[governance] Re: Ronda:

[David Allen]

The first step, it seems, is to recognize that the 'creative [tension] between "order and chaos" ' is where to start the thinking.  As I believe you suggest.

Then we can get to:  how to deal with the power that, inevitably, accrues in the process?  Again, as you say.  Well, the short answer must of course be:  'responsibly.'  But that is a [much] longer subject; there are papers.

Will that 'atmosphere where innovations occur' inexorably fade from the 'Internet [and] the exception that it once was'?  Or, can there be a recurrent cycle, periodically returning to that 'atmosphere'?  The history suggests, I believe (there is history again, as Ronda says), that indeed the 'Net has been built with such a cycle.

Your linguistic confrere, Voltaire, had something to say if I remember about 'habit' versus a frequency of 'once.'  I am pleased to learn (from that)!

David

At 4:40 AM -0800 12/11/06, Mawaki Chango wrote:
>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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