The Future of the Internet: A New Stanford Course

Here is a new and free course to come out of a Stanford University program that (full disclosure) I help organize. It’s called The Future of the Internet: Architecture and Policy (iTunes), and it’s taught by Ramesh Johari. The course, designed for non-techies, gets into the important question of whether the internet will remain “neutral” and freely available to you and me. This course will appeal to anyone who has ever liked the work of Lawrence Lessig. (Please note that we’ll be rolling out a couple more lectures in this course on a rolling basis.)

Check out the complete course description below (and click here for many more free university courses):

“The Internet today has evolved a long way from its humble beginnings as a federally funded research project. As a society, we find ourselves increasingly dependent on the Internet for our daily routine; and yet, the future of the Internet remains a matter of vigorous political, economic, and academic debate. This debate centers around ownership: who will own the infrastructure, and who will own the content that the network delivers? Unfortunately, most of this debate does not involve a substantive discussion of the “architecture” of the network, or the role that architectural design will play in shaping the ownership of the future global network.

This course provides a non-technical introduction to the architecture of the Internet, present and future. Students will be taken on a tour through the inner workings of the network, with a view toward how these details inform the current debate about “network neutrality” and the ownership of the future Internet.”