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Telecommunications Policy

Telecommunications Policy 36 (2012) 594

doi:10.1

URL: www.elsevier.com/locate/telpol

Book Review

Managing the Infosphere: Governance, Technology, and Cultural Practice in Motion, Stephen D. McDowell, PhilipE. Steinberg, Tami K. Tomasello. (2008), Temple University Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 236 pages includingnotes, references and index, £47.50, Hardback, ISBN: 978-1-59213-279-9

Managing the Infosphere is the odd title for a constructivist take on Internet governance. This little gem is well-informedempirically and worth reading. It examines how notions of territory and space are being reconfigured through theinteractions of geographical units, cyberspace and political and commercial identity.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the way it explains how the generic top level domain space expressesU.S. hegemony. At the peak of the British Empire’s power, international postage stamps only specified the country name ifit was outside of Great Britain. The reference to Great Britain was an assumed, tacit part of the system. In a similar manner,the top level domain naming structure adopted by the early Internet pioneers created a naming structure with genericcategories – .com, .net, .org, .mil – and most of the domain name registrants within those categories (though not all) werein the United States. The rest of the world demanded, and got, ‘‘country code top level domains’’ (ccTLDs) which explicitlyidentified their territory—.uk, .de, .se and so on. To this day over 80% of the domain name registrations in the U.S. are in thegeneric top level domains. These registrations (think of google.com, ebay.com, facebook.com) are presumed to be global;the latter-day cyberspace ‘‘empire’’ situated in the U.S.A. is tacit, and does not need to be named. The majority of domainname registrants in the rest of the world identify themselves by national territories, although many internet contentproviders outside of the U.S. register names in .com, .info, .org and the like.

There is also some excellent discussion of the phenomenon of quasi-generic country codes, such as .tv, in whichterritories officially recognized by the international standard ignore their geographic and political identity and insteadleverage the semantics of the name to sell registrations in a commercial market.

The authors do not pursue very deeply the issue of whether the Internet is part of an American empire, nor do theydiscuss what an empire in cyberspace might consist of. Their discussion of the politics of Internet governance is relativelyabbreviated. In general, they do not dwell on issues of power and wealth, but look more at how cyberspace simultaneouslycontradicts and supports existing institutions and systems of governance and identity.

Milton L. MuellerSchool of Information Studies, Syracuse University, USA

E-mail address: Mueller@syr.edu

016/j.telpol.2011.11.002