[governance] IG and its linkage to technology

[Mawaki Chango]

Karl,

The questions you're raising are pertinent and I'd support IGC
pursuing them (having them on our agenda) along with some other
topics suggested by Parminda.

However, I have to say I'm now struck by your techno-optimism,
for there are so many public policy issues that could, should
necessary, unfold from those so-called only technical problems.
And there are so many occurrences where technical decisions can
be biased (there are often different technical options
available, so where the basis for a choice comes from?) and
costly to change later on.

Techies think they are not elitits, and I agree, with the
reservation that their esoteric expertise and language (for the
majority of people, or even of "stakeholders") do that well for
them, while they go about making those "purely technical
decisions" with value-laden, -embedded choices. An example is
IDN: though very technical, the outcome would certainly not be
the same depending on whether you bring in substantial
participation from the non-ASCII world (including non techies)
or you leave it in the hands of the incumbents ASCII geeks ;-)
(and we know by now that you can "bring in" people or not based
on choices that are non-technical design choices, e.g. settings,
processes and procedures, etc.) 

Another day (not near ;-)), probably offline, will comment on
your views of democracy, individual, and stakeholder (in your
position paper,) based on some observations made about the role
played by _organized_ interest groups vs. individual citizens,
ur... consumers in the US democracy. 

Mawaki


--- Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com> wrote:

> 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--
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