Beyond all of the iPad hype, beyond the lovers and the haters and the blenders, there’s a really serious question lurking, and Doc Searls nailed it in his brain dump response:

Do we want the Internet to be broadcasting 2.0 — run by a few content companies and their allied distributors? Or do we want it to be the wide open marketplace it was meant to be in the first place, and is good for everybody?

On closed systems

Searls, Cory Doctorow, Dave Winer, Mark Pilgrim, Alex Payne (cf. this post also), Tim Bray, and Peter Kirn, take the side of the open marketplace.

The Internet in all of its social splendor is revolutionary, some would say the most revolutionary change in the the history of the world when to comes to the way humans communicate.

It’s opened doors for some (e.g. Facebook), posted huge challenges for others (e.g. publishing), and disrupted all of our lives.

But the present experience of revolution isn’t new. Consider this from Cory Doctorow’s Content (links mine):

image credit: Dave Bleasdale

Dear Colleague:

As a fellow member of the publishing industry, I’ve been struggling a bit lately to wrap my head around our emerging role on the internet, in the marketplace, and in society.

In that struggle, I hope to point to a few basic and critical issues at the heart of the debate. From what my research is telling me thus far, the primary issue for us—even beyond copyright considerations—is (and I don’t mean to be flip here) remembering the how the internet works.