[governance] For you as an Internet user, what is a "Critical Internet resource"?

[Vittorio Bertola]

Kieren McCarthy ha scritto:
> I agree with Ray on this, but I would like to know **why** people aren’t 
> involving themselves in the open fora specifically constructed to gather 
> the sort of input that they claiming is lacking.
> 
>  
> 
> There is a surprising lack of candour about the realities of the 
> situation considering the passion that exists out there.
> 
>  
> 
> Is it because:
> 
>  
> 
>     * People don’t know the fora exist?
>     * Feel the fora are not effective?
>     * Feel the fora are controlled?
>     * Because there is no clear thread from input to outcome?
>     * Or is it because people simply don’t like the fact that their
>       views do not make it through the process?
>     * Because to interact is simply too time-consuming?
>     * Because the methods of interaction are intimidating or difficult?

Thinking more at IETF-like places (rather than at ICANN, which is 
already and increasingly a half-blooded creature), I think that there 
still is a problem of reciprocal acceptance and understanding, deriving 
from the social homogeneity of the environment. Even if a policy list is 
formally open, putting one development expert from Africa among 50 white 
engineers from North America and Europe (usually 80% male) is likely to 
generate all sorts of bad group dynamics, up to the point of bitterly 
driving the heterogeneous element away. Sure you can make your points 
about human rights or the importance of ICT for development, but the 
other partecipants won't be very receptive to them, and in some cases 
won't understand them at all, as they derive from needs that they don't 
have, and experiences that they've never undergone.

Of course, this also applies the other way, when the engineers venture 
into the UN system...

The only solution is to put sociologists and technologists, activists 
and businesspersons into the mix in similar proportions, which is what 
we tried to do by imagining the IGF.
-- 
vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
-------->  finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/  <--------
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