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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 221
Netizens-Digest Sunday, December 6 1998 Volume 01 : Number 221
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
Re: [netz] Re: Interesting articles in Forbes and Chronicle of Higher Education
Re: [netz] ICANN membership advisory applications?
[netz] Electronic constituency
Re: [netz] Electronic constituency
Re: [netz] Electronic constituency
Re: [netz] Electronic constituency
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 11:40:15 +0100 (MET)
From: Ingo Luetkebohle <ingo@devconsult.de>
Subject: Re: [netz] Re: Interesting articles in Forbes and Chronicle of Higher Education
On Fri, 4 Dec 1998, Greg Skinner wrote:
> Please check attributions. I didn't write that. Roeland Meyer did.
Sorry for the confusion, I never meant to attribute that statement to you.
Shouldn't have snipped that "... wrote" line :-(
- --
Ingo Luetkebohle / 21st Century Digital Boy
dev/consulting Gesellschaft fuer Netzwerkentwicklung und -beratung mbH
url: http://www.devconsult.de/ - fon: 0521-1365800 - fax: 0521-1365803
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 17:32:40 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] ICANN membership advisory applications?
Carsten Laekamp <lakamp@capway.com> writes:
Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com> writes:
>> My initial response is that it is a problem as the Internet is
>> not for "members" but for a new form of citizenship, and this
>> thing for members doesn't take that into account.
>Erm, could you please be more explicit about the difference between
>"membership" and "citizenship" ? For me, the latter is just a
>particular case of the former....but this might just be a difference
>in culture (?)
>(OTOH, an "AOL member" is not a member but a client, for me... were you
>thinking along those lines ?)
What you say is helpful.
I read over the response I did to the U.S. govt published green
paper where I read through the Framework on Electronic Commerce
published by the NTIA. It seemed to present users as customers
or as you say clients of business services. And it seemed to
look at the Internet as businesses and customers.
While my sense of being online is quite different. It is making
the effort to contribute to the online community. In which case
one is a member of that community, or a net.citizen or netizen, etc.
On the other hand there seems an effort to create a membership
body for the entity (ICANN?) the U.S. govt is creating
to take over ownership and control of the essential functions of the
Internet. Thus the membership that is being discussed in the Call
for the Membership advisory for ICANN seems to be a membership of a private
organization that will make decisions for the Internet.
I reread the call for the membership advisory committee
and it had two different uses of the word members.
One was members of the Internet. The other was membership
for this corporation.
Again members of the Internet is inclusive including all online, while
membership for this organization seems to be exclusively those
who qualify for membership of a corporation.
In the second case the people are no longer responsible for the
net and functioning as citizens of the Net, but rather as
members of this corporation that is asking for control of
the essential functions of the Internet.
It would also seem that the Internet way of having decisions
made by the grassroots whenever possible, is more appropriate
for the Internet, than is creating a top down structure with
decision making power.
There is a new paradigm needed when thinking about decisions
and the Internet. And it is a paradigm that would draw on
the lessons of building the Internet as enpowering the grassroots
to make the decisions whenever and however possible, though
there were of course also times that wasn't true.
However in the history of the Internet, when decisions were
made at the top, there was the sense that they were sound
decisions based on the best scientific and technical reasoning
and thus that was an encouragement to implement them.
Now it seems some small sector of the business community is
being empowered to make decisions about the Internet and for
the Internet based on the interests of their businesses.
That seems a bad direction.
I have reread the call and it seems that it is probably an important
challenge to try to influence what is being created so that it
isn't a monster.
But to do so it would seem important that the means of
creating the Net and the open structures created online be
introduced into the discussion of what is being done,
as now it seems they are basically proposing what seem like
corporate models and forms.
Even the questions they raise seem to be corporate in nature
rather than being built on any understanding of the unique nature
of the Internet.
The call is at http://www.icann.org/ It's under notices.
