[atlarge-discuss] Applied lingusitics RE: [atlarge-discuss] Re: First Things First

[espresso@e-scape.net]

J-F C. (Jefsey)  Morfin" <jefsey@club-internet.fr wrote:
>>Richard Henderson:
>>"... These elections should be seen as the volunteering of SERVANTS.
>>People who offer to serve and facilitate and listen. The role of the
>>elected executive should be to say to the "real leaders" in each
>>region: What do YOU want? How can we support you? How can we help you
>>to grow? The elected executive should FOLLOW the lead and the
>>leadership of the people doing the real work at the local levels.
>>
>>It is the people who organize themselves in various local communities
>>and countries, and grow members, who will be the REAL leaders of our
>>organization. It is those people who will establish true diversity.
>>..."
>>
>>Please forgive my skipping over the point that: We as candidates, we
>>should all be concerned with the Global constituency. My mistake was to
>>take that for granted.
>
>No. You just miss the language.
>
>Global in English and French as in most of the languages means "all the 
>parts of a whole". Global in American seem to be rduced to an equivalent to >Universal.

Maybe a Canadian translator can help a little here. "Global" in French means "total", not "world-wide" which is usually translated by "mondial". The translation for the English "global governance" is "la gouvernance mondiale" and "globalization" is "mondialisation".

>The English language has a real problem with missing a word for the way of 
>"managing in a concerted manner" using the normal term "concertation" in an 
>opposed way.

Actually, one doesn't talk about "concertation" in English. The French "concertation" is translated variously as "co-operation", "collaborative effort", or something along those lines. A "table de concertation" is usually a "Round Table on..." or "Joint Committee for..."

>Govenance in American and in English has scaled from its original Frenc 
>XIIIth century meaning of managing the household (in here "net keeping") 
>into a more complex usually top-down power usage.

As "Jefsey" says, "gouvernance" started out in French with a meaning more like "management" than the usual modern sense of "government by something other than a government". 

>So there are a lot of difficuly in translating the French phrase which 
>describes the way to easily manage the Internet : "la concertation d'une 
>gouverance globale".

Personally, I'd be inclined (in this context, not necessarily in all contexts) to translate the phrase as "collaboration in an entity for  world-wide oversight [of the Internet]".

>So your mistake is to beleive that the "global system governance" is a way 
>of coordinating a unified world government under dedicated servent who ever 
>they are from. ...

Unfortunately, in our era there is a tendency for every tin-pot philosopher or economist to think in terms of a world government run along specific ideological lines corresponding to his (or, less frequently, her) own beliefs.

ICANN has something of a split personality. 

On one hand it is intended to *organize and maintain* the structures of the Internet so that everyone can use it -- regulating TLDs being essential to keep the DNS lookups working. *Everyone* want the Internet to keep functioning, and many people are happy that this function is no longer under the direct authority of the U.S. Department of Defense, which sometimes has other things on its mind than fairness to people outside the U.S.

On the other, it aspires to a quasi-governmental authority over who gets to use the Internet for what purposes, and comes primarily from the ideology that privatization of public electronic space is intrinsically a good thing because it enables the ICT industries to make money. 

Faced with a mandate calling for a mechanism whereby individual Internet users around the world could elect representatives to its board and influence the decision-making process, ICANN came up with the At Large concept and a mechanism whereby as few people as possible would be able to sign up for membership. Even with the minimal publicity and awkward interface provided, the public response was many times the number they had wanted to let in, and the candidates elected by these members had ideas which the existing ICANN board did not wish to entertain -- hence the decision not to seat the At Large board members until the last possible moment so as to minimize their effect.

Then. at the earliest opportunity, the board decided to set up a process which would render the At Large members even more powerless. In which, as we all can see, they have succeeded. Even within the more powerless At Large, though, it was deemed necessary to minimize the chances of more new members signing up, nominating candidates, or even discussing the process.

This may have worked for now but it simply can't be allowed to continue. 

ICANN's function of ensuring that there are viable mechanisms for registering domain names and making URLs work is in essence more administrative than governmental. As far as I can tell, the decision to limit the number of TLDs and the choice of TLD registrars were more political than administrative, especially in preferring profit-making  registrars to non-profit ones from the outset. Meanwhile, on the admittedly political front, the very limited degree of democracy provided to fulfil ICANN's obligation under its mandate from the U.S. government has been diluted,  and again diluted, to the point where it's downright homeopathic. 

We who are letting ourselves be deluged with all these messages were not elected by the general Internet-using public any more than the ICANN board was. Presumably we're here because we want to see some real, democratic and international oversight for the Internet so that it can be a permanent, public good rather than an industry- or government-dominated dictatorship.
Personally, I don't see how we can possibly achieve that unless we are willing to insist that every citizen of the  world who uses the 'Net now or will do so in the future knows how to become part of an organization which work hard on outreach, ongoing analysis of the issues, and whatever lobbying it takes to ensure that there is a counterweight to the lobbying by vested interests.

My big question is:
How do we do that within the constraints imposed?

I very much look forward to hearing your answers, especially from those who are candidates this time around.

Regards,

Judyth la pomme


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Judyth Mermelstein  <espresso@e-scape.net> 
Montreal, Québec "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..."
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