The Internet is a critical infrastructure underpinning international social and economic development. In considering a new infrastructure such as GENI, the Global Environment for Network Investigations, reflection and dialogue are vital on the Internet as a driver of innovation leading to economic growth and social well-being, on the security and privacy functions that can be embedded into the design of future networks to factor in privacy and personal choice considerations, as well as on the evolution process of networking infrastructures. The joint NSF/OECD Workshop "Social and Economic Factors Shaping the Future of the Internet" will bring together researchers, policy-makers, leading academics, private sector organizations, and civil society representatives to discuss the Internet's role as a critical infrastructure underpinning international economic prosperity, scientific innovations and social activity. More specifically, workshop participants will seek to draw lessons from the applications and usages associated with the evolution of the current Internet, which is evolving into a broadband network of networks with increasingly wireless access, to identify both the features that have been critical to the Internet's success, as well as where and why the Internet community has not been able to solve some of the issues the Internet has encountered in a scalable way. A guiding theme for the workshop will be the necessary virtuous dynamics of economics, responsibility and trust that help to ensure a balance between economic, social and technological tensions, as well as the process of transferring results from research experimentation into a real-world scenario.
