalism beyond political news. Based on the framework of discursive institutionalism, we conceptualize journalistic roles as discursive constructions of journalism’s identity and place in society. These roles have sedimented in journalism’s institutional norms and practices and are subject to discursive (re)creation, (re)interpretation, appropriation, and contestation. We argue that journalists exercise important roles in two domains: political life and everyday life. For the domain of political life, we identify 18 roles addressing six essential needs of political life: informational-instructive, analytical-deliberative, critical-monitorial, advocative-radical, developmental-educative, and colla...

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Journalism beyond democracy: A new look into journalistic roles in political and everyday life:

The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom

This article focuses on how we can understand the contradictory dynamicsthrough which communications technologies have been domesticated at the same time that domesticity itself has been dislocated. The article addresses questions of historical periodization and the need for a more developed historical perspective on the futurological debates about the new technologies with which so much of media and cultural studies is concerned today.

What’s ‘home’ Got to do with it? Contradictory Dynamics in the Domestication of Technology and the Dislocation of Domesticity

Software applications (apps) are now prevalent in the digital media environment. They are the site of significant sociocultural and economic transformations across many domains, from health and relationships to entertainment and everyday finance. As relatively closed technical systems, apps pose new methodological challenges for sociocultural digital media research. This article describes a method, grounded in a combination of science and technology studies with cultural studies, through which researchers can perform a critical analysis of a given app. The method involves establishing an app’s environment of expected use by identifying and describing its vision, operating model and modes of governance. It then deploys a walkthrough technique to systematically and forensically step through the various stages of app registration and entry, everyday use and discontinuation of use. The walkthrough method establishes a foundational corpus of data upon which can be built a more detailed analysis of an app’s intended purpose, embedded cultural meanings and implied ideal users and uses. The walkthrough also serves as a foundation for further user-centred research that can identify how users resist these arrangements and appropriate app technology for their own purposes.

The walkthrough method: An approach to the study of apps

This article reports on a collective project by the Midlands Television Research Group into the changing character of weekday evening programming in the 1990s on British terrestrial television between 8.00 and 9.00. Over the decade, there has been a growth in ‘factual entertainment’ and a decrease in analytic documentary, situation comedy and variety. Factual entertainment comprises hybrid genres such as ‘docu-soaps’, CCTV footage-based programmes and lifestyle and make-over programmes. Each of the four sections engages with one aspect of the scheduling in the slot. Rachel Moseley discusses the gendering of the slot, focusing on BBC’s Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver. Catherine Johnson discusses pets, vets and children in documentary programmes. Helen Wheatley looks at the treatment of ‘real crime’ in the slot and Charlotte Brunsdon discusses historical antecedents to some of the lifestyle programmes.

Factual entertainment on British television The Midlands TV Research Group’s‘8–9 Project’

In the era of TVIII, characterized by deregulation, multimedia conglomeration, expansion and increased competition, branding has emerged as a central industrial practice. Focusing on the case of HBO, a particularly successful brand in TVIII, this article argues that branding can be understood not simply as a feature of television networks, but also as a characteristic of television programmes. It begins by examining how the network as brand is constructed and conveyed to the consumer through the use of logos, slogans and programmes. The role of programmes in the construction of brand identity is then complicated by examining the sale of programmes abroad, where programmes can be seen to contribute to the brand identity of more than one network. The article then goes on to examine programme merchandising, an increasingly central strategy in TVIII. Through an analysis of different merchandising strategies the article argues that programmes have come to act as brands in their own right, and demonstrates that the academic study of branding not only reveals the development of new industrial practices, but also offers a way of understanding the television programme and its consumption by viewers in a period when the texts of television are increasingly extended across a range of media platforms.

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TELE‐BRANDING IN TVIII: The network as brand and the programme as brand

Promotional Screen Industries

Introduction Part 1: Histories From Start-up to Consolidation: Institutions, Regions and Regulation in the History of ITV A Prodigious Act of Memory: What Would an ITV Canon Look Like? And the Rest is History: Lew Grade, the Creation Myth and Television Historiography Part 2: Institutions The Transatlantic Adventures of British Television in the 1950s: Funding, Production, Programmes, Formats and the 'Official' History of ITV Mammon's Television? ITV in Wales, 1959-63 From Newsreels to a Theatre of News: The Growth and Development of Independent Television News LWT in the 1980s: Factual Programmes, Public Service Obligations, Financial Incentives Part 3: Texts and Intertexts Channeling Celebrity: ITV and the Construction of Television Fame Rooms Within Rooms: Upstairs Downstairs and the Studio Costume Drama of the 1970s Who Wants to be a Fan of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Television Criticism, "Popular Aesthetics" and the Question of Fan/Academic Tastes Real People with Real Problems'?: Public Service Broadcasting, Commercialism and Trisha Conclusion Historical Timeline: The ITV Companies and the Broadcasting Acts Index

ITV Cultures: Independent Television Over Fifty Years

The past 5 years have seen a rapid acceleration in the development of online television in the United Kingdom and beyond, with rise in ownership of Internet-connected television sets, smartphones and tablets, increased access to broadband and the growing penetration of transaction and subscription video-on-demand (VoD) services. This article asks how free-to-air terrestrial broadcasters are adapting to a media marketplace in which, according to Ofcom, on-demand television is becoming mass market, through an analysis of ITV Hub – the VoD player for the United Kingdom’s largest free-to-air advertiser-funded broadcaster. Focusing on the mature UK VoD market and the broadcaster whose business model is most threatened by online television, the article combines trade press and textual analysis to demonstrate how ITV has developed a VoD service highly structured by the logics of broadcasting. Centering its analysis on the interface for ITV Hub, the article argues that this increasingly quotidian form of televisi...

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Catherine Johnson

Papers

Factual entertainment on British television The Midlands TV Research Group’s‘8–9 Project’

TELE‐BRANDING IN TVIII: The network as brand and the programme as brand

Promotional Screen Industries

ITV Cultures: Independent Television Over Fifty Years

Beyond catch-up: VoD interfaces, ITV Hub and the repositioning of television online