Now like the iPhone/Touch the iPad can use thousands of “apps”– miniature applications developed solely for use on iPhone/iTouch/iPad, and sold through the Apple store. What’s always been disconcerting about the app development process is that Apple controls not only the specifications for apps, but also restricts what apps are made available for use on their product, censors content, and even denies what technologies can be used to produce such apps.

Apple has the right to do all this, of course–it’s their device. Even though the approach out-M$s Microsoft, Apple’s restrictions on production and content of the apps is only one side of a larger problem. What really concerns me is how Apple’s app model will impact digital content on the open web, and I’m not talking about Flash.

The Web as an App

We’ve seen already a number of apps that replicate core functionality of web sites. We’re starting to see more apps produced by content providers as a supplement to their existing web-based content (e.g. Wired, NPR, WSJ). But how long until this supplement supplants the web-based stream? How long until consumers are hooked into fee-based access to this content under the illusion that it’s only available through the app?
I believe Apple has been rather insidious, if clever, in their iPhone/iPad app model, wherein the closed nature of their system requires a kind of fake innovation in the development of “new” apps that do little more than their web-based cousins; certainly little more than what’s already possible with a web browser and a little creative use of standards-based web languages. Instead, these appear to be little more than an opportunity for approved providers to elicit fees in new ways from end-users.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for businesses finding new ways to make money by improving service or a product, but is that what we are getting here? The drive to develop web-based products as apps seems entirely backwards, for we already have the one tool we need to facilitate mobility of both content and services: the standards-compliant web browser. What technologies do we need? Not C, C++, or even Flash, but how about HTML, CSS, Javascript, XML, and PHP? How about the open web standards that have facilitated the information access revolution we are experiencing?

Now a “special” path to mobile device development is nothing new; even the W3 tried to sell us on HDML rather than alternative CSS and minimalistic but semantically correct XHTML. But I think time has proven that this is wasted effort in the face of a broadly-accepted, dually-purposed web site constructed on sound principles of web design and utilizing creative applications of open technologies. Even NPR seems to prove this point by the fact that it has not only released it’s own iPad app, it’s also reworked it’s web site to be “iPad-friendly” for those who don’t want to download the (free) app. And at first glance it looks like the web site provides the same essential features.

Enter Blackboard

As expected, in an attempt to capitalize on the iPad buzz and finally make good on years of broken promises for mobile accessibility, Blackboard has unveiled its iPad app, which

recreates the course experience of Blackboard Learn™ … and lets students check grades and assignments, add discussion board comments and blog posts, email instructors and classmates

How stunningly innovative! I surely couldn’t do any of that on a mobile web browser?

I probably rehash this example too often, but I remember sitting in a session at a WebCT conference 5 years ago that was supposed to reveal WebCT’s innovations in mobile delivery of content. Turned out the WebCT rep had nothing to share, but hoped to take ideas from the audience. Disappointed, I turned to my Palm Treo phone and did some grading through Blazer on Moodle. Though the HTML, CSS, and Javascript of Moodle was still disappointingly primitive at the time, it was just good enough that the weak Blazer browser could handle it, and demonstrated the power of using open web standards.

Michael Feldstein suggests that this sort of “innovation” will promote the iPad itself, saying, “if I were a student or faculty member heavily using Blackboard and thinking about buying an iPad, I might find this app to be an additional motivator to buy one”. I bet Bb is hoping the reverse of this will be true: that by providing all their students with an iPad colleges like Seton Hill and George Fox will create a scenario that fits just right with their particular e-learning solution, which is “the industry leader” with full support for “mobile devices”.

This restrictive piping of information that we currently take for granted on the open web is of greatest concern to educators, perhaps, because it has the potential to retard the development of new models of learning. I don’t mean “learning by doing”, though iPad’s failure to support creative production is notable (Jeff Jarvis writes, “It turns us back into an audience again”); I mean particularly developing models that encourage increased learner self-regulation and networked direction along variable learning paths. Such models require access–both broad and deep–to information and depend upon content aggregation, parsing, and re-dissemination. These capabilities have only recently begun to be realized through the open web, thanks in large part to web standards. What schism might the apps model cause in this new standard of information accessibility? What locks and limitations may now encrust upon the ideals of the open web?

I’ve finally gotten around to reading through Ong’s “Orality and Literacy” (I skimmed it as an undergrad), a book which compares primary oral cultures to literate cultures, weighing the influence of technology. Mott’s point, that we need not teach students to learn information, but rather information-finding skills, reminded me of a passage that I highlighted in the early section, “Some Psychodynamics of Orality: the development of text, though “conservative in its own ways” ultimately “frees the mind of conservative tasks, of its memory work, and thus enables the mind to turn itself to new speculation”.

I expect this idea may be elaborated on later in the book, but as I read this I automatically wondered if instant access to networked information obviates “memory work” (i.e. memorization of information) even further, and thereby further freeing the mind for “new speculation”. If so, we can understand this as ultimately an advantage, a progression leading to future intellectual and cultural developments.

The next question: are we yet ready to recognize these “new speculations” for what they are? For what they and might be?

Ong reminds that literate individuals and cultures do lose intellectual and cultural abilities that are apparent in primary oral, and so we might expect similar losses as we become an instant-networks culture. What might these losses be? I know a number of critics have pointed to attention span, “flow”, sustained and deep reading, traditional concepts of plagiarism, etc.

