Events Detail

   Hudson Institute's Center for Economics of the Internet was pleased to host...

Internet "Governance"—A View from One of the Pioneers

Wednesday, December 12
12:00 – 1:30 PM

First there was the Defense Department-funded Arpanet project connecting mainframe computers at four American universities in the late 1960s. And then, gradually, through a series of key steps—beginning in the United States and eventually involving the rest of the world—today's Internet emerged. Its central technologies and design principles—packet-switching, minimal intelligence at the core, reliance on innovation at the edges—have proved vastly more powerful than its pioneers ever imagined. Voice transmission, for example, once the hallmark of international communications systems, is now just a modest Internet application.

Stephen Crocker discussed recent, dramatic changes in Internet technology—and equally dramatic, accompanying changes in the Internet's supporting structures. He speaks of "supporting structures" —rather than simple "governance" — to emphasize a profound and ongoing evolution in thinking about the essential nature of public-sector involvement in modern telecommunications. Mr. Crocker will provide an overview of the current landscape and comment on the challenges he anticipates over the next decade.

Crocker is currently Chair of the ICANN Board of Directors. He was part of the team that formed UCLA's node on the original Arpanet. And he has since spent his entire career in Internet-related business and research, helping to shape the protocol architecture, protocol documentation, and lightweight standards development process that have endured for more than forty years.

Hudson Senior Fellow Harold Furchtgott-Roth facilitated the discussion.

Stephen Crocker and Harold Furchtgott-Roth