[governance] Innovation

[Alejandro Pisanty]

Karl,

I do not see why Kieren should prove you wrong by disproving your 
statements here, because they are the wrong metrics.

If Internet users' interest in the issues under ICANN's purview were 
indeed massive, not only the ALAC would be massive, but also the Boston 
Working Group (anybody remember that construct? it evaporated to the point 
that it could not even dissolve itself) would have been massive, and you 
would have a massive followership. You would have to hold the ALAC and 
these previous efforts to the same measure, wouldn't you?

The ALAC grows by informed interest, by an outreach process which has been 
de necessario painstaking and slow. An increasing number of Internet 
users, and their existing organizations, are joining the ALAC, building up 
its discourse, and consolidating the foundations of its influence. This, 
and the influence, can be proven in the way considerations from the 
At-Large have marked numerous ICANN processes and decisions. It does take 
some unprejudiced recollection and study - there are far more than the 
shreds of evidence Prof. Froomkin asks for in an email parallel to this 
one. And again, massive numbers are not its metric.

And for many of us, who took up the ALAC concept in the ICANN reform and 
have 
tried to assist its growth and gain in influence, it is not about causing 
people to not vote, it is an alternative to make sure that a diverse 
number of informed, reasoned Internet user voices come through without 
being drowned by bullying and shrillness when these make communication 
difficult because of culture, language, and other differences. Better 
political scientists than me in this list have already made clear that the 
concept itself of this global vote has more challenges than would allow a 
renewed cycle of simplistic implementations like the one you propugnate, 
and which also proved to be extremely problematic.

As much as you can't judge an election as flawed if you lose it, there is 
much subjectiveness in considering it good if you won it.

The absolute-truth appearance of your measures of success is easier to 
grasp for people who communicate across cultures. That, BTW, is one of the 
reasons why the ALAC is built upon local and regional bases, so its 
members interact with others in similar languages and cultures you can 
trust. It is the same reason why ICANN meetings are conducted in a diverse 
range of places and cultures and local languages.

I will address you more than your ideas in abstract in the following 
couple paragraphs:

You have repeatedly challenged Kieren's authority to speak because you 
challenge the honesty of his motives and the independence of his thougt. 
You have allowed yourself to expand your opinions around untested - and to 
my mind, contrary to fact - assumptions about the motives of most people 
who have painstakingly built ICANN and made it operate. You have tried to 
impose your views of success and failure without much listening to 
opposite or alternative views. And you have defended your doing so by 
painting it as "mildly provocative."

Now let me ask you if you would take as mildly provocative the question 
whether your insistence on voting and your lack of recognition of what 
others are achieving in the ALAC could be connected to a lack of 
recognition of how people feel, think, work, and achieve success in other 
cultures, and that this may be associated with the fact that in your 
period as an ICANN Board member you never attended a meeting outside North 
America. You could have witnessed first-hand what otherwise quite 
disenfranchised people were doing when conditions other than governments' 
opposition or benign neglect to the development of the Internet obtained.

This could be a disqualifying statement in your asymmetric-rules 
book but could I appeal to you to ponder on it as a possible cause to just 
temper your statements and open your mind to alternative views of others?

And, why discuss this on this list? Because hopefully someone somewhere is 
grappling with the difficulties of building up a multi-stakeholder 
organization that works, and needs to have a more rounded picture not only 
of what has been done, but what forward-looking lessons can be extracted 
from that history.

Yours,

Alejandro Pisanty



.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . .  .  .  .  .  .
      Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
Director General de Servicios de Computo Academico
UNAM, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico
Tel. (+52-55) 5622-8541, 5622-8542 Fax 5622-8540
http://www.dgsca.unam.mx
*
---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, www.isoc.org
  Participa en ICANN, www.icann.org
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .


On Mon, 26 Nov 2007, Karl Auerbach wrote:

> Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:56:03 -0800
> From: Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com>
> Reply-To: governance at lists.cpsr.org, Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com>
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org, Kieren McCarthy <kierenmccarthy at gmail.com>
> Cc: joppenheimer at icbtollfree.com
> Subject: Re: [governance] Innovation
> 
> Kieren McCarthy wrote:
>
>> It is impossible for me to reply to this post without taking issue with 
>> huge
>> chunks of what's in it. 
>> Just as a quick example. These two sentences, stated as facts: "The ALAC's
>> failure is obvious. Internet users have shunned it in droves."
>> 
>> This simply isn't true. But what's more problematic is that it has very
>> little to do with the issue of voting. 
>
> You were a writer, a good one, I've seen you confront bad ideas.
>
> I claim (and firmly believe) that the ALAC is a failure.  Disprove me. Show 
> how masses of people are running to it and that its processes actually form a 
> force that can hold ICANN accountable for its actions. Show how it is a 
> better vehicle for the formation of ideas and a seed for the formation of 
> consensus than any group of people who might happen to gather in a non-ALAC, 
> such as this one.
>
> I claim (and firmly believe) that people are shunning the ALAC in droves. 
> Disprove me.  Show how, even after years of existence, ICANN staff support, 
> and hundreds of thousands of dollars of life support that, the number of 
> people who are actually involved in the ALAC would fill more than the 
> smallest of small rooms - as compared to the nearly 200,000 people who tried 
> to sign up for ICANN's year 2000 elections.
>
> You claim that the ALAC has "little to do with voting".  If so, then how does 
> one answer the fact that ICANN created the ALAC explicitly as a means to end 
> the election of directors?
>
> On the other hand, ICANN holds the ALAC out as a reason why members of the 
> internet community should be satisfied and not ask for voting.
>
> Thus, to my mind, the conclusion is quite the opposite, that, in fact, the 
> ALAC has everything to do with voting, or rather, to be more precise, it has 
> everything to do with non-voting.
>
> 		--karl--
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