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

[michel Gauthier]

Houhaou!

This seems a comprehensive review and project indeed. With many concepts
and notions that need to be analyszed in more details. I would be
interested in discussing all this, step by step and producing a report/plan
from it. May I discuss it with you through private mail in French (I/you(?)
would feel more at ease). Also, I am not sure you may want to go into
details on a public list the NSA is most probably watching due to the "high
level leaders/influencers" who participate.

Michel Gauthier




2013/8/16 JFC Morfin <jefsey at jefsey.com>

>  Dear Anriette, Bertrand, Daniel, Norbert, and Garth,
>
> This thread has become very interesting and "pre-fundamental". This mail
> tries to synthetize our various inputs into a coherent
> evaluation/proposition. Sorry for it to make a long mail, but this is due
> to your different valuable contributions and their articulation.
>
>
>
> *At 12:31 14/08/2013, Bertrand de La Chapelle wrote:
> *Boy, do I like a good controversy: it is the only way to have all sides
> of an issue, to think deeply, to be forced to reevaluate your own
> assumptions and prejudices, to potentially reframe a debate (as we are
> doing here) and move towards a solution. This is what Parliaments were
> established for: light through debate.
>
>
> Also for voted upon decisions. And before that, to votes on the way to
> vote decisions.
>
>
>
> The IGC Charter says: The mission of the Internet Governance Caucus (IGC)
> is to provide a forum for discussion, advocacy, action, and for
> representation of civil society contributions in Internet governance
> processes. The caucus intends to provide an open and effective forum for
> civil society to share opinion, policy options and expertise on Internet
> governance issues, and to provide a mechanism for coordination of advocacy
> to enhance the utilization and influence of Civil Society (CS) and the IGC
> in relevant policy processes.
>
> It also says: The mission of the Internet Governance Caucus (IGC) is to
> provide a forum for discussion, *advocacy*, *action*, and for
> representation of *civil society contributions* in Internet governance *
> processes*. The caucus intends to provide an open and effective forum for
> civil society to share opinion, policy options and expertise on Internet
> governance issues, and *to provide a mechanism for coordination of
> advocacy to enhance the utilization and influence of Civil Society *(CS)
> and the IGC in relevant policy processes.
> From this I understand that people want to talk in a forum about the way
> to proceed with Enhanced Cooperations, and that the role of the IGC is to
> provide such a forum, i.e. a mutual help point of entry into the IGF for
> civil society members in order to enhance the cooperation as regards what
> it may bring to the Internet utilization process.
>
>
> ICANN is complex machinery and still a laboratory of multi-stakeholder
> governance. Issues like the risk of capture(s) by one constituency or
> another, the tension between a corporate vs. a regulatory role, or how to
> ensure the defense of the global public interest, just to name a few, are
> necessary, substantial debates. We need to have them.
>
>
> ICANN is also a complicated enhanced cooperation machinery prototype,
> experimenting a practical way to balance the four reference poles of a
> global governance under the leading influence of a national unballancing
> tutor. We needed the tutor; we have to get rid of the unballance, but
> when/how?
>
>
>
> Actually, the launch of the new gTLD program will require a deep
> examination of its impact on the structures and processes of ICANN. Whether
> we call it ICANN 3.0 or not does not matter. What will be needed is
> engagement in the discussion that will necessarily take place in the coming
> years.
>
>
> The vTLD (vanity TLD) program is not coherent with the openness of the
> naming space that we established in 1978 and globally consensually agreed
> on in 1984 (RFC 920) by Jon Postel, the IETF documented in RFCs, Vint Cerf
> confirmed in 2000, and IDNA2008 RFCs, and what ICANN pleads for in its ICP3
> policy. We all need the multinational, multilingual, multiledger,
> multilayer digital name space (ML-DNS) to be stable and well behaved.
>
> This is why we welcome the current technical respite that we currently
> have, thanks to China/i-DNs' sense of responsibilities and precaution (I am
> still looking for an appropriate modern word for the greek "philia").
> However, I am afraid ICANN is not suitably taking advantage of this period,
> which could come to a close in the year to come (due to software and
> architectonic progress and evolutions). This is why I fear that the
> "discussion that will necessarily take place in the coming years" will turn
> out to be more of a cyberwar leading to an uncertain eventual negentropy
> and in the meanwhile to real and possibly economically devastating entropy.
