At the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute in Washington DC on June 6, Professor Milton Mueller’s new book Will The Internet Fragment: Sovereignty, Globalization and Cyberspace was launched and discussed at a panel that included Rebecca MacKinnon of NAF, Tim Maurer of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Angela McKay of Microsoft.

Mueller’s book analyzes the threats to the global compatibility of the Internet and says that the fragmentation debate is really a power struggle over the future of national sovereignty, pitting global governance and open access against traditional territorial institutions of government. This conflict, the book argues, can only be resolved through radical institutional innovations. In order to save the internet, we need to move away from national sovereignty and towards popular sovereignty in cyberspace.