[governance] Where are we going?

[Karl Auerbach]

I suspect that I must have not been clear when I was drawing my analogies.

You are quite right that national borders and geographic spaces have 
insulated people into their own cultural spaces and that the internet is 
one (but not the only) technology that has begun to erase that insulation.

My point is that we (in the sense of all of us, everywhere, not just 
those of us here on this list) have not yet had the time (it's only been 
about 10 years so far) to mull over the implications and come up with 
viable approaches.

And thus, because we are likely not to come up with a satisfactory 
solution in the short term, ought to refrain from engaging on matters of 
internet governance except on terms in which the processes and decisions 
of that governance are based solely on internet technical necessity.

We could call this a principle of expediency or, perhaps with a bit of 
humor, call it a principle of recognized incompetency on our part to 
deal with matters not grounded in technical necessity.

Thus, taking DNS as an example, because we are ill equipped to be social 
arbiters and regulators, internet governance over the question of new 
TLDs should be based solely and exclusively on the technical capacity of 
those providing new TLDs to adhere to broadly accepted and used written 
internet technical standards and also on the technical issue of the 
impact of a new TLD on the technical behaviour and operation of the net.

Yes, there will be non-technical side effects.  But since we are not 
equipped to deal with those side effects in a rational, principled way, 
and since that is already the realm of national governments, internet 
governance should not attempt to base its decisions on those side effects.

		--karl--

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