ISI Samuel Lazerow Memorial Lecture

Abstract: Web 2.0 would seem to represent an emancipatory move to oppose the old closed or bounded system of technologies, forms, and institutions (the web page, the encyclopedia, the firm) with a more democratic open one (the wiki, wikipedia, wikinomics). Despite the hype, there is a great deal of truth and hope in such claims. A glance at the past suggests, however, that such struggles are not entirely new, nor, as some would have it, entirely the function of new technologies. By looking at earlier struggles over open or closed, we can not only understand the current trajectory better, but also understand why it sometimes happens that technologies, forms, and institutions that were once triumphantly forced open in hard-fought battles nonetheless closed again.