[governance] Are Techies from Venus and Non-techies from Mars :)

[Daniel Kalchev]

This is an observation we all make at some point of time (I hope). But 
you summarized it well.

However, my take on the techie/non-techie part is different. Here is my 
opinion why you observe these things.

The people who know the system and are not "innocent" enough (have seen 
the bad usage of others' ideals) is who you call the "policy" people. 
These people know, that using tools like "competition" to fight 
increasing power of one entity is futile if done as a policy. Therefore, 
they advocate the promotion of true competition (free market), because 
then many non-ecumbered by policy (and politics, let's not forget) 
entities will fight with the powers-that-are in the market, making them 
behave. Same about "collaboration". When you have competition, there is 
no problem with collaboration forming any cartels. Plus, competitors 
will often be forced by the market to cooperate... or leave the market.

The "techie" people are unfortunately pretty much innocent in these 
things. They believe in what they are told: corporations are bad, 
cartels is what happen when corporations sit together. As idealistic 
(and deluded) as they are, techies will happily support "somebody else" 
to "make sure corporations are not way too powerful".

In the end, just as with humans, every corporation becomes weak and 
dies, no matter how powerful or influential it once was. Such is life.

Come to think, myself, being labeled by many as an "techie", apparently 
I lost my innocence a while ago. I don't believe either model alone, so 
in my opinion, I must be from Earth. Although ... I have always 
suspected my origins are out of this world. ;-)

Daniel

On 30.01.13 23:22, michael gurstein wrote:
> In the course of some private discussions with techie colleagues concerning
> my comments on RFC 6852  it fairly quickly became clear that we were using
> the terminology around "competition"and "collaboration" in quite
> different--in fact, diametrically opposite, ways.
>
> For me "competition" evokes market based relationships and in fact, in most
> policy discourses "competition" is generally used as a code word for the
> pursuit of private interests and "free markets" a la the Washington
> Consensus actively promoting the opening up of telecom markets globally (as
> Milton quite correctly, if disparagingly, understood in his reply to my
> original comments).  Similarly for me "collaboration" refers to the joint
> puruit of common goals (as for example, social collaboration in support of
> the public interest, or p2p relationships, social solidarity and so on) and
> in a policy context would be appropriate to interpose as a balance to a
> position supporting "competition".
>
> For my tech colleagues the understanding, at least according to two
> non-communicating tech folks was that "competition" is seen as being the
> means by which to "limit the power of otherwise overly powerful corporations
> and cartels". While on the other hand "collaboration" needs to be controlled
> "otherwise it will lead to the formation of harmful cartels".  (While these
> latter uses of the terms are clearly correct they would never have occurred
> to me, at least, as being primary definitions that might be used in a
> document such as RFC 6852.)
>
> (As an aside, I'm wondering whether at least some of the disputes that have
> been recurrent themes of the IGC discussions might not have similar origins
> in rather profound domain centric mutual misunderstandings as to the use of
> quite common terms.)
>
> M
>
>

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