Business bookshelf: 'Splinternet'

Scott Malcomson, OR Books, 198 pages, $15. As Scott Malcomson writes in "Splinternet," an illuminating survey of the past and future of the Internet, the platform was developed "by the U.S. military to serve U.S. military purposes." In the 1980s the American military began to lose interest in the Internet as priorities shifted. The time had come for the hackers and geeks who had been experimenting with early computers and phone lines.

Today they are the giants. Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft — together with some telecom operators — help set policy in Europe and America on everything from privacy rights and copyright law to child protection and national security. As these companies grow more powerful, the state is pushing back. There are two potential drawbacks to this reassertion of established power over the Internet, both serious. The first is the threat from surveillance and its potential chilling effects on free speech. The other big risk is that the tension between states and companies resolves into a symbiotic relationship.

This does not mean, however, that governments should always keep their hands off the Internet. Malcomson describes the Internet as a "global private marketplace built on a government platform, not unlike the global airport system." Air travel today may be less luxurious but it is vastly more affordable and democratic. So too, for all its flaws, is the Internet.