My Fellow Internet Engineers,
*WTF do we do now, as Donald Trump's America looms, threatening
Democracy as we know it at home & abroad?*
In 1992, the Internet opened to the public, which immediately started
calling for /Electronic Democracy/, /Electronic Town Meetings/, and
/Electronic Town Halls./
Dave Clark told us what that might look like, proclaiming:
/*We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough
consensus and running code.*/
And, I launched the /Center for Civic Networking/ to bring electronic
town meeting to the world.
Since then, I've been building community networks, and organizing civic
forums, focused mostly on planning & developing municipal
infrastructure: growth planning, master planning, managing
rights-of-way, launching municipal broadband infrastructure. More
recently, I've focused on redeveloping aging condominium complexes -
motivated by serving on a board & long-range planning committee of the
oldest condo complex in Massachusetts, worrying about how to avoid the
fate of Miami's Champlain Towers, crumbling into the Atlantic while its
board rearranged deckchairs by the pool, its owners ignoring the
situation until way too late... a challenge we share with many
condominium complexes built in the post-WWII era.
And now, as the 250th Birthday of America approaches, I find myself
living in Acton MA, birthplace of the first Minuteman Company to cross
the Old North Bridge in Concord, the first to die turning back the
British, convening a Town Meeting on *How Do We Redevelop Our Aging
Neighborhoods & How Do We PAY For It? *Three days later, I attended the
250th Anniversary reenactment of the /Massachusetts Provincial Congress,
/at First Parish Church & Wright Tavern in Concord - the assembly that
became the de facto government of Massachusetts, subsequently sending
delegates to the /Continental Congress/ in Philadelphia, that went on to
declare independence, raise an army, write a constitution, and declare
/E Pluribus Unum./
I did not expect to find myself, a month later, contemplating the demise
of American Democracy as we know it, and perhaps the fall of Western
Civilization. But here I am, 70 years old, 63 years after attending
JFK's inauguration, contemplating his words:
*/Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall
pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend,
oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty,/*
and his challenge: */And so, My Fellow Americans: Ask not what your
country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country. My fellow
citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what
together we can do for the freedom of man.
/*My Fellow Internet Engineers, it's 55 years since the first packets
traversed the ARPANET. We've Networked the Planet, linked 6 of the 8
billion people on Planet Earth into a Network of Minds. Each of us, and
all of us carry in our pockets the power to be anywhere, and everywhere,
all at once. We've learned to organize ourselves in large numbers - to
go the moon, to wage global war, to build global supply chains, to
exchange cat pictures & shout political vitriol at great volume. *Now
it's time to use this network we've built, to **/Call Town Meeting to
Order/**,**//**to address the Clear and Present Danger that confronts
all of us.*
Yesterday, on Election Day, I posted a think piece, on
*/Rebuilding Democracy: Town Meeting Government for the Internet Age/
<https://milesfidelman.substack.com/p/rebuilding-democracy-town-meeting>*
Inviting people to join me in pulling together a /Civic Engineering Task
Force /... to launch a /Campaign to Redevelop Suburbia/, Develop a
Platform, Form Working Groups, and Solicit Presentations Exhibitors &
Sponsors for an initial Plenary Meeting.
*This morning, I awake to a far greater threat, a far more pressing need
to organize ourselves*,
and so I ask you, My Fellow Internet Engineers, to
*Join me at **/Civic.Net/ <civic.net>**to* *Help Integrate a Civic
Internet, organize Working Groups, and convene Town Meetings in your
communities - so that */*government of the people, by the people, for
the people, shall not perish from the earth.* /
Right now, we're a blog & a chat group on Substack - a step up from
Licklider's paper /MEMORANDUM FOR: Members and Affiliates of the
Intergalactic Computer Network /listing /Topics for Discussion at the
Forthcoming Meeting/ - but I hope to clone the IETF/Meetecho &
Datatracker/ environment to support serious electronic town meeting -
and could use some serious help from folks experienced with both the
technology, and the process that has brought us our global nervous
system, and perhaps our /last best hope of earth.
/*Join me at **/Civic.Net/, <civic.net>***subscribe, pipe up/, /pitch
in, contribute a few bucks to the cause - it's /Lives, Fortunes and
Sacred Honor/ time, I'm all in, and this is not a one-person job.
Miles Fidelman
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why. ... unknown
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