A Brief History of the Internet,Part 1

Internet Map. by Matt Britt, Wikicommons

In the beginning was cyberspace, a dark, unknown void, whose depth and breadth were untested. Beyond this void were multitudes of isolated instances of archived information, crudely organized, but primitively connected, narrowly accessible, and not easily reproduced.

Then the Internet was born, and soon would come days when baud modems populated the lands. And the internet begat baud modems, which begat dial-up servers, which eventually begat BBS servers for trading song lyrics and shareware, and FTP servers for sharing text files and games. Thus the sharing and consuming of niche information multiplied throughout many lands.

From amongst these early adopters were born the elite nerds, and many rejoicing in the magic of the networks let their hearts harden against Copyright, which was the law. There were many who read the works of the Three Philosophers, Asimov and Dick and Gibson, and fashioned themselves as cyberpunks. And there were many who beheld visions of shareware, and the coming of open source. Ten, seeing how the people who were not 1337 suffered, soon the elite nerds opened the gates of the Internet to the masses of the world, and with Mosaic and Navigator ushered them into the wilderness.

The masses found and consumed the information, and it was good. And the masses authored, and created, and it was better. Yea, even through the beneficence of ad-riddled sites such as Geocities the peoples’ voices grew. Creators shared the information that they had with consumers, and consumers often shared it as well, whether the creators liked it or not, for all was public. And some who would not share did so anyway, for they were ignorant, and had no Google Analytics to track visitor data.

Then one day the tempter, a two-headed serpent, came and whispered in the ear of the creators, “If it’s publicly available on the web, how will you make any money?”

So the creators saw that they were naked, and sewed themselves footers with character entities such as ©, and limited their software to 30-day demos. And the works of many creators were hidden, or else ignored, and throughout the land many foul things were uttered against creators.

With his second head the tempter whispered to the consumers, “Why should you pay for that song if you can get it for free?” Thus the consumers were emboldened, and made Hotline, and Napster. And throughout the land their actions were labeled a sin against the creators.

Thus the tempter sowed enmity between creators and consumers, and enlarged their feud by running sensational TV reports on the local news.

There were in this land, living amongst the creators and consumers, philosophers who said, “Behold, we have open source, and GNU GPL for your software.” But the consumers compared it to commercial products which they downloaded from warez sitez, and found them lacking. And so from their long lines in front of the only computer in the office with a CD burner, they mocked these philosophers, saying, “Dream on” and “Get a life”, and turned their backs on the idea of open source, and paid tribute to commercial software companies.

But not all was lost, for the philosophers swayed some of the people, both consumers and creators saying, “Walk this way”, and in their words were prophesies of the future.

Then the age of Microsoft came to pass, and their products were good, or at least better. But the power of Microsoft grew swiftly, and soon the prince CEO was convinced by the whisperings of the tempter. And he consumed many lands, and many commercial products, and the might of his lawyers was made know, for they defended attempts to overthrow it’s great power, and and hurled insults and threats against the followers of open source.

Many who had mocked the open source philosophers had bowed down to Microsoft, and Adobe, and Corel, and idGames, but in private they continued to distribute and download warez. Those among them who had the power zipped these products, and with archives which spanned across 132 floppy disks, they enslaved the other consumers, and tempted them to hunt down passwords from pay-to-click ad links on their web sites, or else suffer at the mercy of Microsoft’s OEM distributions.

In these days there was heard a great and barbaric scream from atop the mountain where the music producers dwell, yea even the great and abominable RIAA, for they had fallen sick in their revenues, which depended on buying albums with 12 songs, but only one good one. But they persisted in their ways, and did not follow the digital path though the consumers demanded it of them. When they were confronted by their follies they lashed out, striking at consumers with one hand, while miming false promises with the other. Thus many fled the RIAA and it’s lawsuits, but many more were trampled, or made examples of. And contempt for these copyright holders grew.

Microsoft continued to weild it’s mighty power, even unto the courts of the lands, and it ran radio advertisements offering gold to those who would turn in the keepers of the warez, which were also called pirates. Thus more consumers sought the philosophers of open source, or at least their software.

And Microsoft began pushing out beta versions as final releases, and there was much wailing amongst the consumers, and many cried, “Why must we suffer under this beta version? Shall we not then cleave to open source?”

The philosophers of open source gathered followers from many lands, and creators collaborated through CSV, so that the whole was greater than the sum, and they proved their valor with Linux, and Apache, PHP, and MySQL. They gave the people distros such as Mandrake, and there were rumors in the land that an office software suite was coming, and it required no CD key, and it would be pure, for it held within it neither advertisments nor spyware.

There was also in this land scholars who dwelt behind the armored walls of the ivory tower, and students who dwelt below them in walled gardens. They saw this struggle and knew the pain of the consumers, for they felt the burden of costly textbooks, and publisher contracts, and cumbersome ePacks. They, too, were confounded, for they needed to create, consume, and reuse content. They had patronized the lawgivers, and though they had been given the TEACH act, the law was incomplete, and so yet they feared the wrath of the Copyright holder.

The open source philosophers knew of the sufferings of the creators and the consumers, the scholars and the students, and their numbers grew. Amongst them rose a few with good intent who would collaborate, and with tools for licensing, organizing, and sustaining the work, could liberate the people. For they knew that a new hunger was growing, one which could only be fed by a freedom both to take and to publish, both to share and to remix.