I'm making my way through Professor Zittrain's book as carefully as I can, and the more I read the more I get how dialed in he is to what is happening to the state of the 'Net these days and how we're so blinded by these "gee-whiz" technologies to see what is happening to our world.
During the first chapter he notes that one of the first mechanical computers, was built by Herman Hollerith for tabulating the Census, but leased to the Census Bureau, and that support was sold to them for a profit. They couldn't reprogram the machine, it did what the owner told it, and the owner took orders from the customer but had the final choice as to whether or not to implement a feature.
Hollerith's company became IBM. We know the rest.
Of course, with the CBS-Facebook March Madness debacle, you can't help but wonder why we have such short memories. Then again, we are in another bubble, aren't we?
More as I keep reading...
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