[governance] Proposed text for a sign-on or IGC statement re:

[McTim]

On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 11:45 PM, Jeanette Hofmann <jeanette at wzb.eu> wrote:
>
>
> Milton L Mueller wrote:
>>
>> As a quick response (on the road, must run out the door soon), I think we
>> are using the term “private sector” in very different ways. To me it just
>> means “civil society” in the more general sense that the term has been used
>> in political theory, which includes the voluntary, agreement-based
>> non-governmental parts of society. This includes both business and what we
>> on this list consider to be noncommercial civil society.
>>
> There are different traditions in defining civil society. In the US, it is
> quite common to include the business sector in this definition. All out
> attempts to delineate civil society, for example against hybrids such as
> ISOC or people with several hats, have amounted to nothing. Yet, for out own
> discussion it would be useful if we could at least agree whether or not the
> private sector is part of our understanding of civil society.
>>
>> As for the term “Internet community,” yes, I understand the ways that term
>> has been misused, having critcizied it extensively myself. But I hate to
>> concede the term, because it expresses the way Internet (and many other
>> forms of ICT governance) blurs the line between producer and consumer of
>> information and communication products and services. As a network technology
>> the Internet creates its own public, its own community, its own polity. That
>> is what I mean.
>
> I agree with Milton in that it is worth to reclaim this term. If we agree
> that world citizens cannot be experts in every policy field and that the
> democracy beyond the nation state is likely to be organized  by  sectors or
> areas of interest, then it makes sense to speak of communities who engage in
> certain areas such as the Internet community which cares about the general
> mode of using, providing and changing the net's infrastructure.

Can I just point out that there is nothing new in the term "Internet
Community". It's been use use for a very long time (2 decades
perhaps), and as such it has a well established pedigree.  There is no
attempt to create a new global reality here, the reality has long been
in existence.

-- 
Cheers,

McTim
http://stateoftheinternetin.ug
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