[governance] Re: Rhonda:

[Mawaki Chango]

David,

I'm pleased to agree with you here -- "une fois n'est pas coutume"
;-)

Provided that CS does not eventually crystallize into just another
power player (pointing to a concern already expressed by someone here
- maybe Danny Butt?) This may be way harder than many of us think, in
a sense that every institution or grouping virtually has some power
and a possible target/field for the possible "negative" exertion of
such power. 

There is always something in the atmosphere where innovations occur
(whether it's in the arts, in technology or in philosophy) which is
definitely gone when comes the time for "secularization." Maintaining
a creative balance between "order and chaos" has always been, I
think, the worthy challenge for, and the sign of, the smartest powers
(governmental, industrial, social, intellectual, etc.) On the other
hand, temptation for exerting power (material or symbolic,) whenever
possible, is such a natural thing.

Will the Internet still be the exception that it once was?
Best,

Mawaki


--- David Allen <David_Allen_AB63 at post.harvard.edu> wrote:

> At 3:04 PM +0100 12/9/06, William Drake wrote:
> >This historical arcana aside, Milton's broader point about
> mythologies is
> >indisputable.  Government and corporate decisions in the
> international
> >telecom policy space directly impacted the net's development pro
> and con,
> >and emerging developments therein probably will as well.
> 
> Mythology to specific reality:  We can see how this particular
> piece of history lays out at least one template to consider, when
> hatching future schemes.
> 
> The birth of this big tool, the 'Net, was fused out of both the
> opposites we tend to posit - the individual inventor versus the big
> institution.  In the 'Net case, these two were US government
> support, via an internal funder of research, and the intrepid group
> of individual innovators who made it happen.  Neither big
> institution, nor individual actor, separately - but rather the two
> together in a sort of symbiosis.
> 
> Interestingly, Bell Labs - source of the main innovations we still
> suckle going on a century later - may offer a similar template. 
> Though the Labs seemed to be (only) a large institution, reports
> from those who flourished in its golden age tell of a freedom for
> individual inventors, inside.
> 
> Both cases give hints of stable order and creative chaos together,
> in a tension.
> 
> History does have its uses (as George Santayana reminded).
> 
> David
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