The (un)Economic Internet?

The Internet economics track will address how economic and policy issues relate to the emergence of the Internet as critical infrastructure. The authors provide a historical overview of internetworking, identifying key transitions that have contributed to the Internet´s development and penetration. Its core architecture wasn´t designed to serve as critical communications infrastructure for society; rather, the infrastructure developed far beyond the expectations of the original funding agencies, architects, developers, and early users. The incongruence between the Internet´s underlying architecture and society´s current use and expectations of it means we can no longer study Internet technology in isolation from the political and economic context in which it is deployed