ABSTRACT
Everyday life without the Internet has become unimaginable. It is rooted in our social lives, our purchasing behaviour, our work and our relationship with government, and is increasingly embedded in everyday objects and devices, from smart meters to the cars we drive and the moveable bridges that we cross en route. For a long time, Internet governance was the exclusive domain of what is known in Internet circles as the ‘technical community’. That community laid the foundations for the social and economic interconnectedness of our physical and digital lives. And those foundations, with the Internet Protocol as the most prominent component, continue to function as the robust substructure of our digital existence. But the governance of that substructure has become controversial.
