Barbara van Schewick: Internet Architecture and Innovation (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · computing, internet, networks, software, technology
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. She analyzes in detail how the original architecture affected innovation—in particular, the development of new applications—and 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.
Publisher MIT Press, 2010
ISBN 0262013975, 9780262013970
560 pages
Johnny Ryan: A History of the Internet and the Digital Future (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · censorship, computing, history of communications, history of computing, history of technology, intellectual property, internet, politics, technology
A great adjustment in human affairs is underway. Political, commercial and cultural life is changing from the centralized, hierarchical and standardized structures of the industrial age to something radically different: the economy of the emerging digital era.
A History of the Internet and the Digital Future tells the story of the development of the Internet from the 1950s to the present, and examines how the balance of power has shifted between the individual and the state in the areas of censorship, copyright infringement, intellectual freedom and terrorism and warfare. Johnny Ryan explains how the Internet has revolutionized political campaigns; how the development of the World Wide Web enfranchised a new online population of assertive, niche consumers; and how the dot-com bust taught smarter firms to capitalize on the power of digital artisans.
In the coming years platforms such as the iPhone and Android rise or fall depending on their treading the line between proprietary control and open innovation. The trends of the past may hold out hope for the record and newspaper industry. From the government-controlled systems of the Cold War to today’s move towards cloud computing, user-driven content and the new global commons, this book reveals the trends that are shaping the businesses, politics and media of the digital future.
Publisher Reaktion Books, 2010
ISBN 1861897774, 9781861897770
246 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-7-17)
Comment (0)M. Mitchell Waldrop: The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal (2001)
Filed under book | Tags: · arpanet, biography, computing, cybernetics, history of computing, history of technology, technology
While most people may not be familiar with the name J. C. R. Licklider, he was the guiding spirit behind the greatest revolution of the modern era. At a time when most computers were big, ponderous mainframes, he envisioned them as desktop tools that could empower individuals, foster creativity, and allow the sharing of information all over the world. Working from an obscure office in the depths of the Pentagon, he set in motion the forces that could make his vision real. Writing with the same novelistic flair that made his Complexity “the most exciting intellectual adventure story of the year” (The Washington Post), Waldrop presents the history of this great enterprise and the first full-scale portrait of the man whose dream of a “human-computer symbiosis” changed the course of science and culture, gave us the modern world of computing, and laid the foundation for the Internet age.
Publisher Viking, 2001
Sloan Technology series
ISBN 0670899763, 9780670899760
502 pages
PDF (DJVU; updated on 2012-7-17)
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