Will the Internet Fragment?: Sovereignty, Globalization and Cyberspace

by Milton L. Mueller

The Internet has united the world as never before. But is it in danger of breaking apart? Cybersecurity, geopolitical tensions, and calls for data sovereignty have made many believe that the Internet is fragmenting.

In this incisive new book, Milton Mueller argues that the “fragmentation” diagnosis misses the mark. The rhetoric of “fragmentation” camouflages the real the attempt by governments to align information flows with their jurisdictional boundaries. The fragmentation debate is really a power struggle over the future of national sovereignty. It pits global governance and open access against the traditional territorial institutions of government. This conflict, the book argues, can only be resolved through radical institutional innovations. Will the Internet Fragment?  is essential reading for students and scholars of media and communications, international relations, political science and STS, as well as anyone concerned about the quality of Internet governance.

Genres: Nonfiction

140 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 23, 2017

About the author

Milton L. Mueller is Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public Policy. He is the author of Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (MIT Press, 2002) and other books.

Reviews

[Joaquín Maquieira · Rating 3 out of 5]

The picture that Mueller introduces is "Govs are bad", as if companies did not present problems to world society.

[André · Rating 4 out of 5]

Milton Mueller is a public policy professor and director of the Internet Governance Project. He is an ICANN-man and a "renowned cyber-libertarian" who is siding with the "self-determined ISP [business] and users" against national regulators, using ideals of counterculture to sell corporate politics as revolutionary act. Mueller even equated European privacy advocates with the Communist Party of China.

But besides that, I think that Mueller's text offers some read-worthy facts and considerations on the state of Internet governance as viewed by globalists and nationalists, of national alignment we see today (national securitization, territorialization of information flows, control over names and numbers), its "paradoxes" and disadvantages (undermined efficiencies of global markets) and possible opposition by considering sovereignty and territoriality as disparate things (transnational Internet movement, e.g., Pirate/Internet parties).

Mueller also invalidates the fragmentation argument for the dispute, the Internet is already "fragmented" (interconnected networks/AS; app-layer incompatibilities etc) but governed by entities other than the state (namely RIRs and "self-determined" businesses), hold together by network externalities. The problem would be keeping politicians' hands off the net.

On the state vs market trope:
- English: http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004...
- German: http://www.trend.infopartisan.net/trd...

For more info see my reading progress.