[governance] IS THE DIGITAL DIVIDE A PHANTOM?

[McTim]

On 7/30/07, Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com> wrote:
> McTim wrote:
>
> > We clearly have differing definitions of "access"   For me, It's
> > accesible if I can ping the host (Do I have acccess to the Internet?).
> >  For you it's reading a page?  Try Google's "translate this" feature.
>
> I believe in starting small and learning before trying to solve all
> problems.  Thus for purposes of these intial stages of internet
> governance I have on several occassions defined the internet in the
> following terms:
>
>     The internet is the open system that carries IP packets from source
> IP addresses to destination IP addresses.
>
> Governance of that the thing that reifies that limited definition is
> already a complex topic that has, so far, defied solution.
>
> Going beyond that and including governance of layered-on, optional
> applications (such as HTML carried in HTTP, i.e. "the web") seems, to my
> mind, to be biting off too much and reduces the chances of success.

Agreed.

My favorite definition is Seth Breidbart's:

"It's the largest equivalence class in the reflexive transitive
symmetric closure of the relationship "can be reached by an IP
 packet from".


-- 
Cheers,

McTim
$ whois -h whois.afrinic.net mctim
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