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

[Carlos Afonso]

Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> 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.

We did try, but the actual IGF semms to be a lame beast and attempts to 
make it be more meaningful (and influential, gods forbid) are confronted 
with fierce resistance...

--c.a.

-- 

Carlos A. Afonso
Rio       Brasil
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Projeto Sacix - Apoio técnico a iniciativas de inclusão digital
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Coletivo Digital. Para mais informações:
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