[governance] Inter-stakeholder issues in a multi-stakeholder environment

[michael gurstein]

Thanks George, I’ll intersperse comments below


 

From: George Sadowsky [mailto:george.sadowsky at gmail.com] 
Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2013 3:31 PM
To: michael gurstein
Cc: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; 'Peter Ian'; 'Salanieta T.
Tamanikaiwaimaro'
Subject: Re: [governance] Inter-stakeholder issues in a multi-stakeholder
environment

 

Mike, and all,

 

Thanks, Mike, for your patience in obtaining a reply.  Real life sometimes
interferes with what one would prefer to do.

 

I welcome the opportunity to respond, in part because it really forces e tho
think how I feel about the points raised.  It's quite easy for any of us to
become used to living in environments of like-minded people, akin to an echo
chamber that amplifies what we think instead of challenging.  The
interaction of the political parties in the U.S, parliament is a very
visible, and destructive, example of that.  Unfortunately there is good
evidence that the Internet itself encourages such echo chambers to form and
to encapsulate people.

[MG>] yes


 

I've thought about "Snowden" in my own personal context, and can't come down
strongly on either side of the argument.  It's clear that there are "big
data" specialists working for intelligence agencies who have the feeling
that if something can be done to increase the density of intelligence
information available, they should do it.  Their motivations may be good in
the sense of enhancing security, but  their disregard of law, societal
mores, and even sometimes common sense is evident.    It's also clear that
the methods of judicial oversight of the NSA, the FISA and parts of our
Congress, have failed rather badly.  I hope that this can be fixed, but I
admit that I'm not sure what exactly I mean by 'fixed.'

[MG>] yes


 

It's also clear that there are people in the world who would like to kill me
and my countrymen (and possibly you and yours also), simply because we have
different beliefs, if they could get away with it.  Given the turmoil,
largely based upon religious differences, there is a lot of hate that
translates into daily violence in many places in the world.  This is a fact.
Now the question needs to be asked: how much intelligence is needed in order
to keep people safe?  The question is compounded by the fact that most
intelligence operations must be deeply secret in order to be effective, so
that unless one is part of a privileged few, one cannot possibly hope to
address the question.  That causes me some anxiety, as well as re-examining
the level of trust that I place in the actors involved.

[MG>] yes


 

I don't have quite the level of moral outrage as some regarding NSA's
intelligence mandate; my concern is with both the extent of their
activities, as well as their skirting or breaking the laws under which they
operate.  I take it as a given that all moderately developed countries have
intelligence operations, and that all of them use the Internet to some
extent, perhaps some to a large extent, to gather their information and
perform other functions.   Some of the events uncovered by Snowden relating
to spying on non-hostile countries have led to discoveries that those
countries were themselves spying on each other.  So there is some phony
outrage involved in the ensuing charges.   I wish that the world were
different, and that we could all rust each other, but that is not the world
that we live in.

[MG>] yes
 But three things
 First, I think that Internet/ICT based
surveillance and subsequent analysis is of such a different magnitude and
substance that it has to be treated differently from earlier such activities
and also the differences in quality and quantity as between the most
advanced countries in these areas and the rest means that this is something
new that needs a global response. Second, one of the things I get from
Snowden is how central is the significance of the Internet to security (and
other?) concerns and aspirations and that too has to be taken into
consideration in such areas as IG including or especially in areas of
anticipation of “trust” and expectations of “good will” and “public
mindedness”. Third, I think a “passive” response is inappropriate given how
significant the Internet is for so many spheres, how this significance is
increasing at an accelerating rate, and what we see revealed about the
subversion of the Internet that appears to be going on 
 We – (and I’m not
quite sure who “we” is in this context) – can’t not do something (or at
least make our most valiant efforts


 

One of my colleagues who works with multiple governments tells me that the
Snowden affair has divided governments into two groups: (1) those that have
NSA-like capabilities, although they may utilize them differently; and (2)
those that don't have such capabilities, and are envious of NSA and want to
acquire them.  I believe that statement is largely correct, and it
highlights that governments themselves are heterogeneous organizations.  For
example, the U.S. State Department funds projects in countries that provide
TOR and useful encryption tools so that civil society activists in those
countries can be more effective, while the NSA tries to decode TOR traffic.
I suspect that many other countries have the same mixed objectives.  This is
the world in which we live, whether we like it or not.  

