The Un-Internet and War On General Purpose Computers

theodp writes "Apple,' writes Dave Winer in The Un-Internet, 'is providing a bad example for younger, smaller companies like Twitter and Tumblr, who apparently want to control the 'user experience' of their platforms in much the same way as Apple does. They feel they have a better sense of quality than the randomness of a free market. So they've installed similar controls.' Still, Winer's seen this movie before and notes, 'Eventually we overcome their barriers, and another layer comes on. And the upstarts become the installed-base, and they make the same mistakes all over again. It's the Internet vs the Un-Internet. And the Internet, it seems, always prevails.' Thinking along the same lines, Cory Doctorow warns the stakes are only going to get higher, and issues a call-to-arms for The Coming War on General Purpose Computation."

Comments

Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm tired of these articles. They seem like such trolling. Does and editor have some vendetta against the iWhatever/Android market? Last time I checked, nobody was having their arm twisted to use these devices. The free market is saying "We dont always need a PC." not "We don't need computers." Seriously, guys, take your paranoia back to mom's basement where you can be secluded and make your uninformed projections on other people in peace.

What exactly is his problem?

[Hentes]

Your content cannot be displayed by Twitter unless you're one of their partners. How you get to be a partner is left to your imagination. We have no visibility into it.

Sure you have: you have to create a Twitter account, and after that you can post whatever content (although calling tweets content is a bit of a stretch) you damn well please.