[bestbits] Designing the world/Internet we want (was Re: Rousseff & Chehade: Brazil will host...)

[Norbert Bollow]

Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

> CONGRATULATIONS TO BRAZIL FOR STEPPING UP AND SHOWING THE NECESSARY
> LEADERSHIP!
> 
> NOW WE MUST SET TO WORK TO HELP DESIGN THE WORLD/INTERNET WE WANT!

I strongly agree.

The initiative of Brazil and ICANN presents a tremendous opportunity,
which will be wasted if we (in the sense of “people who care about
human rights and other social justice concerns”, i.e. not limited to
just the civil society stakeholder category) don't get to work to
initiate such a design process, so that the event in Brazil will have
a worthwhile set of input documents.

(Of course it is possible for that opportunity to get wasted for
reasons other than the lack of a suitable design process, but even then
initiating a design process for “the world/Internet we want” will not
be a wasted effort. If we get inspired by the hope that this event will
be worthwhile, and on the basis of this inspiration create a good
design process, something very worthwhile will have been created quite
independently of whether the event in Brazil actually fulfills the high
expectations.)

The first step is to design a suitable design process.

This design process needs to be highly inclusive. In particular it must
be possible to participate effectively for people who are neither
techies nor fluent in the language that is typically used in Internet
governance discourses (English).

The design process also needs to be technically realistic. At all steps
at the design process it must be clear (at least to people with in-depth
technical understanding of the topic under consideration) what the
suggestions under consideration means in precise technical terms, and
that it is possible to implement them, etc.

Further, this design process needs to contain suitable mechanisms for
dealing with conflicts of interest. For some conflicts, it will be
possible after discussion and reflection to find consensus solutions
that fully satisfy the interests of all concerned stakeholders. There
will however also be other conflicts for which no consensus solution
will be found, and that reality also needs to be addressed somehow,
for example by working out a set of possible options for national
parliaments to choose from.

Greetings,
Norbert