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

Sun Apr 20 11:59:56 UTC 2014

Perhaps we could rename this aspect of this thread conspiracies and power?  Net mundial documents... as a thread title had a chance of being useful, not shared with this current conversation....  No problem if people want to have it, just under another topic header please.

Joe

Sent from my iPad

> On Apr 20, 2014, at 7:46 AM, Nii Narku Quaynor <quaynor at ghana.com> wrote:
> 
> 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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