Re: [ga] Interesting Times

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I don't really care whether an "individual user" is an IT expert or an unmarried mum with some time on her hands to surf the web(<irony)... "individual users" is a term I apply to anyone whose life benefits from this worldwide resource, or contributes to it, or communicates through it, or learns through it, or helps others through it, or makes peace through it, or enjoys it, or trades on it, or... shares in a common interest in its future and well-being.

Speaking personally, I go to work as a school teacher, I teach kids all day, I put up their schoolwork and spellings on the web
www.westbrookenglish.co.uk 
I put up their weekly football results on the web
www.hendo.co.uk 

I have no IT professional knowledge. If I buy a domain (as any of us are entitled to) it's to use that domain for a purpose I choose
www.iraqwar.co.uk 
or to support my local community
www.berkhamsted.info 

Most of us fall into that category. But the thing is...

This world community of ordinary individual users is by far (hundreds of millions) the largest constituency of all those with an interest in the Internet/DNS...

and yet... all these people are unrepresented... 

OUR Internet - for I firmly believe it belongs to the whole world and not just ICANN's internal universe - is what we do with it, how we use it, what we contribute to it, what others (particularly the dispossessed and marginalised) may gain from it in the right hands.

OUR Internet deserves defence.

It is a very reasonable concept to suggest that ordinary people should have a substantial say in determining its future, sharing in decision-making, and protecting its freedoms. Since it is a world resource potentially for ALL the people, it is a very reasonable concept to believe that a network of communities and individuals could "share a vision" and take responsibility and stewardship for something precious for the whole world.

That's not really being a firebrand is it?

It's just ordinary people asking a small number of logical questions over and over again, because the status quo would prefer to resist that logic.

The status quo is the protection of vested interests and insiders and is subject to capture or control by corporate entities or the Department of Commerce. The status quo is "old world" and "top down" and part of a tired expediency.

The potential future of the Internet is about exactly the opposite principles.

Ordinary people exercising free speech and freedom of communication, and thinking ordinary or extraordinary things, and creative, and often co-operative in instinct... ordinary people who, in their millions and hundreds of millions, want to conduct parts of their lives on this Net.

The governance of this resource (or significant parts of it) should not be in the hands of a small group of croneys. ICANN's mandate does not account for the millions of ordinary people all over the world. ICANN is a self-perpetuating internal universe that locks out individual users.

The questions need to keep coming, from "bottom up", addressed to those who seek to control from "top down".

Richard Henderson
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Hugh Dierker 
  To: ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2005 3:01 AM
  Subject: [ga] Interesting Times


   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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