On the heels of its paperback release, I would like to recommend a book that is required reading in our shop, Internet Architecture and Innovation by Barbara van Schewick. I've mentioned Barbara before on this blog. She is a Law School Professor at Stanford and has written extensively on this important topic.
I am a fervent believer that everything that is great about the Internet emanates from its underlying architecture. That's where Barbara is coming from too, which is probably why we like her and her work so much at USV.
In this book, Barbara argues that the massive amount of innovation that has been made on top of the Internet is directly attributable to its architecture and that there are some parts of the architecture, most notably the last mile in wired and mobile, that are problematic and that do not benefit from the hypercompetitive nature of the open Internet.
This is an important piece of policy work and anyone who cares about the Internet ought to give it a read.
