Each scenario represents the ever-shifting trade winds blowing through this revolutionary new technology. To think that things have settled yet is crazy. As the build out continues, Zittrain explains, the pressure will increase on Net users and designers to agree to a larger set of common operating standards. I think that's been a great policy so far, but in the absence of government presence, we will see a number of powerful figures emerge. You'll get private sheriffs, and they'll start running their towns however they like, and you can't throw them out in an election if you don't like them.
Every plot of land is bought and sold.
Condos go up and everybody will lament the fact that the park land is all gone. For now, at least, there is a sense of anonymity and relative freedom on the World Wide Web, but Zittrain's vision for the future is more pragmatic. The possible negatives include a world in which, thanks to highly targeted corporate means of knowing who you are when you surf, corporations are able to judge you as a customer, just the way you are judged when you board an airplane and you flash your Premier Gold card. At some point, it becomes a really weird world for which an excess of data about who is who erases some of the de facto egalitarianism that we've become used to in daily transactions and commerce. It's now time for our second round of financing, our retrenching, and I'm delighted there's somebody who's fresh and new and ready to take it on.