My papers on some of the open processes that built the Net are
at http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers
Also several of the chapters in Netizens discuss these. The URL is
in my signature
And there is also my proposal to the NTIA
at http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/dns_proposal.txt
Ronda
ronda@panix.com
Netizens: On the History and Impact
of Usenet and the Internet
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
in print edition ISBN 0-8186-7706-6
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 23:04:29 -0400
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] Electronic constituency
Ronda responded to J Fenello (quoting E Dyson),
> >The Net's long-run impact on democracy, I believe, won't be one of
> >propaganda or information dissemination; CNN and the various national
> >broadcasters (private and public) do a fine job of that. The real impact,
> >if it works, will be to encourage citizen participation, to make people
> >feel that they can influence the discussion. Instead of choosing from
> >what's on offer, they can actually make suggestions and arguments of
> >their own. If you think a politician is brain dead, you can say why
> >instead of just giving your vote to someone slightly more alive. People
> >want to contribute their ideas as well as their votes.
>
> And they can help to frame the questions so the discussion of the
> problem gets somewhere instead of going in circles.
>
> Good to see you agree this is important.
>
> But also the Internet has been built on this new form of participatory
> contribution and netizenship and really requries it to function properly.
- ------------
Greg S wrote to R Hauben,
>
> >It seems to me that if it was possible to form Usenet, and the
> >mailing list form, if those forms aren't adequate, others can be
> >developed.
>
> >But it is to explore the existing forms first.
>
> There is nothing wrong with forming mailing lists or newsgroups (as
> this list is). However, these lists tend to attract people who
> already know the issues fairly well. Usenet and the Internet
> technical community-oriented lists are still very much "underground." The
> common user knows little if anything about the existence of these forums.
> You need an already well-established mass medium to reach these people if
> you are ever to get a statistical sampling of their opinions.
Between these two comments, it appears that 'these lists' are not yet seen as
adequately serving the cause of citizen participation. But I disagree that what
the net needs is some *other* 'established medium', as if (as with the
formation/ induction of ICANN) there is no need to be concerned with means, as
long as the desired end is reached (in this case, 'statistical sampling').
Ronda is a teacher, but over the past couple of months, in the 'technical'
context of IP addresses and trademarks and distributed servers and so on, it is
as if she was trying to adress a class of overgrown rowdy kids, who belittle or
ignore what she has been trying to say. So be it; if we can't be male
chauvinists in the world of computer networks, where else can we be?
When *we decide its a problem, then we shall solve it, and we don't need no
schoolmarmish type to tell us to think about no larger picture.
I have no certificate, and am affiliated with no institution, and do not expect
much different treatment. Nevertheless, for the sake of who knows how many
ignorant 'citizens' who are in this forum without having followed a
'tendency,'** I suggest that the above quotes do describe a problem, that it
can be adressed within the Internet, and that a technical solution may be
possible.
1. As in any situation where self-education to the issues is not sufficient,
there are two possible strategies: a) 'top down' authoritarian diktat, and b)
'bottom-up' dialog. They apply both to i) 'the issue' itself -- and to ii) the
process of determining what the issue is.
If, as GS suggests, the issue is publicity, then having Ted Koppel *tell*
people indeed solves the problem. People are used to being told, and accept TK
as an authority.
If the issue is getting widespread and *informed* user input, the problem
remains, for these people will know only what TK tells them, and he is not
(probably) as well informed as all that, to start with, and even a half hour
program, much less a PR 'spot,' can not be the equivalent of the hours and
hours that have gone down (here, for instance) among the self-educated.
2. But this is, in fact, exactly the situation faced by a teacher in a class.
The issue is not, 'passing the exam,' for she could easily hand out the answers
in 5 minutes. No, the exam is only a (crude) instrument to quantify how well
she succeeds at the task, which is to develop informed students -- and this
does indeed take hours and hours. Why? Because it's the essential bottom-up
process, starting with what is already known to produce a different
perspective, which then serves as the foundation for another step.
