The new closed models that represent the likely future of consumer computing and networking are no minor tweaks. We face wholesale revision of the Internet and PC environment of the past several decades. The change is coming partly because of the need to address security problems peculiar to open technologies, and partly because businesses want more control over the experience that customers have with their products. The trend from open systems toward closed ones threatens the culture of serendipitous tinkering that has given us the Web, instant messaging, peer-to-peer networking, Skype, Wikipedia

Another is Web 2.0 software-as-service ventures like the Facebook platform and Google Apps, where software is written to run out in the Internet "cloud," on the vendor's service.

. Steve Jobs at first locked down the iPhone in this way-a product upon which he is betting the future of Apple.