Jonathan Zittrain's book, The Future of the Internet, and How to Stop It, is an extraordinary examination of computing and internet technologies in the "Web 2.0" world. Zittrain's thesis, which I will probably not do justice here, is that the personal computing and internet are generative technologies, which provide incredible opportunities for innovation but ultimately leave users vulnerable to security and privacy risks, including viruses, spam, and other versions of malware. There is a risk that popular fear of these risks will put pressure on regulatory authorities to lockdown the internet and computing industry and prevent both security risk and innovation, or the market will respond with "tethered appliances" that accomplsh the same things.
Zittrain counsels a set of community responses to these risks, providng generative answers to generative problems. He makes a provactive comparison to Madisonian government, in which the Constitutions' separation of powers and federalism doctrines were a response to moderate, but not choke, democracy in the late 19th Century, providing a republican solution to a republican theory.
See http://futureoftheinternet.org/
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