[governance] IG and its linkage to technology

[Karl Auerbach]

Bertrand de La Chapelle wrote:

> Hence, Internet governance not only goes beyond technical matters but 
> may even have implications in the future beyond the Internet itself to 
> other global issues. But this would get us in the debate on the notion 
> of stakeholder that I know Karl does not appreciate particularly :-) so 
> let's keep it for another time.

It is likely that everyone here is hoping to build a better world.

However, we are just people.  We make mistakes.  We can not see the future.

The reason that I am arguing that internet governance limit itself to matters 
with a clear and strong tie to technology is that it lets us develop methods 
and principles, and make our mistakes, in a context that is real but constrained.

I stress the constraints - we *are* talking about matters that, if we go beyond 
the technical, step on the toes of national governments and often reach into 
matters that are deeply emotional, subjective, and cultural.

And because technology is, in a sense, mechanical, when we try to do something 
wrong (like defining pi to be 3.0 or dictating that elephants fly) that the 
mechanical aspects will give strong feedback indicating our errors.

It's not that I don't want to solve the world's problems.  It's just that I'd 
rather start small, making small, and correctable mistakes, rather than make 
big mistakes that are hard to undo.  (Just look at how deeply entrenched the 
ICANN mistakes have become.)

This is why I have suggested that discussions of internet governance pick a 
fairly neutral, but certainly difficult topic, as a proof-of-concept.

My suggested topic is this: How can end-users (or their agents/local-ISPs) 
obtain assurances (not guarantees) of end-to-end, cross-carrier service quality 
sufficient to support the user's application (such as VOIP).

That's not a trivial topic, it deals with issues of the balance of power 
between users and providers, and between providers and providers.  It deals 
with costs, it deals with routing and inter-provider peering, transit, and 
exchanges, it deals with user-desired traffic preferences (and because it is 
user-desired it tends to keep the topic out of the "net neutrality" debate.)

It's a topic that could make the difference between usable VOIP and unusable 
VOIP, particularly for "southern" regions.

		--karl--
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance