[governance] Fundamentally broken design of society

[Norbert Bollow]

Kicki Nordström <kicki.nordstrom at srfriks.org> wrote:

> The group I am thinking of was created at the first WSIS and with
> its side event, we have continued to work on the resolution we
> adopted, wishing a ICT society open for ALL! The resolution was
> further developed in Tunis at the second phase of WSIS and the
> disability Forum hold the second side event.
> 
> I really hope something will happen now so as we can move this issue
> a bit further!
> 
> Thanks Norbert., for your good initiative, do you mind to take the lead?

Dear Kicki and everyone,
  let me start by apologizing for having been so slow to get back
to you with regard to this.  Of course I feel honored by the
suggestion that I could maybe take on a leadership role.  Still I
think that it may be important to clarify goals and expectations
a bit more before it makes sense to decide that we want to go
forward together and that I and/or others could agree to take on
leadership responsibilities.

Kicki's post and the entire discussion that led up to it (including
in particular also the posting by Linda Misek-Falkoff about systems
which may have gotten some thoughts going subconsciously which then
surfaced when I read Kicki's message) have sparked something in me,
so that I want to try get something going in the sense of a social
hack which attempts to create a subsystem of society which will be
arranged according to principles of empowerment rather than power.
Therefore, what I have in mind is not specifically focused on just
the particular needs of people with disabilities, but rather on
implementing principles for empowering people (which implies active
system design aimed at preventing anyone from getting disempowered
or marginalized).  I want to get rid of what Kicki called "disabling"
technology by practicing and inspiring good, empowering principles of
technology design, not only with regard to people with disabilities
but also with regard to people in economically underdeveloped regions
and also with regard to the people in whatever one's country of
residence is (in my case, that's Switzerland).  I'll admit right
away that this set of objectives sounds extremely ambitious, and that
might be a good reason why one might perhaps want to reconsider the
idea of following whatever leadership I might be able to provide.

Nevertheless, I want to go forward, and I'm perfectly willing to
serve as a leader of a small group aimed at investigating the kind of
ideas that I outlined above.  I'll set up a mailing list for this
shortly, then we'll see whether something gets going.

The vision which I described here is of course not in conflict with
more focused activities aimed more specifically at getting the needs
of people with disabilities met, but I feel that such a more focused
project should have someone else as leader while I want to work on
the big vision that I described.

Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                    http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG  http://SIUG.ch
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