The environment balances the free against the controlled. Thus, preserving
this environment means preserving this balance.

But nothing guarantees that this mix will remain as it is. There is no "na-
ture" of the Internet that will assure a continued commons at the code layer,
no strong protections limiting Congress to ensure that adequate resources
remain free at the content layer. And most troubling in this environment,
there is an increasing pressure to use contracts to muck about with the free-
doms enabled at the physical layer -- to retrofit those technologies, that is, to
ensure that they don't threaten existing interests (as we'll see more of in
Chapter 10).

This mix constitutes an environment for innovation; this environment
enables the new against the old. But the old have an interest in under-
mining this environment, to the extent it threatens the old. And the means
to pollute this environment are well within reach. This requires environ-
mentalism in the Internet era.[8-34]

A crude economics is skeptical of this dynamic of the old versus the
new -- not skeptical that the old have an interest in resisting the new, but
skeptical that they have the means.[8-35] If the new represent a more efficient
technology, then, over time, that efficiency will drive out the old. There may
be struggles in the meantime, and these struggles will no doubt waste re-
sources. But the question is not just whether the old will interfere, but
whether intervention to protect the new won't itself be more costly.

At any particular moment, this question of trade-offs will be important.
But the issue as I've presented it is not the question of trade-off. The issue is
not which technology we can expect to win in the long run. It is, instead,
what architecture for innovation best speeds us along the path to the long
run. Which architectures encourage experimentation? Which permit the
old to protect themselves against the new? Which permit the new the most
freedom to question the old?

This raises again precisely the issues that Christensen describes in his _In-_
_novator's_Dilemma._ As I've said, Christensen's argument doesn't depend
upon stupidity. He is not identifying a failure in the market; he's identifying
a feature of successful companies' perspective. The problem is not that the
decision maker is irrational; the problem is that innovation is controlled by
the wrong decision maker.

The solution is to architect the system to vest the power to innovate in a
more decentralized manner. Or, put a different way, the solution is to archi-
tect innovation to be free rather than controlled. The lesson that the failure

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