[MG>] yes, but see my points 2 and 3 above


 

Thinking about "Snowden" in an Internet governance context leads me to other
lines of thought, and your comments are relevant.  It's probably more
understandable if I insert my remarks at the relevant places in your text
below 

[MG>] okay

 

 

On Nov 24, 2013, at 1:41 PM, michael gurstein wrote:

[MG>] more
 below




Thanks George for a very sober, serious, insightful and dare I say generous
piece.  And there is little there that I disagree with including your
overall aspirations for and comments on civil society.

 

There are however, two issue themes that aren`t included in your discussion
which come from two separate pieces of my own personal ecology in these
matters that I feel have to be addressed if we are to get to the space that
you are urging us toward.

 

The first is that you don`t mention Snowden or what we have learned (or
perhaps for some, found to be confirmed) through his actions. What we have
seen in the starkest of terms in the Snowden documents is how important
`control` over the Internet is seen in some quarters, and to what lengths
those quarters and presumably others will go to ensure their `dominance` in
matters having to do with how the Internet is deployed and used. 

 

I think that some may see in this wording an implied connection between
ICANN's relationship with the U.S. government and NSA's ability to use the
Internet for its extreme surveillance activities.  I hope not, because the
implication is false.  The control that the US government has over ICANN is
the result of a completely independent history, and does not confer any
advantage to NSA.  With sufficient resources, any other government's
intelligence service could do the same thing as NSA does  --  although I
hope that doesn't happen.  I can understand that the correlation between
NSA/US and ICANN/US can arouse suspicion in people's minds, but those who
take the time to understand the facts will allay the suspicion.

[MG>] actually I was not referring to ICANN here although I can see someone
more actively involved with ICANN than myself interpreting this in that way.
Rather I was referring to a more general level of interventions in support
of attempts to “control” the Internet as for example, interventions to
weaken security features (or dare I say, the possibility of attempts to
intervene in surreptitious ways in IG discussions via surrogates or
otherwise



Your technical community colleagues have characterized this as an ``attack``
on the Internet.  From my perspective I see it as a full-on attempt to
subvert the Internet in support of certain interests—and at this point it is
unclear whether those interests are national security, national strategic,
economic, political or some seamless integration of all of these.

 

My technical colleagues are quite unhappy, as am I.  For me, the worst part
of what has happened, if true, is the covert seeding of weaknesses into
encryption and similar software designed to enhance privacy and protect
confidentiality of communication.  I don't see any specific proof of such
accusations yet, but I am sure that this is going to be thoroughly examined
by technical people who are independent of the US government.  If such
seeding is confirmed, there will be people and agencies in the technical
community who will never be trusted again.

[MG>] yes

 

You'll note that the IETF is starting a concerted effort to build new tools
that are, by community inspection, much more likely to be free of such
intrusions.  I welcome this effort, and I would like to think think that
civil society actors would welcome it also.

[MG>] yes for sure something to most definitely be welcomed and supported 



Among the most damaging outcomes from Snowden is a general breakdown in
trust (or confirmation of the reasons for an on-going lack of trust)
concerning I would say, all matters having to do with the core elements of
the Internet of which certainly, Internet governance is one. Again your
technical community colleagues well recognize this development (as of course
does the Business Community) and the extremely corrosive and destructive
elements that this lack of trust has introduced into what had previously
been on-going collaborative relationships of all sorts with respect to
Internet related activities.  This lack of trust is certainly no less in
Civil Society (and dare I say no less warranted) than for the other
stakeholder groups and given the lack of normative coherence and even of a
shared self- definition that we witness in Civil Society discussions on a
daily basis it is perhaps even more explicable for CS, even if no less
damaging.

 

I agree that the loss of trust, very important in being able to work
together, is a major casualty from Snowden's disclosures and the reactions
in the U.S. Congress

[MG>] yes

 

One of the things that I have heard over and over as a consequence of this
affair is that we have to re-examne the balance between privacy and
security.  I agree with the sentiment, but I think that the rebalancing is
not something that can be discussed as if it were an intellectual exercise.
That side of governments concerned with security, and possibly espionage
also, has probably learned a different lesson from this affair: don't get
caught!  They are likely to continue their undercover activities, perhaps in
a more limited fashion, but they will continue.  The balance in this case
comes from the Snowden revelations that empowers many people to push back
agains such excesses.   That is, the balance will never be established as a
static balance, but depends upon both an intelligent intelligence agency and
an active citizenry to maintain it in a position that both can accept.

