[IFWP] governance and common sense

[kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)]

Jeff, 
   Following my own standards of polite discourse, I would have 
written you privately to point out the obvious: not just that your 
telling me what I already know is unnecessary, but that I made it 
as clear as I possibly could that I knew it and thus your 
belabouring the point does not further anything except your own 
agenda of belittling William Walsh

I would have done so, in order to enlist your help. It is possible to 
use this medium called language to communicate to more than 
just the person one is apparently replying to. Indeed, isnt it a 
fundamental principle of mailing list netiquette that one *avoids one-
to-one exchanges? Sure, William was a convenient 'target' -- but so 
have many others been in their turn, and I havent seen you riding 
my coattails at those times.

But one-to-many communication (if I can borrow the phrase back 
again from the technologists who seem to think that any exchange -
- hell, any *sending of a message, never mind its receipt or 
response -- can be called communication) requires -- obviously, I 
should have thought, but obviousness is the topic here and now -- 
*more than two people to participate. 

So never mind WXW; how do we involve *other people*? Why, we 
strike up a decent, respectable conversation between ourselves, 
and show that *who is participating is not as significant as what 
(and how) they are able to contribute. I was going to invite you to 
'collaborate'; to respond to the *content of my posts, just as if it 
didnt matter a damn to whom it was addressed. After all, under the 
guise of irony, I happen to have thrown out some *ideas. For 
instance, take my first para (tho you're free of course to pick 
another message),

> > I think Mark is trying to say that the Net is not *only a
> > market(enhancing) device in the same way as he is not *only a
> > consumer. It may be that the choices he has available to make 
> > are provided by (and curtailed by) markets, in the same way
> > that his terminology and references have been conditioned by
> > marketing- enhancers -- and all of this not only 'has any
> > relation' but is absolutely central to privacy policy, and net
> > administration.

I mentioned Mark only to maintain continuity; it doesnt matter, at 
least for this proposed strategy, whether *he was trying to say 
something or not; but it was obvious that he and William were not 
*communicating -- using a common language. I'm sure Mark can 
follow up his own line of thought in due course, but lets go on with 
my example: 

What do you think of the parallel I constructed between marketing 
'choice' and marketing language? Do you agree with the proposition 
that how one thinks about something is influenced by the 'color' of 
the language; that is, the terms one thinks about it in? Do you 
think that there is any communication possible between one 
person who speaks of 'verifiable identity' and another who speaks of 
'privacy' *even though they are really taking about the same thing to 
quite a large extent*? Does this idea strike you as relevant to  
ICANN, its putatively business-management style, and the fact that 
what it is setting out to 'govern' (however you would like to define 
that term) is a very lively global conversation (isnt that how the 
Supreme Court put it?), compared to which -- if one uses 
engineering measures such as megabytes and hops instead of 
dollars -- the 'free-marketing' component hardly registers at all?
 
I suspect you do agree -- but that is altogether beside my point. I 
dont care if you disagree; in fact contention and disputation is a 
darn good way of getting a look at all the angles. (I admit, the 
hardest thing to grasp about this internet conversation is that *no 
one person needs to express *all the angles.) But what I want to 
know is why in hell you dont join the conversation instead of 
derailing it in snide and *redundant* sarcasm and bringing IFWP 
down to the level of private conversation? (Its not exactly the first 
time either, btw.) How is the membership -- the general assembly --
of the list ever going to learn its democratic ABCs if it doesnt have 
an example to follow? (Everybody seems to be able only to follow 
the leader -- even if they deny with every breath thats what they 
want, and say 'answers' instead -- and even if one thing that is for 
sure clear is that there isnt any leader, nor -- doesnt it seem 
probable? answers either. ) 

God knows, Im no expert navigator, but I dont trudge off into the 
trackless swamp just because everybody else does; and if we can 
get enough people to start looking around to see which way they 
*might go, somebody just might find something they can do which 
will be useful for getting everybody out of this godalmighty endless 
bickering and posturing. (When in doubt, *explore*; that's the 
meaning of democracy according to de Tocqueville, who saw it a 
couple hundred years ago. - What wondrously technological 
progress we have made, eh?) 

That's the message I would have written, but rather than go through 
all this explanation ' backchannel' -- where you probably would have 
replied you understood all that already -- and leave both of us open 
to accusations of chicanery and manipulation and conspiracy when 
it became clear what we were doing, do you see why I leave it out 
here in full public view right from the start?  

I sure hope somebody does; I dont often manage to be this blunt! 


kerry
  cc: comment@icann.org