"iBrick"

In Jonathan Zittrain's article, "The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It", Apple's iPhone was discussed. Launched in 2007 he thinks it is both a generative and tethered device, or in other words, good and bad. Stating that it was a device that wasn't only for hobbyists, like the Apple 2, and could be used by anyone in this age, he says it was a generative invention. However, he also says that the iPhone has its downfalls which also makes it a tethered device. For example, the first version of the iPhone only allowed the Apple company to create the applications on the phone. Therefore, the owners of the cell phones were not able to tamper with the handheld computer/phone, which did not allow for the growth or advancement that is needed with such a new and innovative technology. Also the fact that if the touch screen on the phone broke it would literally be useless, (with the coined term iBrick), makes it a tethered device.

After reading Jonathan's article, I began to think about the Blackberry phone that I just ordered on eBay. Although they just came out with a touch screen version, and many phones now are becoming touch screen, I personally would never want one, and many other phone users feel the same way. According to the reviews of the blackberry touch phone online, many people have gone back and returned for the older version because of the annoyance of the touch screen. This reminds me of our discussion on the procrastination principle, which was defined by Bill Thompson. Apple, along with the creators of Blackberry, puts new things on the market and fix the glitches as they go along, which is annoying at first, (tethered), but can eventually be to our benefit, (generative)