[governance] On "ad hominem" and "twisting words"

[Daniel Pimienta]

Garth,

I'm glad the "constructive provocation" virus is contagious and makes 
more good old dogs barking ;-).

I do not think baby IGF shall be thrown out with the bathwater but 
some bubbles in the water may help it grow well.

Besides nostalgy (and I could do the same with MISTICA community 
which was vibrant at the WSIS time and also disappeared - but it will 
not be fair to blame WSIS in that case), those are very interesting 
toughts you are casting and provocative questions you are asking. The 
issue of how locality (or at least glocality) is paid attention in 
those global discussions is certainly a valid question and at least 
we need to be reminded from time to time. Indeed, the world has been 
more drastically changed by the use of basic Internet applications by 
millons of people in many parts of the world than by our discussions.

You ask me which is better. I always have been reluctant to see the 
development work area in terms of disjonctive alternatives; either 
you do telecenter or not, either you do community work or not, either 
you are in open source or not, either you are in the local or not, 
etc...  I think the plurality and diversity of approaches is valid 
and the point is to reach excellence in each one. The challenge is 
how to articulate somehow those different approaches and here the 
results are often frustrating (one of the reason is the human 
tendency to consider own approach as the only valid). In spite the 
WSIS civil society process was not capable to integrate all the 
required diversity (and you are correct to remind us that), on my 
experience, it has been quite a succesful effort in terms of 
articulation and my frustration is that we have lost this momentum 
and I wish we could regain it during times where civil society 
influence has been decreasing while governments and some big players 
from private sector decide our cyberfuture in a way I personnaly do 
not feel comfortable.

But I am sure your reflections will resonate in this room and make 
positive interferences with the coming discussions.

Cheers
Daniel


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