>
>
> *At 14:43 14/08/2013, Daniel Pimienta wrote:
> *May be we should consider either create a new forum inviting many
> players who are active in our field (and doing advocacy on their own) or
> simply revive the existing Virtual WSIS CS Plenary Group Space <
> plenary at wsis-cs.org> which should have been the appropriate place for
> that purpose.
>
> In the multi-stakeholder game (nothing pejorative in that word, I use it
> in the mathematical sense of game theory) the other groups (governments and
> private sector) have their own mechanism of coordination outside where we
> are not present and this is perfectly fair. Civil society also needs to be
> better coordinated in the inner circle and at this time we lack such
> mechanism. In game theory the winner is the one which strategy is unknown
> to the other players: we have implicitly accepted to discuss publically our
> strategy here and this is not good for our chance of pushing our
> consensuated visions.
>
> My proposition and action is based on the same analysis and on the
> observation of the three other groups.
>
>
> 1. International organizations are proceeding on the language plane.
> Norbert reported it for the "Cloud", but this is true in other domains.
> Their role is a global concordance for compatibility, interoperations, and
> interintelligibility. The problem raised by the lack of civil society
> cooperation in their normative effort is that their vocabulary and its
> underlying concepts will result in a biased by solutions pact to the
> detriment of use.
>
> 2. Governments are proceeding through the ITU normative forum and the
> global treaty on telecommunications. With a well-organized debate, meeting,
> and concluding pact.
>
> 3. The private sector also reached a paradigmatically normative pact and
> an organization (named "OpenStand" - *http://open-stand.org*) embodied
> through RFC 6852 that associates the private stakeholders around ISOC
> (network engineering), W3C (business proposition) and IEEE (computer
> engineering).
>
> 4. For the time being, ICANN stays in between Governments due to its de
> facto affiliation with the US Government and intergovernmental philia, and
> its self-sustenance protection policy. This teaches us a lot, but we cannot
> copy this model at this stage by lack of budgetary sources or in the fear
> to unsettle the cyberspace.
>
> Civil society must organize itself in taking advantage from these
> experiments. This means that we must take control of a key something that
> we can master with a heterarchic and fuzzy management through truly
> enhanced cooperation where we will propose Govs, Intl.orgs, and Corps to
> join us.
>
> - Governments have sovereignty and power - they use treaties.
> - Private sector has standards and money - they have named their pact
> “OpenStand”.
> - Intl.orgs have documentation and ties - they call these “norms”.
> - We have information and use - I call our capability in that are
> “OpenUse” when dealing with OpenStand chairs. This is for this OpenUse
> approach (* http://openuse.org* <http://openuse.org/>) that  I call for
> help after having established an OpenUse technical liaison with the IETF
> through IUCG at IETF.
>
>
> *At 15:22 14/08/2013, Norbert Bollow wrote:*
> this would be a joint NomCom of civil society as a whole: Members of all
> the various civil society organizations and networks would be invited to
> volunteer for the NomCom, and a reasonably sized group from among these
> volunteers would be randomly selected to form the NomCom. The NomCom would
> constitute itself (it particular the NomCom chair would be elected by the
> randomly selected members of the NomCom). For each selection task within
> the remit of the NomCom, the NomCom would publish a call for expressions of
> interest and then selecting a good civil society representative or group of
> representatives (the NomCom members themselves being not eligible).
>
>
> +1. A CSnomcom is just a common service that is provided to the
> organization of a group. If several organizations wish - for efficiency
> sake - to be represented by a unique person, this is their choice. If this
> choice turns out to be beneficial, next time others will join.
>
>
> Obviously all of the steering groups etc. of these networks must be
> invited to participate in the discussions around creating a Joint Civil
> Society NomCom mechanism, or other credible mechanism that could serve the
> same purpose.
>
> I however don't think that it is appropriate to restrict these discussions
> only to people who are on some steering group. Therefore I'd like to
> broadly circulate a call for expressions of interest for participation in
> these discussions, in which everyone who is
> (1) experienced as a civil society participant in Internet governance
> debates, and is
> (2) clearly primarily participating as a civil society person, with
> reasonable independence from industry and government interests is invited
> to also participate in these discussions on the basis of a simple
> expression of interest.
>
>
> +1. Just a remark: the term "dynamic coalition" has been coined not to be
> specific to any form of coalition and organization by individuals or
> groups. This should be respected as there are also other forms of
> articulated relational spaces than the common steered networks formula.