[MG>] I agree with this overall but there is another point that needs to be
made. “Security” for a weaker party is about setting up effective defenses

“Security” for the dominant party is about finding ways of effectively and
efficiently maintaining that dominance. Much of the initial set of responses
to Snowden which inevitably came from within the US were of th – it’s not
okay to do this to us Americans but its okay as long as its just being done
to
<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/in-an-internetworked-world-no-one-
is-foreign/> “foreigners” – variety.  That sort of explicit rhetoric is now
certainly passé in most circles but regrettably it is still implicit in a
lot of discussions such as yours which evoke the national security interests
of the US (and its allies) which in these contexts becomes an argument in
support of
<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/the-open-internet-society-and-its-
enemies-can-multistakeholderism-survive-information-dominance/> “Information
dominance”.

 

I don`t know what to do about this. Perhaps given the lack of resources for
facilitating the kinds of (generally face to face and purpose driven)
encounters in neutral disinterested spaces that are usually involved in
`trust building` perhaps nothing can be done, but I do know that not facing
the issue of trust directly and recognizing it in its full (and very ugly)
reality means I think that it is more or less impossible to go forward in
the ways that you are not unreasonably suggesting.

 

I understand, but think that we need to understand exactly what bonds of
trust have been weakened, between whom, and by which actions.  I worry that
there is a tendency to associate actions taken by or in the US to impute
blame on all actions and actors associated with the US.  I understand that
it is a convenient thing to do, and it's a correct thing to do with respect
to some actors and some events, but not all.

[MG>] yes, but given how pervasive is what is being revealed by Snowden (and
this, it should noted, is simply pointing to the SigInt (signals
intelligence) side of things and not the HumInt (Human Intelligence—CIA
etc.) side), the scale of resources that are available, and the significance
that the Internet apparently has what would you consider to be the
appropriate default position


 

At the same time, I can understand that understanding the logic of a
situation may not be sufficient to overcoming the emotion associated with
the judgment.

[MG>] not, I think “emotion” but rather something based on a fairly
reasonable risk assessment

 

The second issue that I would want to add to your commentary is a different
one and comes from quite a different background.  Many here began this
particular odyssey in relation one way or another to WSIS.  And certainly
for me working in the grassroots use and among grassroots users of ICTs,
WSIS was the doorway into these broader Internet Governance concerns.

 

Notably, many in CS see WSIS as a significant success and one whose gains
they currently appear reluctant to put in jeopardy by re-opening those
discussions. I see it rather differently in that for me WSIS was largely a
continuation of the pattern of top-down processes (the DotForce, the ICT4D
Task Force etc.etc.) trying to solve ICT for Development issues without
giving those most directly involved a chance to participate and provide
their own insight into these matters.

 

This is interesting, and I think that we have discussed this before.  I
myself have never seen any significant positive output from the Dot Force,
which was clearly a top down effort to stimulate the use of ICT for
development.  That was the era of the dot-com bubble, and there was a wave
of optimism at certain levels that we had identified a panacea. Of course,
it was far from it.

[MG>] yes

 

I was on the Markle Foundation -UNDP advisory group, and I saw first hand
how their attempt to address the ICT4D question stumbled badly due to lack
of knowledge and experience, and the inability of the sectors to understand
each other.  UNDP was, at least, in transition to take more input from the
countries in which they worked, which helped them to be reasonably
effective.

[MG>] yes, although the UNDP was (and is) hindered by being required to work
through governments and government agencies which in many instances were
either unable or unwilling to incorporate the real
experience/reality/knowledge of development processes on the ground into
their planning and actions

 

And later, we were both associated with GAID, a sorry initiative that served
as the retirement program for certain UN officials, and never really
produced anything of value.  At the same time it occupied official center
stage at the top, and thereby pre-empted any other effort from being
recognized as a possible improvement to offer leadership in the ICT4D
sphere. 

[MG>] complete agreement of course J

 

Few (if any) of the organizations (including it must be said the CS
organizations) most directly involved with WSIS were in fact, in a position
to give voice to the concerns of the grassroots users or
activists/practitioners and unfortunately the train of failed ICT4D policies
and programs (and more recently the quite evident donor fatigue with these
failed programs) is a direct result.

 

I think that in the area of ICT4D, the road to hell is surely paved,
multiple times, with good donor intentions.  The path to development appears
to be deceptively easy at the top, where the real on the ground issues are
not clearly observed.  We have discussed this, and as you know, many donor
efforts produced but a prototype of some intervention, and then have
declared their work a success even though it may not have been sustainable
or even capable of replication.

[MG>] yes


 

The ICT4D field was littered with 'successful' pilot projects that went
nowhere, and a lot of this was due to the top down incentive structure of
those who had money to fund them.

[MG>] yes


 

I believe even my first intervention into the IG discussion space
articulated much of the above and very very regrettably I see little if any,
progress having been made in the activities and interventions which have
followed.  Rather I see the matters which would be of greatest interest to
grassroots users and communities perhaps characterized best through the term
``Internet Justice*`` derided, marginalized and ignored; even dare I say, to
the extent that a number of CS groups appear to be opposing a revisiting of
WSIS specifically because issues relating to Internet Justice might be
introduced including by the G77.

 

I'm not sure if we have a difference of opinion here or not, and I guess
that depends in part upon how you would define the term 'Internet justice.'

[MG>] Internet Justice
<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/11/27/internet-justice-a-meme-whose-time
-has-come/> 

 

>From the point of ICT4D, I see as import the ability to access a reliable,
safe, secure, and affordable Internet to accomplish their aims.  Certainly
some of that has to do with Internet governance, but I'd argue that the
substantial majority of what it takes to produce that environment is a
function of national or local policy, not global issues or actors.  

[MG>] yes, I agree.  The link though comes through the possible/actual
influence which the global has on the national and local (see the message
which follows concerning Jeff Sachs and then recognize the overall
deplorable influence which that type of top down approach is having in the
range of upcoming global fora—WSIS, MDG’s and SDG’s among others. The
“Internet Freedom” crusade for example, didn’t to my knowledge go anywhere
beyond extremely mild references to enhanced “access” and pointing to the
already failed programs


 

When I ran with GIPI, we worked in multiple countries to bring sectors
together to understand and work fora regime of legislation and regulation
that would empower use of the Internet by local actors, whether they were
from business, academia, or civil society, at least as much as some
governments were willing to allow.  Perhaps our projects were in some sense
the forerunners of the national IGFs.   I regard these new IGFs at the local
level as more important that the global meetings because they can
concentrate upon specific local issues, and the people and organizations
that can contribute directly to solutions are there.

[MG>] yes, I think there is significant potential there
 My very limited
experience with regional IGF’s though is that the rather baleful influence
of the global IGF and the pre-occupation of regional/national IGF’s with the
discussion/issues from there (and not incidentally the extremely visible
presence and participation of IGF oriented national NGO’s or national
instantiations of more global NGO’s) tends to skew the result such that
local voices/concerns in these areas often get drowned out (but I would be
delighted to be proven wrong on this


 

I am suggesting that if our focus is on ICT4D, and by 'D' I include both
economic and social development encompassing at least some of civil
society's concerns, then what happens at the global level may be less
important than what happens at the local level.  It is at the local level
that the issues are most meaningful to people and where the greatest gains
may be capable of being achieved.  I don't write off the relevance of global
governance issues, but they fall into a somewhat different category.  

[MG>] I tend to agree but only to a point. My own experience and the
experience of my community informatics colleagues is that you can only go so
far with local development/empowerment and for any real structural
change/development to occur you need to be able to influence/have access to
the policy level. Since the policy level in many developing countries is
highly influenced/responsive to what happens in global fora such as the
WSIS, MDG’s, SDG’s and particularly the bi and multi-lateral funding
programs by governments, agencies and foundations that tend to follow/mirror
those fora to my mind there is an absolute need for all of these—development
policy, development practice and Internet governance understood in it’s
(WSIS) sense, to all be linked.

 

Not incidentally the attempts by various of the OECD countries (and their
allies within civil society and elsewhere) to suppress a revisiting of WSIS
and to redirect the MDG and SDG objectives in ideologically compliant
directions only serves to reinforce this as a priority.

 

I think it would be very desirable for CS broadly to move in the directions
indicated in George`s piece below but only if done in full recognition,
awareness and responsiveness to the issues that I have just attempted to
articulate.

 

Mike, I've responded as best I could.  If we do still have points of
disagreement, I'd like to understand them.

