This reminds me of another writer that's been writing about open and closed systems, Tim Wu.
In his book The Master Switch[0], he makes a similar argument, though in the case of this, it was open access and net neutrality, but I think the overall message and patterns around that he talks about, it is very much similar to whats being talk about by Doctorow. The sum of his argument maintains that basically open systems allow for high periods of innovation, experimentation, and ultimately new markets, and eventually, when those open systems start to get dominated by a few players, they tend to close and become entrenched, until they stagnant, and become open again. He also suggests, as part of the conclusion of his book, that if as society it is encouraged, for instance, for base systems to be open, you don't have to sacrifice interim innovation and growth that come with open systems, and therefore encouraging innovation across all affected sectors.
Think about it like this. Large companies were once small, and when they were small, they built their backs on reverse engineering proprietary protocols and using open access systems, in which they were able to innovate in these spaces, while also able to maintain that innovation catalyst by inter-operating with common systems (e.g TCP/IP, HTTP) and reverse engineering proprietary protocols. In the case of Apple, for instance, one of their primary motivations in investing in AppleWorks[1] is that they actively reversed engineered the Microsoft Office formats, which afforded interoperability with PCs. Arguably, without open access systems and the ability to reverse engineer these formats, Apple would not be where it is today. However now, legislation and legal precedent has been set that would be it, at best, dubiously legal, for a competitor to do just that.
[0]: He gave a talk at Stanford based on the ideas of the book, which centered around net neutrality and open protocols, you can see that talk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij76dh_340w
It's not entirely a coincidence that Tim and I sound alike on this subject! We grew up together at the same hippie alternative school in Toronto and then both came under the influence of Larry Lessig in our adult lives.
Tim and I got a chance to catch up at a Brussels antitrust conference last month and it was great to go over all the ways that our backgrounds contributed to our work in adulthood:
This weekend I got back to doing a little bit of work on my TerseNet concept, inspired by one of your articles "https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-n..." and things like the Gemini Protocol with the idea of combating monopolies by making protocols simple enough for the average programmer or small team to implement them.
That's amazing, such a small world! I been following Tim Wu since I first heard of him way way back when he was a guest on an early video series produced by The Verge (the video series unfortunately, is now defunct, these were the Josh Topolsky days). No idea you guys were connected in any way.
He's an amazing writer on the subject of information systems and broader society, in my opinion. I was drawn to your work via Factually! of all things.
Going to take a moment to mention - though I shared a disagreement elsewhere in the comments, I respect the work you've been doing Cory and I regret not saying so in my comment. I'm glad you're make a case for adversarial interop and I hope people do give it a shot.
In his book The Master Switch[0], he makes a similar argument, though in the case of this, it was open access and net neutrality, but I think the overall message and patterns around that he talks about, it is very much similar to whats being talk about by Doctorow. The sum of his argument maintains that basically open systems allow for high periods of innovation, experimentation, and ultimately new markets, and eventually, when those open systems start to get dominated by a few players, they tend to close and become entrenched, until they stagnant, and become open again. He also suggests, as part of the conclusion of his book, that if as society it is encouraged, for instance, for base systems to be open, you don't have to sacrifice interim innovation and growth that come with open systems, and therefore encouraging innovation across all affected sectors.
Think about it like this. Large companies were once small, and when they were small, they built their backs on reverse engineering proprietary protocols and using open access systems, in which they were able to innovate in these spaces, while also able to maintain that innovation catalyst by inter-operating with common systems (e.g TCP/IP, HTTP) and reverse engineering proprietary protocols. In the case of Apple, for instance, one of their primary motivations in investing in AppleWorks[1] is that they actively reversed engineered the Microsoft Office formats, which afforded interoperability with PCs. Arguably, without open access systems and the ability to reverse engineer these formats, Apple would not be where it is today. However now, legislation and legal precedent has been set that would be it, at best, dubiously legal, for a competitor to do just that.
[0]: He gave a talk at Stanford based on the ideas of the book, which centered around net neutrality and open protocols, you can see that talk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij76dh_340w
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleWorks