[discuss] [governance] [ciresearchers] NETmundial documentsonline for comment

[Nii Narku Quaynor]

Sounds all about "wealth and power" and less about Internet's benefits to economies and it's also unnecessarily accusatory

> On Apr 20, 2014, at 9:20, "michael gurstein" <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Thanks for the reference Avri and I've now had a chance to take a look at
> your paper...
> 
> Useful, but I'm not sure how far it advances the discussion...
> 
> What I noticed in the paper and in effectively all of the "academic"
> discussions on global (Internet) governance is that it completely ignores
> the elephant in the room i.e. that global (Internet) governance is no long
> about how to move bits and bytes around efficiently and effectively (if it
> ever was).  Now, and with ever-increasing importance, global (Internet)
> governance is about how vast reaches of Internet based wealth and power are
> managed and distributed.  
> 
> The last figures that I saw had the Internet being in whole or in part
> responsible for some 10% of the US economy and probably slightly smaller but
> similar percentages of OECD economies overall, with somewhat smaller but
> rapidly increasing percentages for the rest of the world's economies.  This
> is not small potatoes.  Equally we know from Snowden that the Internet is
> being used as the platform for an unprecedented global exertion of
> clandestine political and economic power by the US and presumably by any
> other country that has the resources to undertake these initiatives. 
> 
> So, to not analyse global (Internet) governance (viz. MSism) within its
> power and influence context and the context of the contending forces that
> are without any doubt attempting to shape this to serve their own private
> ends, seems to me to miss the point.
> 
> And all this without speaking of the future where the Internet platform will
> become even more significant, pervasive and determining i.e. as "global
> governance". 
> 
> Having control over this platform in whatever manner--active, passive, or
> simply ensuring a status quo which privileges certain actors and positions
> and disempowers and relatively immiserates others--gives one the
> overwhelming power to shape the future.  
> 
> This IMHO is what global (Internet) governance is about and to my mind the
> rest is playacting and stage management.
> 
> M 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: discuss-bounces at 1net.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at 1net.org] On Behalf
> Of Avri Doria
> Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2014 4:30 PM
> To: discuss at 1net.org
> Subject: Re: [discuss] [governance] [ciresearchers] NETmundial
> documentsonline for comment
> 
> 
> 
>> On 19-Apr-14 10:57, Alejandro Pisanty wrote:
>> 
>> "Multistakeholderism" is not being used as an "ism", suggesting an 
>> ideology or a belief. It is shorthand for "participation of all 
>> stakeholders" and, depending on the case at hand, advances, 
>> complements or blazes a trail for larger-scale democratic processes 
>> (which as has been discussed, do not have a unique form.)
> 
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> I should add that I discuss, ad nauseum perhaps, the word
> multistakeholderism in a chapter of "The evolution of Global Internet
> Governance" by Radu et al.  in a chapter called "Use [and abuse] of
> Multistakeholderism in the Internet" Springer-Schulthess 2013.
> 
> I have an early version of this article before the polishing editors give it
> at:
> 
> http://psg.com/~avri/papers/Use%20and%20Abuse%20of%20MSism-130902.pdf
> 
> I do not think it is available on line otherwise.
> 
> The chapter also contains a discussion on Democracy that I am sure will
> cause some to gag into flame.  I have yet to further develop this theme
> beyond those few pages and would go further now in terms of multistakeholder
> models as participatory democracy models.  My contribution to NetMundial
> (117), makes some of those points.
> 
> http://content.netmundial.br/contribution/multstakeholder-model-as-a-form-of
> -democracy/117
> 
> avri
> 
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