[MG>] As I read it only a few relatively minor but not inconsequential
points of differing priorities rather than disagreements J

 

Best,

 

Mike

 

Regards,

 

George





 

Best,

 

Mike

 

 *Notably the term ``Internet Justice`` follows on from our Environmental CS
colleagues who are now characterizing much of their concerns under the
rubric of ``Environmental Justice``.

 

 

 

 

From: George Sadowsky [mailto:george.sadowsky at gmail.com] 
Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2013 8:59 AM
To: michael gurstein
Cc: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Peter Ian; Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro
Subject: Re: [governance] Inter-stakeholder issues in a multi-stakeholder
environment

 

All,

 

Please note that the opinions that follow are my own personal opinions and
are independent of any of the organizations with which I am affiliated.

 

I'm suggesting that we should modify both the words and concept of Sala's
suggestions and my response.

 

Let's not think of doing anything formal; I think that both ends would balk
at that, and for good reason.  Instead, I'll just be somewhat more active on
this list, and if anything comes up with respect to the technical community
that I can clarify or help with on an informal and personal basis, I'll try
to do that.

 

So with that understanding, I'd like to throw out some thoughts to see if
any of them resonate with any of you.

 

First, I believe that the introduction of the idea of multi-stakeholder
approaches has had a significant negative effect between the Internet
technical community and the community that has coalesced to represent
classical civil society concerns.  As I recall in the 1990s, these
communities were considerably intermingled; the promise of the Internet
encouraged us not only to help it evolve in beneficial ways but also to
explore how to exploit it for social and economic benefits.

 

The solidification of different stakeholder groups resulting from the WSIS
process, caused informal differences to formalize.  Issues of
representation, power, time at the microphone, visibility on (sometimes
competing) lists and victory in arguments on those lists grew, while
informal discussion gradually declined.  Polarization of opinion grew as
willingness to respect others' opinions and to agree civilly to disagree
suffered.  

 

Second, I believe that the specific role of the Internet technical community
as a stakeholder group for the purposes of participating in the MAG and in
the IGF is not properly understood.  At this point in its evolution, the
Internet is a very complex system at most levels.  In order to understand
fully the implications of policies that have to do with Internet
administration, operation and governance, one has have a good technical
understand of what the effect of those policies will be at a detailed level.
The primary role of representatives of the Internet technical community, in
a MAG and IGF setting, is to study and understand such effects and to inform
those deliberating about them.  That function may well extend toward
consideration of broader thematic areas and suggestions of what needs to be
discussed for continued Internet health, either short or long term, or both.


 

In the grand scheme of things, this is a moderately narrow focus, but it is
extremely important.

 

Third, I believe that one result of formalized multi-stakeholderism appears
to have been to separate groups of people rather than separating groups of
ideas.  A couple of examples illustrate the point.  To the extent that the
Internet technical community does its work in guiding the MAG well to
enhance Internet evolution, I believe that involved representatives of civil
society benefit and should encourage their participation.  Conversely,
representatives of the Internet technical community are people, and many are
very likely to have beliefs that are quite consistent with the positions
espoused by those same civil society representatives. The multi-stakeholder
approach, however, seems to create a silo effect that minimizes or even
denies the overlap of commonality of interest regarding issues by separating
people into different silos.  So instead of recognizing positive overlap of
beliefs, the approach encourages a focus on inter-stakeholder group
separation.

 

Fourth, I'd like to propose a reconceptualization of the term "civil
society."  In the multi-stakeholder instantiation that is now employed by
the UN/MAG/IGF axis , it refers to groups if individuals, some representing
organizations of various sizes that agree to various extents regarding the
importance of individual rights of various kinds.  These groups represent
civil society goals and are therefore grouped as "civil society" to populate
that stakeholder group.  And although the goals of that group are generally
quite positive, their actions are often based upon pushing back against
other stakeholder groups, most notably government but also others.  Perhaps
that reflects the reality of the tension between groups, but that tension is
not moderated, as it might sometimes be, by people bridging groups instead
of being siloed.

 

An alternate way to define civil society is to start with all people in the
world and remove government involvement, the private sector involvement, and
perhaps other large institutional influences.  To borrow a phrase from
Apple, what is left is "the rest of us," and it contains fractions,
generally large fractions of most of us as individuals.  

