A.M. Rutkowski wrote:
....
> Existence is inherently unstable, and
> the Internet arrangements account for that.
Tony,
Thanks for the link, and thanks for humoring me with meta-talk. The I*
folks have generally been much less willing to do this for me than you,
Milton, Jay, and Stef. (Still, the choice of Esther Dyson as ICANN chair
may turn out to be a windfall on that front, so I can't complain.)
Speaking of keeping things unstable, what ever happened to that stop
ICANN action you initiated at the time of the November open meeting in
Boston? Did it ever come together? Is it currently working behind the
scenes? Or do you expect ICANN to fail of its own accord?
Now for Milton...
> Craig thinks the Internet is a "trade"
> that's going to be run by a "trade association."
The "Internet" is a feature arising out of the voluntary interconnection
between a growing number of autonomous (mostly private) networks. It is
an emergent property, a constituted structure, and not inherently a
thing in itself, though we often find it useful to speak of it as such.
It is a fiction that we buy into because following certain rules pays
off.
There's an important two-way simultaneity by which networks
co-constitute the Internet while the Internet co-constitutes those
members AS members (Call them agents, edges, what have you. The point
is, they're edges OF something.) Another example.. The US constitution
announces a number of rules which "make" inhabitants of a specific
territorial domain into governed citizens; yet the sovereignty of the
government over that domain could not persist without the participating
consent of the people in it.
My point is that the "Internet" is already run by its associated
members. It could not be said to exist without their association. But
the vocabulary which presently facilitates that association is rather
limited. This debate concerns whether it is appropriate to add things
like codes of conduct to the vocabulary so that more people will have an
easier time finding out "how to go on" in this new environment.
Many of the elite ICANN-bashers are philosophically predisposed to favor
a very loose association based on the rule of the freest possible free
for all. That predisposition is so deeply embedded, they have become
allergic to the concept of recognizing that a more clearly stated set of
rules is likely to benefit a wide population.
Craig Simon