>
>
>  Acknowledgement: This initiative is significantly inspired by Thomas
> Lowenhaupt's suggestion of a while back to create a Joint Board for
> selection tasks.
>
>
> The process might be as touchy as the MAG selection process... But it
> could start small and grow by positive reputation.
>
>
> *At 16:47 14/08/2013, Anriette Esterhuysen wrote:*
> Response from the Indonesian representative to my question made during the
> MAG meeting about this high-level ministerial event is as follows:
>
>
> I note that the proposition was a "high level leaders meeting" and it then
> becomes a “high level ministerial event”. Therefore, it means it is hosted
> by governments. However, the terminology has not been adapted to a partly
> claimed equal footing with business sector and civil society.
>
>
> - Will start off with statements from each of the ministers present
> - This is followed by statements from leaders from business and CS
>
>
> I think it is time that we introduce a question about what a leader is in
> the Internet Governance and for us to introduce the concept of "NIL"
> Meetings. The NILs being the “Network influent level”. Those who are denied
> to talk, and who can only do and pay.
>
>
> if we want the IGF to become more outcome oriented.. don't we want ALL
> outcomes from IGF-linked processes to be reflected.. or should that apply
> only to events that are formally part of the main IGF? But high-level
> protocol is a powerful force, and not one that combines easily with
> interactive dialogue.
>
>
> If we want interactive dialog among people who are not used to it, it is
> up to us to organize it and make them participate in becoming the common
> information media both in documenting their conclusions and in publicly
> questioning them about the points they purposely or unwittingly ignore,
> challenging these conclusions with those of other stakeholders, including
> ours. They talk, we broadcast, archive, document. What realy counts is not
> their rules, technology, agreements and norms but our intelligent use of
> them and our best purchases and practices.
>
> This is the OpenUse attitude that I propose we all support .
>
> Now, let me finish with mentioning what you should all keep in mind. As a
> typical representative of the non-funded civil society members, I see the
> IGF as split into two: the TLLMand the others. The TLLM are the T&L level
> members who can be invited (or participate in IETF or ISO meetings). I must
> acknowledge that I am not very interested in TLLM participation in HLLMs
> (T&L level members in High-Leader Level Meetings). The cost of the T&L to
> Bali in order to attend the ethics alibi meeting would permit Free Research
> and Development High Competence Level Members of civil society to
> significantly upgrade the cyberspace (may I just remind everyone that
> today’s Internet cyberspace has some analogy with the deck of the
> SST(itanic)).
>
>
> *At 00:20 15/08/2013, Garth Graham wrote:
> *On the one hand, the stewards of the uses of ICTs for community
> development recognized that WSIS would (as it did) fail to grasp the nature
> of how societies and their technologies co-evolve.  They stayed away from
> WSIS.
>
> On the other hand, the agencies that saw community networking as a means
> to the end of human rights, rather than an end in itself, trampled the
> stewards of community use into the dust as they stampeded towards the WSIS
> trough of resources.  In large part, WSIS killed GCNP.
>
> I believe the nature of digital economy and society is revealed most
> strongly through the emergent patterns of community online and daily life
> online.  That means the best way to evolve the Internet Governance
> Ecosystem remains local, not global.  It means the conscious neglect of the
> experience of the stewards of the uses of ICTs for community development
> inherent in those two examples was a mistake.
>
> Those stewards have not gone away.  Every increase in bandwidth, every
> decrease in bandwidth cost, every effort to locate control of Internet
> access in the hands of community, increases their interstitial strength and
> numbers.  They are the early adopters of the phase change in governance we
> are now experiencing, away from closed systems of control and towards open
> complex adaptive systems that learn.  Some nation states, particularly
> those that recognize the importance of digital inclusion, acknowledge their
> existence better than others.  But they are clearly not players who are
> active in our field, if that field or space is defined as civil society.
>
>
> This analysis sounds perfect to me, except on my one key point: what the
> French word “concertation” or the old Greek word “philia” imply: may be the
> portmanteau “coopetition” in English. This is *the key of our complex
> world*: we are bound together, so if something is truly good/bad for one
> it is holistically good/bad for all, all the way to the whole universe
> (this is what a fractal universe means).
>
> Nothing new under the sun: we know what it implies. “Man is by nature a
> social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally
> is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that
> precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or
> is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of
> society, is either a beast or a god. ” (Aristotle). The 19th century
> mistake led to our paying for creating the sole financial profit dedicated
> “Homo economicus”.
