[governance] Muti-stakeholder Group structure (some ideas)

[Karl Auerbach]

I feel that I need to follow up to my own posting my mentioning certain 
things:

   - Individual people tend to be more effective if they create or join 
an aggregate.  I know that I have reduced the strength of my own voice 
by trying to remain an independent actor in these matters.  And I 
believe such aggregates, such as those under the "civil society" 
umbrella do a very fine job articulating and advocating the interests of 
many, perhaps most, users of the net.  And sometimes governments or 
their agencies also reasonably represent their citizens (but more than 
often governments are instead articulating, often repeating, commercial 
concerns.)

   - I don't deprecate commercial concerns, indeed my own personal 
wealth, such as it is, is based largely on commercial things and 
intellectual property.  But those are really just repackaging of the 
personal interests of those natural people who run (and sometimes own) 
those commercial enterprises.

   - My advocacy of "the individual" is to permit an "escape valve" so 
that there is a means, perhaps only a thin one, to counter what I fear 
will be excessive concentrations of virtually plenary authority, such as 
ICANN has become, in bodies of internet governance.

   - Milton and others are right in saying that we can not solve all the 
problems at once, nor can we be all inclusive at once.  Milton didn't 
say it in so may words, but he is expressing the wisdom that "the 
perfect is the enemy of the good".

   - And finally, I know, perhaps better than most, how expensive it is 
to act as a lone individual in these matters.  I really doubt that more 
than a few of us will ever be out there to the degree that we have.  But 
just as a hurricane is formed by the coalescing of water vapor around 
tiny, individual grains of dust or sea salt, it strikes me as 
exceedingly important to never lose sight of the fact that at the bottom 
of everything are real people living real lives.  (Wow, I hope that that 
badly mixed metaphor didn't run off of a cliff.)

		--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