 

Most individuals have interests in more than one sector or stakeholder
group.  We have interactions with government and may work for it.
Alternatively we may work for a private or other public sector organization.
Almost all of us are increasingly users of the internet.  Using this
approach, perhaps an aggregate of 5 billion of us constitute "civil
society," as opposed to the people who are now labeled as being in the civil
society stakeholder group.   If we are all civil society in large parts of
our lives, then we all have some claim to represent our views as we live.
Thus, a representative of Internet technology on the MAG is likely to, and
has a right to opine on issues in the larger space, just as self-defined
representatives of civil society positions have a right to do.  This
illustrates again how the various stakeholder groups, or silos, are really
quite intertwined, making the siloed and often competitive relationships
between them at a formal level quite unrepresentative of the underlying
reality,

 

I conclude that the multi-stakeholder approach that is accepted to be an
approach to bring us together, has not insignificant negative externalities
that serve to keep us apart.  We need to assess the multi-stakeholder
approach with that in mind  If it is retained as an organizing principle, we
need to recognize and understand those negative effects so that we can
minimize them and can exploit the positive aspects of that approach.

 

This is a much longer note than I ordinarily write, but it has helped me to
understand some of the roots of the often unnecessarily antagonistic
relationship between proponents of issues important to civil society and
technical community experts guiding the evolution of the Internet.  Thank
you for taking the time to read it.  I realize that what I have written, and
any discussion of it, is considerably more nuanced than what I have
presented above.  However, I have tried to present the core of some ideas
that I think may be useful.  The more nuanced discussion can and will come
later.

 

Your comments are welcome.

 

George

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  

On Nov 23, 2013, at 1:53 PM, michael gurstein wrote:

 

Thanks George and it is a potentially interesting proposition.

 

But I must say that I’m unclear as to precisely what role is being suggested
here.  If the role is to attempt to frame the diversity of voices being
articulated in civil society (in my case including those of the community
informatics community for example) in a manner in which it can be more
readily understood/assimilated/responded to by the technical community I
think that is very useful.

 

If it is, on the other hand, to act as a more or less
“authoritative”/designated “filter” of communications/voices from Civil
Society to the Technical Community then I can see quite considerable
difficulty and controversy resulting, if nothing else, from a concern within
certain CS elements of being “silenced/ignored”.

 

(The same clarification would need to be made if the role is perceived as
being more of an “honest broker”—i.e. the question being, particularly on
the CS side, how inclusive of all CS interests/voices is the “brokerage”
committed/able to be.

 

Perhaps some clarification is in order here either from yourself in how you
perceive the role, or from Ian or Sala on how they presented the role (and
perceive it from a CS perspective).

 

(I should also possibly add here that a significant number of those active
in the Community Informatics community would, by their background,
qualifications, experience and current activities qualify as being “techies”
of one sort or another.  Whether they would qualify as being members of the
“Technical Community” (TC) under what I understand to be the criteria for
inclusion within the TC as currently defined by the formal TC structures I’m
not sure, as their orientation tends to be towards technical design and
fabrication in support of social/digital inclusion and social justice.)

 

Best to all,

 

M

 

From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org
[mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of George Sadowsky
Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2013 8:04 AM
To: Ian Peter
Cc: Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro; governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Subject: Re: [governance] Fadi Speech to ALAC, Brazil 2014 Meeting and need
for IGC and civil society Liaisons

 

Hi, Ian,

 

Sala and I talked while we were both in Buenos Aires.  Perhaps I can clarify
my sense of what she may have been proposing.

 

There is at the moment somewhat of a gulf between the technical community
and the list(s) used by the proclaimed representatives of civil society.
Sometimes such differences of opinion, as well as fact, can be resoled
rather quickly if they are discussed directly by people on both sides of the
issue, rather than being left to fester and feed growing suspicion and/or
discontent.  I think that Sala thought that having some announced or implied
line of communication, clearly non-exclusive, might be helpful at times.  I
thought so, too.

 

Having seen little response from anyone on this list, perhaps the idea isn't
welcome in the more formalized sense in which it has been presented, and I
can understand that.  I think that perhaps I could be more active from time
to time in the discussions that occur, and that might help to bridge some
differences between the communities.  Although I consider myself more
technical in the context of Internet governance discussions, I  do have
roots in development activities that are quite consistent with some of the
expressions of opinion posted to this and similar lists.

 

George

 

 

<<trimmed>>

 

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