Internet Architecture and Innovation

Internet Architecture and Innovation by Van Schewick, Barbara. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780262013970.

A detailed examination of how the underlying technical structure of the Internet affects the economic environment for innovation and the implications for public policy. Today -- following housing bubbles, bank collapses, and high unemployment -- the Internet remains the most reliable mechanism for fostering innovation and creating new wealth. The Internets remarkable growth has been fueled by innovation. In this pathbreaking book, Barbara van Schewick argues that this explosion of innovation is not an accident, but a consequence of the Internets architecture -- a consequence of technical choices regarding the Internets inner structure that were made early in its history. The Internets original architecture was based on four design principles: modularity, layering, and two versions of the celebrated but often misunderstood end-to-end arguments. But today, the Internets architecture is changing in ways that deviate from the Internets original design principles, removing the features that have fostered innovation and threatening the Internets ability to spur economic growth, to improve democratic discourse, and to provide a decentralized environment for social and cultural interaction in which anyone can participate. If no one intervenes, network providers interests will drive networks further away from the original design principles. If the Internets value for society is to be preserved, van Schewick argues, policymakers will have to intervene and protect the features that were at the core of the Internets success.