Communication tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring. Jonathan Zittrain points out that the ‘ever-increasing usability [of Web 2.0]has been accompanied by the deliberalising of user rights’. To believe that competitive pressures will lead providers to offer more freedoms is like expecting the commercialisation of news to improve the quality of reporting. ‘Mass amateurisation’ ~ racing car driving is difficult, so we have professionals for whom driving is not a means but an end; driving a normal car is so easy that amateurs can do it while trying to achieve other things. Activist academics who like to think of themselves as progressives yet covet their positions as consultants to conservative business and government ~ Self-censorship at work. The total absence of controversial issues creates the narrow scope typical of books written by consultants.
http://www.metamute.org/en/content/analysis_without_analysis