How does this translate in terms of list-discussion? Here thare are no teachers
and students, and no exams -- but there are those who know and those who don't
know, and the 'issue' is not to collect statistics, but to maintain
communication between those two groups. If I may say so, a group of which it
can be said that it "tend[s] to attract people who already know the issues" is
*failing* to achieve this sort of communication. (Isn't this tendency, after
all, simply an inverted way of saying that _heretofore_, only those who know
have stayed around? Those who don't know do not "feel that they can influence
the discussion," and disappear.)
3. Well, let's get to the hard stuff. What might be a suitable topic for these
two groups to take up? Obviously, it should not be a problem which is already
solved; it has to require some technical knowledge; it has to reflect a need
which even an ignoramus like me can get interested in. In broad outline, one
such need is how to scale the kind of "participatory contribution" process
which built the Internet when those who knew were in the majority, now that
those who dont know have them seriously outnumbered?
Let's look at the two strategies: a) we might install a board of directors who
will act as if those who dont know have *chosen not to know, or b) we can
address this condition of ignorance as a problem to be solved: what do we know
about such problems that can apply in *technical terms?
Here's my view -- not a plan, or a model, or scheme, by any means: the first
impression on meeting some situation which one does not know is that its *too
complicated*, it has too many variables to keep track of. 'Learning' is then
largely a process of keeping track; '(already) knowing' is largely
unconsciously keeping track (but often expressed as 'not needing to keep
track').
I put it this way because keeping track, of course, is what computers do
exceedingly well. For a complex issue, then, the problem to solve is a
mechanism with a *simple interface that tracks what a user understands and what
he doesnt, and at the same time enables a participant to input new components
to the problem. (If all aspects were known beforehand, we'd be violating the
original criterion of suitability.)
I trust the implications for creative database design, text analysis, user
interface, privacy concerns, etc etc need no belaboring, and I look forward to
many happy megabytes of participatory conferring while the details are worked
out. Won't ICANN be pleased when we give it the *mechanism for broad
constituent support (which it desperately needs) as a Christmas present?
Cheers,
kerry
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 15:37:59 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] Electronic constituency
The reason I suggested using a mass medium to get the word out was
from Dave Farber's response that there was no practical way to reach the
millions of Internet users and find out what their feelings were on
what ICANN is doing.
Mass media is better than the Internet at this, for the moment. It
doesn't just have to be Ted Koppel, either {that was just a suggestion
on my part). It could be all of Ted Koppel, MacNeil-Lehrer, BBC World
News Service, etc.
These mailing lists and newsgroups are very much underground, as I
said before. The vast majority of the Internet does not even know
they exist. Even the ICANN-related articles that have made it into the
online press are not front-page items (from what I have seen so far).
The front-page items are the AOL-Netscape merger, the Microsoft trial,
the Internet stock market, etc.
If people feel it is important to have a statistically significant
portion of the world's population informed about what ICANN is doing,
established mediums that are good at this need to be used, in my
opinion.
So, I guess what I am trying to say is that my intentions were not
to statistically sample for opinions, but to use mediums that make it
more likely that a statiscally valid sample of opinions can be
collected.
- --gregbo
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 06 Dec 1998 19:31:13 -0500
From: Mark Lindeman <mtl4@columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: [netz] Electronic constituency
I guess I'm gonna quibble with part of what Greg has to say.
At 03:37 PM 12/6/1998 -0800, Greg Skinner wrote:
>The reason I suggested using a mass medium to get the word out was
>from Dave Farber's response that there was no practical way to reach the
>millions of Internet users and find out what their feelings were on
>what ICANN is doing.
>
>Mass media is better than the Internet at this, for the moment. [snip]
>[...]These mailing lists and newsgroups are very much underground, as I
>said before.[...]
Fair enough. But I suppose that if ISPs wanted to reach the millions of
Internet users, they could do a pretty good job. Strangely, AOL hasn't
made it a priority to solicit its "members"' informed opinions on these
goings-on.
