[governance] From the Google Policy Blog

Tue Nov 15 00:47:30 EST 2011

On Monday 14 November 2011 03:10 AM, Fouad Bajwa wrote:
> Parminder,
>
>    
>> Now, we of the global civil society have to make up our mind on this.>  Unfortunately, most people in the IG related civil society still live in a>  strong denial of this emerging global reality. It is surprising how many>  among the IG civil society themselves seem to have little problem with US>  taking the leading and defining role in shaping and enforcing this new>  emerging regime, as it evidently is.
>>      
> What factors do you think are causing this misunderstanding?
>    
Fouad,

One way to respond to your question is to speak of new class struggles 
involving global tectonic shifts in class structure as a major aspect of 
the emerging network society. For the first time, the economically 
resurgent middle classes of the developing world are developing common 
economic, cultural, social and, consequently, /political /interest to an 
extent that that has perhaps begun to exceed their 'common-ness' with 
their compatriot lower classes in their respective countries. This 
global (and the globalist) middle class distrusts and hates nation based 
political systems, as something that seeks to pull them down into some 
kind of a common destiny with masses who do not seem to them to have 
much of a future. Not anytime soon in any case, and they are in a hurry. 
At the very least, they – the lower classes – are not really quite 
/interesting/, as the global middle class is, but I suspect that the 
major reason is economic interest, over which cultural, social etc 
interests are being built. (Though the cultural attractions of a hyper 
stimulant-seeking society may, to a good extent, be an independent 
factor as well.)

This is bit ironical because the post-feudal professional/ 
business-based middle class in the (then colonised) developing countries 
was born as a nationalist group with strong sentiment against 
imperialism (to which they are today so fatally attracted). The lower 
classes were too busy with eking out, what was certainly a meagre, 
living to bother much about nationalist revolutions.

Anyway, back to the contemporary moment, this new global middle class is 
unable to put its faith into traditional (or perhaps even any new) 
political systems, for understandable reasons, They prefer to be led and 
guided by the blind global economic/ market system, and to the extent 
that it needs some basic minimum leadership and political direction 
(even if mostly of a market-dynamism ensuring and enforcement kind) they 
are not too averse to US and large corporates together providing this. 
They do realize that this is not the best thing, but they see no other 
option and therefore somewhat grudgingly accept it; because the 
alternative is simply not acceptable to them. Governance, for them, is 
largely reduced to a technical function, of which one sees so many 
strong proofs in discussions on this list. They want to let themselves 
loose from the shackles of politics at home; of which the agenda they 
fear most is that they will have to share their wealth and prosperity 
with the others. This is their escape to the developed world even 
without their country needing to become developed. And they are able to 
achieve this even without necessarily having to leave the shores of the 
country of their, what may be called in this context as, accidental 
habitation. A worthy network society phenomenon.

However, if I am to be more generous to people in the IG civil society, 
and less into cynical-sounding structural analysis, my response to your 
question may be that people here are just too afraid of a fear that they 
can instinctively feel and understand – of governments taking control of 
the Internet, and kind of killing the most exciting socio-cultural 
phenomenon since a long long time, which would of course be such a pity, 
to put it mildly. However, perhaps, the issue of how the phenomenon of 
the Internet is able to skew distribution of economic and social well 
being – not necessarily in a positive manner, what kind of structural 
changes may be underway, and what kind of strategies are required to 
confront the negative developments in this regard, may not 
professionally be the foremost agenda among most civil society actors at 
present involved with the IG arena. And, those civil society actors who 
are otherwise most involved with such socio-economic struggles, do not 
have the resources and time, and perhaps also the vision, to yet engage 
with the IG arena.

While I have a proposed an economic interest and class based analysis 
above, I do not think it impossible, or even unlikely, that ethics and 
human values may still overwhelm narrow economic interests to stem the 
tide of many current negative global trends. 'Occupy the wall street' 
kind of social movements may well become a deep cultural phenomenon that 
can force far reaching changes. After all, basic democratic, one-person 
one-vote, based systems are still alive in much of the world, and 
properly inspired and organized people can yet direct our common 
destines in the right directions. That would be a worthy struggle to be 
part of.

Meanwhile I greatly recommend this article on changing nature of civil 
society action in the network age at 
http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/lisa-veneklasen/citizen-action-and-perverse-confluence-of-opposing-agendas?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=201210&utm_campaign=Nightly_2011-11-11%2005%3a30 
<http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/lisa-veneklasen/citizen-action-and-perverse-confluence-of-opposing-agendas>

Apologies for the long email, but I thought Fouad's question was 
important, and it would be inappropriate for me to leave it unanswered 
after I had suggested that there are structural issues about how much of 
the IG civil society responds to the neo-imperialist agenda of the US 
together with its digital mega corps.

Parminder

> The basic objective for all business ventures/activities remains the
> same, an activity that generates profit! Free flow of information,
> information products etc all should result in increased revenues, more
> market controls, more profits, period.
>
> I am trying to understand this whole debate in another context that
> may seem irrelevant. I know there is a significant difference in views
> and opinions between CS actors from developed and developing nations.
> Many don't have direction. Many cannot convince even their own policy
> makers about who should control their Internet or even the fact that
> can the Internet be controlled or not in the first place.
>
> We here in Pakistan have a mixed feeling as well because pluralism and
> tolerance stand at cross roads with the emergence and penetration of
> the Internet in our lives. My region recently implemented a very large
> ban on over 150,000 websites/addresses termed as
> objectionable/pornographic content. To this end, this region is
> strictly looking at more controls and access denial and this is being
> done by the authorities with a great deal of citizen support and
> requests. It remains that this process was not shared or input invited
> from a broader audience or multistakeholder consultations. This is
> single sided decision making that is actually prevalent in other areas
> of governance in our society.
>
> This filtering does not affect Pakistani citizens in any direct manner
> but still its a display of unaccountable and non-transparent authority
> that has been evident in the recent past across many other types of
> content political or non-political. The question here is, when this
> region has no direct role in the content produced and made available
> to its citizens, or, when most of this information is flowing from the
> US and other western countries, or, when almost none of the developing
> countries have access or control over which domains are blocked
> because of counterfeiting or violation of western trademarks and
> products, then does it even make sense to publicize such documents and
> papers by US digital corporations? They already have full control here
> so whats the point?
>
> On a separate note, it always raises an eyebrow that why Human Rights
> remains a no-go-area in such papers/statements? A small example was
> that during the Arab Spring in Egypt, a Google employee (though he
> worked for google in the emirates) was abducted and restrained by the
> Egyptian authorities...this individual was projected by media to have
> played a significant role in helping gather people online and getting
> the word out through facebook...and still no consideration of HR? So
> its still a thin red line.......
>
> So far, it seems like intellectual masturbation for the sake of it by
> these corporations??? In a global environment where cultural diversity
> and tolerance continue to remain an ever growing challenge, CS will
> remain divided.....
>
>    
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