>
> This societality also means that our human decision margin in order to
> influence complexity is *slim.  *Therefore*, *our current time’s job is
> neither to choose between the tide of the technological innovation and the
> wind of the societal evolution nor to decide on a route for others, but to
> provide shipping (States, Corporations, Organizations, and people in a
> people centered society) with navigational help permitting one to go where
> one wants – otherwise, we will all sinkin the cybertempest. Among these
> tools there are the WSIS, IGF, RFCs, best practices, dynamic coalitions,
> enhanced cooperations, multistakeholderism, e-sovereignty, e-empowerments,
> Internet architecture, etc.etc.  All of these comprise the digital
> architectonic area.
>
>
> I believe that there has been a total breakdown of public trust in the
> structural capacity of a triumvirate of government, business and civil
> society to sustain a social contract.
>
>
> Correct, in the cyberspace, at the speed we are going, we need a cyber
> code, radars, adequate charts and referent frames, navigational aids, etc.
> and mutual respect and civil friendship from others. This is like in a car
> or on an airplane.
>
>
>
> Changing the concept of organization to self-organization will scale
> fractally towards planetary responses that are sensible to anyone at any
> level, without the need for the creation of monolithic and therefore very
> dangerous global institutions
>
>
> Garth, this is exactly what the WSIS did and what we should do. But we
> read it first with our old glasses. Like the IETF did, and still partly
> does with some RFCs. The RFC does not change, nor does the source code, but
> the architectural or even architectonical perspective adapts.  We want to
> conduct fractality instead of influencing it. This is the error. We want to
> rule the internet, instead of reaping the best advantage from it. This
> cannot work: this is a layer violation. Too many unordered parameters and
> interlinks. We have to learn.
>
> The problem with self-organization is that if you cannot moderate it
> through adequate auto-catalysis, it then becomes critical.
> Self-organization criticality (SOC) means that we humans do not scale to
> the new level of complexity that we have reached. Then, the world takes
> over (its automatic pilot is sometimes rude, as we experimented with WWII
> or how we are currently doing with the global financial crisis). In some
> cases, however, we can keep control, as seen during the Cold War.
>
> How did we make it? Probably because we learned and were precautious, i.e.
> we prevented the major conflict ahead of time before having to fight it.
> This is what is called counterwar.(i.e. to engage preemptive low cost
> actions now, against further higher cost war – along the principle of
> precaution). This is (IMHO) the plural attempts to excellence advocated by
> Daniel. Defusing criticality in advance through intelligent
> self-organization autocatalytic solutions (trying to adapt Ulanowicz to the
> digital ecosystem, or an interesting paper of Barry McMullin
> http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~alife/bmcm9901/html-multi/)
>
>
> *At 04:00 15/08/2013, Daniel Pimienta wrote:*
> You ask me which is better. I always have been reluctant to see the
> development work area in terms of disjunctive 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 successful 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 personally do not feel comfortable.
>
>
> Yes. I suggest we have to consider two things here:
>
> 1. the WSIS was correct in identifying 4 poles (Govs, CS, Business, and
> Intl.orgs). What is wrong is our frequent replacement of Intl.orgs by the
> Technical and Academic Community in our schemas. For two reasons: (1) there
> are lead users, searchers, and engineers in each stakeholder category (ARPA
> to start with is a governmental R&D, and OpenResearch is Civil Society
> oriented) and (2) this artificially increases the power of Govs instead of
> reducing it. International organizations are temper sovereignties,
> sometimes for good and sometimes for the worse.
>
> 2. We are discussing the data level at the data level. In other words, we
> are considering what transports and stores data (Internet, cloud), how it
> is organized and how it impacts our lives. However, we do not consider the
> fundamental power which is in metadata (the data on data) and in the
> metaorganization of these metadata. Where the reality, i.e. the true power,
> i.e. the syllodata (the data between the data), and the way to support them
> is through communication. What counts first is the way the real world
> actually IS, and then we can consider how we want to complement it
> (architectonic) along prefundemantal considerations, then how we will
> structure this complement (architecture), then the way we can implement it
> (engineering), the way we can intelligently organize our use of this
> complement, and then - and only then - the open and neutral best ways that
> users can utilize and enjoy the result for their development.
>
> jfc
> * http://openuse.org
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *
>
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