"Perhaps even more significantly, one Stanford Law School professor has argued that part of the reason for the tremendous gains of the past two decades has less to do with the nature of digital technology than the structure of the network. In her influential book Internet Architecture and Innovation, Barbara van Schewick argues that “dumb” networks like the internet tend by their nature to leave more room for innovation.
“Innovating on an integrated architecture provides an option on a portfolio, whereas innovating on a modular architecture provides a portfolio of options,” she writes. “…In a modular architecture, innovators can use any module innovation that is better than the existing module, and can reject the others. In an integrated architecture, an innovator has to accept or reject a complete system, improvements in some parts of which may be offset by deteriorations in others.”"
- Date Published:03/25/2015
- Original Publication:CKGSB Knowledge