Internet Architecture and Innovation

Citation

Mason, D. (2011), "Internet Architecture and Innovation", The Electronic Library, Vol. 29 No. 6, pp. 856-857. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640471111188114

This book examines how the architecture of the internet, i.e. the principles underlying its basic design, affects economic behaviour and how it indirectly influences innovation. Innovation is seen as the driver of economic success for the USA so the author argues that this makes the design of the internet a matter of public policy.

This book invites the reader to think more generally about how the design of the internet affects society and encourages or impedes innovation. The prevailing view is that internet architecture is a matter best left to engineers to determine, and that the free market will evolve the most effective and efficient design. However, a system's functional requirements only partly determine its architecture. Many different architectures can provide the same functionality and those architectures also determine the emergent properties of the system. Those emergent properties include economic consequences and the scope to allow technical innovation within the architecture. An architecture that enables and encourages innovation will lead to other changes in the architecture, and will lead to further innovation.

The argument is therefore an analysis of how business, law and public policy can and should act to influence the design of the internet. Each of these is accustomed to regulating or exploiting the internet, but the author argues that desirable social outcomes can be attained instead by participating directly in the design of the architecture, rather than by managing its consequences. This is already done in some instances: communications policy is often aimed at not just regulating activity but at prescribing how and where it can be used.

The book is organised into four sections. The first part is a detailed theoretical analysis of the relationship between internet architecture and innovation. The second describes the actual architecture from a technical and operational viewpoint. The third has three chapters on how internet architecture influences innovation. The fourth part considers the end‐to‐end argument. In essence this posits that the original architecture of the internet fostered innovation, but changes since have reduced the number and quality of innovations. This has been at the cost of the economy and society in general, and benefited only the network providers.

The book is focussed on the USA and focuses on the specific legislative, cultural and legislative environments that prevail there but the general principles hold good for all developed societies. It is a scholarly and well researched book, there are 102 pages of notes, and the reference list is 55 pages long. Overall it is an excellent analysis of the internet and it influence on the macroeconomic society of today.