techno-politics was Re: [governance] Bloomberg - The Overzealous

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

It is techno political to the extent that otherwise it is entirely
difficult to ensure that the lists.igcaucus.org we all know and love is the
actual lists.igcaucus.org we expect to get, and not some alternative
provided by a third party that thinks they are the ig caucus, or some
sinister government plot to snoop on their civil society

I tend to disagree with lessig's "code is law" as an overly broad
generalization, but sometimes engineering and security are hard
considerations of reality that we can't get away from, politically
expedient or not.

If there is an atlernate political theory there are two ways out -

1. An engineering model that scales worldwide to back it. if you espouse an
alternate system

2. Work from within the system to change what you feel is wrong with it

#1 has been proposed multiple times, but I am afraid it has failed to
actually work beyond being an interesting hobbyist theory. Or where it is
done at scale, it is definitely not transparent, and even sinister in
nature (dnschanger trojans, government sponsored alternate roots for
censorship ..)

The root hierarchy that is available now is also a valuable tool to address
any security threats as a global, coordinated technical community.

Avri Doria [20/01/13 09:05 -0500]:
>
>On 20 Jan 2013, at 06:21, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
>
>> The single root (system of root servers under a wide range of control) setup is a result of architecture, not politics.  Alternate roots are technically not feasible, and where they do exist, they either require their small number of believers to set up a complete new set of resolvers without which the particular set of alternate roots they require won't resolve.
>>
>
>
>I contend that this is a techno-political statement
>
>I know this is just an example in this discussions, but let me explore this just a little.
>
>In the beginning, as far as I recall when DNS was first being discussed in the IETF, there were those who felt that DNS should allow for multiple roots.  But it was hard to do and was deemed to be unnecessary by most at the time.
>
>the decision that it was unnecessary was political
>the decision that it was hard was technical.
>The overall decsion was a techno-political decsion.
>
>Today many people feel that it is necessary.  That is still a political decision.
>Today some beleive it is technically possible and not so hard.  That is technical
>Still techno-political
>
>There are those who feel that while it may be possible, won't know until it is studied and undergoes a technical development process, but who also beleive that to allow the IETF or other organizations to study and work on that possibility would  sanction multiple roots, which they see as a bad thing.  Again, a techno-political decision, one where the technical and the politics cannot be separated.
>
>I think a lot of the discussions where we have where there 'is it technical' or 'is it political' tussle can be analyzed this way and that in many many cases, things people call solely technical or solely political are really techno-political where both aspects, and maybe others, need simultaneous analysis.
>
>avri
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