Internet Architecture and Innovation - Couverture souple

Van Schewick, Barbara

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 026251804X ISBN 13 : 9780262518048

Editeur : MIT Press, 2012

Synopsis

Today--following housing bubbles, bank collapses, and high unemployment--the Internet remains the most reliable mechanism for fostering innovation and creating new wealth. The Internet's 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 Internet's architecture--a consequence of technical choices regarding the Internet's inner structure that were made early in its history. The Internet's 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 Internet's architecture is changing in ways that deviate from the Internet's original design principles, removing the features that have fostered innovation and threatening the Internet's 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 Internet's 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 Internet's success.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

The Internet's remarkable growth has been fueled by innovation. New applications continually enable new ways of using the Internet, and new physical networking technologies increase the range of networks over which the Internet can run. Questions about the relationship between innovation and the Internet's architecture have shaped the debates over open access to broadband networks, network neutrality, nondiscriminatory network management, and future Internet architecture. In Internet Architecture and Innovation, Barbara van Schewick explores the economic consequences of Internet architecture, offering a detailed analysis of how it affects the economic environment for innovation. Van Schewick describes the design principles on which the Internet's original architecture was based--modularity, layering, and the end-to-end arguments--and shows how they shaped the original architecture of the Internet. She analyzes in detail how the original Internet architecture affected innovation--in particular, the development of new applications--and the how changing the architecture would affect this kind of innovation. Van Schewick concludes that the original architecture of the Internet fostered application innovation. Current changes that deviate from the Internet's original design principles reduce the amount and quality of application innovation, limit users' ability to use the Internet as they see fit, and threaten the Internet's ability to realize its economic, social, cultural, and political potential. If left to themselves, network providers will continue to change the internal structure of the Internet in ways that are good for them but not necessarily for the rest of us. Government intervention may be needed to save the social benefits associated with the Internet's original design principles.

Biographie de l'auteur :

Barbara van Schewick is Associate Professor at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, and Assistant Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering in Stanford University's Department of Electrical Engineering.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: MIT Press
• Date d'édition: 2012
• ISBN 10: 026251804X
• ISBN 13: 9780262518048
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 586