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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 14/03/13 18:12, michael gurstein
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:11c601ce209c$67730020$36590060$@gmail.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Having indicated how I could be deemed suitable under each of the above
categories I was then told that I did not meet the criteria of "having
contributed to the building of the Internet".
Some 20+ of my colleagues including computer scientists, International
officials, academics, researchers most from LDC's provided written
confirmation and support from the 1500 members of the Community Informatics
Research Networks, indicated how in their opinion I had in fact, through my
some 20 years of work making the Internet accessible and usable by the
widest range of possible users, "contributed to building the Internet" (if
we understand the Internet to include the "users" as well as the "wires").
At that point the criteria was further redefined as an "interpretation
(where) the technical and academic community includes individuals who have
technically built the Internet".</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Oh, lordy lordy. This is too much. Doubtless there are many
academics on this list, holding degrees other than computer science,
who will be interested to learn that they are not qualified to be a
member of what they might reasonably have supposed was their own
stakeholder group. Thanks for bringing this to light, Michael.<br>
<br>
Conceptually, of course, there is no justification for the technical
and academic communities to be their own stakeholder group. WGIG
considered that question, and explicitly decided they should not
be. The WSIS output documents are a bit ambiguous, but I've put the
case that they too describe only three separate stakeholder groups.<br>
<br>
Nevertheless, the technical community have carved out a separate
stakeholder role for themselves just on the basis of their
historical (and ongoing) role in the management of critical Internet
resources and standards. Whilst that is an important role, it is
hard to see it providing a coherent conceptual basis to constitute
them as a separate stakeholder group.<br>
<br>
I've been called out for being too critical of the technical
community lately, but actually I <i>am</i> a member of the
technical community; former board member of ISOC-AU, Secretary of
Australia's first (non-profit) national ISP, an open source software
developer, have been a system administrator, and former manager of
two IT consultancies.<br>
<br>
So I'm by no means an enemy of the technical community, I'm just
calling the shots as I see them; and the treatment you have
received, Michael, seems to me another example of the wrong approach
being taken at a high level by the technical community's
self-appointed representatives.<br>
<br>
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