[Fwd: [governance] Workshop proposal - Internationalisation of

[Garth Graham]

On Apr 21, 2009, at 6:27 PM, Garth Graham wrote:
>> I know this doesn't help at this late date, but I see  
>> international / transnational / global as beside the point - which  
>> is the Internet's inherent capacity to support distributed self- 
>> organizing relationships.

>> On 21-Apr-09, at 7:00 AM, William Drake wrote
>> Well, that's a point, but the point was the one we were discussing.

Apparently not! ....  because then, on 22-Apr-09, at 10:45 PM,  
Parminder wrote:

> Garth Graham wrote:
>> To put that another way, does anybody believe that "world"  
>> government can be "accountable political governance?"
>>
> ...... But to the put the question back to you, do you think a self- 
> organizing governance at the global level can be accountable and  
> fair governance. I am very sure that it cannot be. Quite the  
> opposite; self-organizing is used as a ruse to discredit political  
> governance, so that the march of the dominant forces toward even  
> more absolute domination remains institutionally and morally  
> unbridled.

I believe that many local forms of governance can be made accountable  
through responsible citizen action, but that any and all  "global"  
forms of governance cannot.  But your view of the role and  
significance of self-organization seems to be wildly divergent from  
my own.

I see relational self-organization as inherent in such things as the  
roots of Internet Protocol,  the IETF credo of "rough consensus and  
running code," and Benkler's “commons-based peer production."  I'd  
see finding a common understanding of the relevance of self- 
organizing systems to be central to what ISOC is calling, "The  
Internet Model of Internet Governance."  Thus my later suggestion  
that the title could be, "Interdependencies and Internet  
Governance."  I hear your identification of it as a focus of  
resistance as at odds with that.  If an IG Caucus is struggling to  
both increase and decrease these elements of effective Internet  
Governance then, yes, gaining "clarity" of intention really does need  
to proceed with great care!

It's my experience that the tolerance of the "Internet Technical  
Community" (an unfortunately limiting phrase) for "philosophy" is  
actually quite low.  So I'm reluctant to address definition.   
However, if anybody wants to go there, the best short introduction  
I've found (12 minutes 25 seconds) to a relational world view and its  
implications for the future of democracy is:

Lee Smolin. How science is like democracy. Technology, Entertainment,  
Design (TED), Filmed Feb 2003; Posted Nov 2008. http://www.ted.com/ 
index.php/talks/lee_smolin_on_science_and_democracy.html

Smolin says, "There is no place to put an explanation of something  
that comes from outside a system. Somehow the system makes itself."

And several times, I have posted my own musings on how  relational  
self-organization of distributed systems applies to Internet  
Governance to this list. Perhaps the most complete summary of those  
can be found in the list archives at:
http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/arc/governance/2008-03/msg00073.html
From: Garth Graham <garth.graham at telus.net>
Subject: Re: [governance] WSIS, ICT4D, the IGF and other...
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 09:40:58 -0800

If anyone does go to the archive to retrieve that, don't forget to  
open the pdf attached at the end, on future scenarios for Internet  
Governance.

GG







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