[governance] India's communications minister - root server misunderstanding (still...)

[parminder]

On Friday 03 August 2012 02:36 AM, David Conrad wrote:
> (snip)
> While I personally believe existence and an ability to perform a function does imply some level of legitimacy (perhaps this comes from sitting through too many presentations describing the wonders of unreleased software :-)), I don't think this is particularly relevant to how the technical community can improve the understanding of the technological underpinnings of the Internet. My question isn't about how ICANN can justify what it does, it's about how we in the technical community can get those outside that community to understand "this is how the Internet works".

David, Since you (and, perhaps, some others) have sincerely asked what 
can the 'technical community' do to make others, chiefly, policy makers, 
understand 'this is how the Internet works', let me try to respond with 
all sincerity, as I really see it.

I think you are quite wrong here, that 'legitimacy' or 'how ICANN can 
justify what it does' has nothing to do with how the proposed 
understanding of 'how the Internet works' is conveyed. My contention is 
that these issues are very basically connected. Riaz has made this point 
quite well, and often rather eloquently, in a few of his recent emails, 
but let me summarise.

The basic problem here is that the so called 'technical community' is 
indeed largely what may in fact be called as the ICANN/ISOC community. 
It does not consist of all the people who have sound technical knowledge 
about the subject, it systematically attracts, encourages and organises 
(even, variously, incentivizes) those who can largely defend a certain 
techno-political status quo around the Internet. And it equally, 
discourages, distances, dis-incentivizes, and disables possibilities of 
organising of those technically- knowledgeable people who could offer 
'neutral' or factual views, and, certainly, those who could advocate 
techno- political alternatives. As a result, what we have as the most 
visible, active etc 'technical community' is indeed, often, directly or 
indirectly, aggressively or more subtly, found as trying to 'justify 
what ICANN does'. Here 'what ICANN does' becomes a place-holder for the 
current techno-political paradigm around the Internet.

(Apart from how we are mostly faced with actors with some degree of 
closeness if not embeddedness into the ICANN/ISOC system, there indeed 
is the factor of 'Californian ideology 
<cid:part1.08040903.09030505 at itforchange.net>' political proclivities of 
a certain dominant and ascendant techie group, in general. This later 
point admits of somewhat different political analysis which i wont go 
into here.)

Now, there is nothing wrong in holding a techno-political outlook and 
philosophy. Indeed, my organisation and I do. However, and this is my 
main point, there is everything wrong in holding such a outlook, and 
professing that one does not, and behaving as one is merely providing 
'neutral' technical details. I have found very few people on this list, 
if any, merely provide technical facts, in that sense. Everything has 
been thoroughly wrapped in a certain techno -political viewpoint, in 
fact, mostly, in quite a strong techno-social viewpoint.

A 'technical community' committed to such specific and clear 
'techno-political' viewpoint can do very little to improve the 
understanding of political actors, who could have different base 
political positions, or at least would want to keep alternatives open. 
It is my view that this is '/the/' key issue at the bottom of what we 
see here often as the display of disappointment/ dismay by many of the 
'technical community' or close-about on this list about what seems to 
them as such poor understanding of political actors, and their pious 
statements of desire to do something about to improve it.

regards
parminder

>
> Regards,
> -drc
>
>
>

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