[ga] Interesting Times

[Hugh Dierker <hdierker2204@xxxxxxxxx>]

I have concluded a very interesting cruize around the web looking at various blogs and sites disussing Internet type governance issues. In many circumstances it was difficult to remain a paying tourist to the Zoo instead of becoming a member of the Zoo. But when studying one must be careful not to effect outcomes or natural behavior.
 
The world in this sense reminds me of those famous newsreels of bookburnings. Only a small minority seem to applaud it, yet the majority remains silent. The vocal minority, or should we say "those outraged enough to speak up" are so tiny compared to the readers of those books, or users of the net. The articles, letters, notes, comments and postings are all in basic agreement that there is no meaningful representation of individual users anywhere. But all make it clear that they are doing a good job of representing themselves. There in fact is no lack of published viewpoints and authoritative writings on the subject. I found not one missive suggesting that individuals should not have a voice. Although there were many "experts" that seemed to shade their presentations with the idea that individuals would add little if they were not "qualified" as in technologically credentialed.
So I concluded that the voice of the dotcommoner is not silenced but loud and clear. The next question was simple; did they have voting rights anywhere? Simple answer no. But what I found intriguing to watch was truly illuminated by a brand new Blog dealing with the atlarge. The whole site was pretty close to many others and that is what I found interesting. 
The one thing these sites held in common was that the vast majority - 95% - of contributions were by industry folks and not dotcommoners. So then I was left with another question; Was what I believed to be a dotcommoner voice of the user, that at all? I randomly picked 5 posters from five sites that I had alternative email addresses for and played around a little and everyone of them were multiple domain name holders and professionals of some sort in IT.
So I was initially wrong, there is no voice for dotcommoner internet users on the net. Certainly there is no vote. And certainly very very few of them give a hoot.
 
So now I must pose the question to all those screaming for at large representation on the BoD of ICANN. When you are not even one of the individual users why do you think it is important they have a voice?  And secondly I ask one of these proclaimers of need, say Jeff, Karl, Danny, Richard, Michael or Sotiris to name a single person that could be elected by an at large that would be a dotcommoner none IT professional?
 
Eric

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