If you want efficiency and order, hire Hitler.
Democracy and freedom are messy, but
with a global sense of our interactivity,
nothing else uplifts the spirit so well.
The Internet is based on decentralized
architecture, so let Internet governance
be decentralized. Just because it's a new
way of being in the world does not mean
it won't work. We need to experiment first.
Ken Freed
Media Visions Webzine
http://www.media-visions.com
>At 09:51 AM 2/17/99 -0800, you wrote:
>>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Kerry Miller) wrote:
>>
>>It's debatable whether formal structure is or isn't needed. Some
>>people who feel as if they've been left out of the process or that
>>their perspectives haven't been given audience want a more formal
>>structure in place than the original structure.
>>
>You will all forgive me for this, I'm sure. I was sitting in my anthropology
>class tonight learning about the mechanics of social formations; from the
>egalitarian hunter-gatherers to the stratified state hierarchies that had a
>degree of central authority, as evidenced by ruins of central structures
>that were not residential. It seems, as anyone who has served on any
>committee can attest, that the larger the group, the less effective it is
>in making decisions. Those who demand a vote, and a voice in the
>proceedings, lose heart when they discover that there are hundreds of
>others just like them in the mix, and such events as . . . can we say,
>hashing out some topic for years on end with no result? . . . never do
>reach a decision. It is thus realized, unhappily as this may seem,
>that to grant just a wee bit of direct voice so as to get just a wee bit
>of an actual, working result may sometimes, in fact, be worth it.
>
>Bill Lovell