Anyway, if you think about how many millions of people read bogus virus
warnings and chain letters, think of the _potential_ audience on this
issue, with no ISP intervention or network anchor goodwill/competence
required. (I'm not saying this proves anything in particular -- just think
about it.)
>If people feel it is important to have a statistically significant
>portion of the world's population informed about what ICANN is doing,
>established mediums that are good at this need to be used, in my
>opinion.
>
>So, I guess what I am trying to say is that my intentions were not
>to statistically sample for opinions, but to use mediums that make it
>more likely that a statiscally valid sample of opinions can be
>collected.
Greg, I don't know what you mean by "statistically significant" or
"statis[ti]cally valid." Actually, these have technical meanings, which I
don't think are the ones you intend (although it's more likely in the
latter case). My guess is you really mean something like, "if you want to
inform most users -- or at least a healthy minority of users -- and also to
get opinions back from a lot of them, then mass media is the way to go."
Or something like that. I could make the case that mass media isn't too
likely to inform most users (although it's worth a shot) and _certainly_
isn't likely to get opinions back from them, but since I'm putting words in
your mouth, that would be kinda silly of me. <grin>
Better mass media coverage: I'm all for it. It's no substitute for
Internet forums, and Internet forums are no substitute for broad publicity.
I certainly don't want to purvey the notion that we have to choose between
these [except that we, here, probably have a bit more control over one than
the other]. (And if your concern is to solicit informed opinions from a
representative "sample" -- where you first have to contend with the problem
that most representative Internet folks haven't even heard of the issue --
then you're perhaps looking at some sort of deliberative research. But
that assumes that someone is trying to make this whole process work
democratically, which is pretty utopian, I suspect.)
Cheers!
Mark Lindeman
MTL4@columbia.edu
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 19:09:36 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] Electronic constituency
Perhaps I should back up a bit and ask what the goal is that people
want to work for.
If the goal is to provide for an online forum that interested parties
can discuss issues relevant to ICANN, this forum is perfectly valid.
However, for reasons I've given earlier, this forum does not reach a
large number of people.
On the other hand, the established media (TV, radio, newspapers) reach
much larger numbers of people. If it were possible to get a
comprehensive, yet accessible presentation of the issues surrounding
ICANN's establishment into the mass media, there is a greater
likelihood that a larger set of opinions can be obtained than just
from a few Internet newsgroups and mailing lists that only a tiny
percentage of Internet users participate in.
So, what is the goal?
Getting back to Mark's response ...
>Fair enough. But I suppose that if ISPs wanted to reach the millions
>of Internet users, they could do a pretty good job. Strangely, AOL
>hasn't made it a priority to solicit its "members"' informed opinions
>on these goings-on.
I actually have brought the subject up in a local forum frequently by
lots of ISP operators and users, ba.internet. Only one person
responded and thought that the ICANN was of no consequence and that
nothing it did would affect SF bay area ISPs. Most of the discussion
on the newsgroup is about ISP comparisions, and some is about other
Internet-related issues, such as the recent AOL acquisition of
Netscape.
>Anyway, if you think about how many millions of people read bogus
>virus warnings and chain letters, think of the _potential_ audience
>on this issue, with no ISP intervention or network anchor
>goodwill/competence required. (I'm not saying this proves anything
>in particular -- just think about it.)
As large as the potential Internet audience is, it dwarfs in
comparison to the audience that can be reached by conventional mass
media.
There is also the problem that a growing number of people have set up
filters to screen out chain letters and the like. So a mass mailing
is not necessarily the best approach. Mailings issued from ISPs'
management are more likely (imho) to make a difference.
There is another mailing list, inet-access, where some of these issues
are debated, and indeed, some of the folks from IFWP are on that list
as well. However, that list has the same dynamics as the IFWP list.
Basically, what you will find is that the forums where this issue is
debated will generally be dominated by people who either work for
ISPs, or have otherwise considerable backgrounds in Internet
technology.
- --gregbo
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End of Netizens-Digest V1 #221
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