[governance] CSTD: Adopted Resolution on WSIS and access to statements and recordings

[Deirdre Williams]

Dear All,
Were you aware that there was outside remote participation, or at least
remote observation :-), all last week?
Apparently this is the first time it has happened. There was an invitation
from UNCTAD to remote participarnts on the Friday of the week before - I
expressed an interest, I got a reply asking me about membership of an
organisation with accreditation - to ECOSOC, WSIS - to which I answered no,
that I was just interested - expecting that that would definitely be that -
and lo and behold I was sent the links.
I was late on the first 2 days - the sessions started at 4am here - and on
Friday I had to leave about 10pm Geneva time (the debate lasted until about
2am Geneva time), but otherwise I was "there" all week. There were usually
about 5 of us.
I have just emailed Mr Hamdi to thank UNCTAD for making this possible.
Friday a week ago Izumi stood up in the EC meeting and expressed his
displeasure - very diplomatically but as harshly as I have ever heard Izumi
speak - and it worked.
So I think we have to just keep pushing and, following Mike's earlier
message, get lots of other people to push with us.
Maybe we should sing too - Eurovision got lots of coverage :-)
Deirdre

On 27 May 2012 14:04, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

> Avri,
>
> I have nothing against being utopian -- I've been accused of that virtue
> myself from time to time, the problem is that utopianism can sometimes
> divert energy and attention away from more practical approaches to the same
> issues and that I think has been happening in spades around the Internet
> where a lot of (dare I say naïve) utopiansim has diverted a lot of energy
> away from the practical work of figuring out how to use the Internet to
> enhance and deepen democracy including through increased participation,
> through strengthening bottom up processes as I've spent the last 15 years
> or
> so trying to do through community informatics, through providing
> opportunities for contributions from multiple stakeholders as and where
> appropriate and so on.
>
> But unfortunately as you well know a lot of the efforts driven by utopian
> dreams around using the Internet for democratic purposes have foundered
> precisely on the shoals of "scaling up"... Using the Internet for enhancing
> participation (a la "likes" on Facebook, or "signing on" to Avaaz petitions
> is one thing, actually making workable decisions democratically even in a
> group as small as we are is something else again.
>
> My feeling now is that democracy can be enhanced by working both bottom up
> and top down... Bottom up -- by using ICTs to strengthen community
> capabilities particularly in enhancing participation in decision making of
> more immediate relevance to them, but also top down by opening up existing
> channels to broader participation, including multi-stakeholder
> contributions
> as input into broadbased democratic decision making; by enhancing the
> transparency and accountability of bureaucratic and political decision
> making through implementing the optimal opportunities for bottom up
> participation in those processes that ICTs present; and by overall
> beginning
> a process of adapting existing decision making and administrative
> structures
> and processes to the enhanced capability for information flow,
> transparency,
> accountability/participation and so on which ICTs provide.
>
> It's going to be a long hard slog but a necessary one I think and better to
> start off both with the head in the clouds and the feet in the muck.
>
> Mike
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org
> [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of Avri Doria
> Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2012 9:30 AM
> To: IGC
> Subject: Re: [governance] CSTD: Adopted Resolution on WSIS and access to
> statements and recordings
>
>
> Hi,
>
> On 27 May 2012, at 12:08, michael gurstein wrote:
>
> > But maybe it means something more than that to you and I would be very
> > interested in having you describe (another homework assignment :) what
> > it might look like--without, dare I say, invoking as an example the
> > IETF or any grouping that isn't larger than one than can comfortably
> > meet in a room let's say the size of the UN GA (or a New England Town
> > Hall..
>
>
> You are asking me to be utopian again. And maybe I should try to write a
> novel or a play that shows how a bottom-up participatory democracy could
> work.  But I expect some aspect of my personality or day to day life will
> keep me from ever completing such a project.
>
> I think the solution is an emergent one, and it is by doing the work
> (theory
> and design) and the experimentation (empiricism)  that we find the
> solution.
> It is not about 1 advocates utopian visions.
>
> The issue between the things you tell me not to use as examples and the
> global is a scaling factor.  I beleive that subsidiarity and aggregation
> moving, from the bottom, up to areas of greater scope that can't be handled
> at the local would be a key to any solution.
>
> And I beleive that finding the ways to use e-governance to reach people
> directly whereever possible (including making it possible to use
> everywhere)
> are a critical part of any solution. I.e governance by and of the Internet.
>
> avri
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
“The fundamental cure for poverty is not money but knowledge" Sir William
Arthur Lewis, Nobel Prize Economics, 1979
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