[discuss] - questions of consent and influence

[Steve Crocker]

Bill,

Thanks for this piece of historical information.  Is a copy of the signed document available online somewhere?

I think a Boswell and an ombudsman are two different roles.  Both are valuable and necessary.  Jon may have embodied both, but that was unusual.  Those functions are both necessary now, but they need to split.

Steve



On Feb 21, 2014, at 3:12 AM, manning bill <bmanning at isi.edu> wrote:

> 
> Reviewing the history of the gravitas that settled on Jon Postel in his role as IANA, a few things emerged:
> 
> 1- For nearly two decades, there was tacit agreement by the developer and user community that Jon would act as an ombudsman, in Vint Cerfs words,  “Our Boswell”
> To save time, the reference is to James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (29 October 1740 – 19 May 1795) was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland.  Boswell's surname has passed into the English language as a term (Boswell, Boswellian, Boswellism) for a constant companion and observer, especially one who records those observations in print.  (wikipedia)
> 
> In 1987, there was the Lake Arrowhead meeting, <ADVANCED COMPUTER COMMUNICATION WORKSHOP> with the following participants from academia, business, and government:
>                              PARTICIPANTS
> 
>    Tony Acampora                   AT&T-BTL
>    Gordon Bell                     National Science Foundation
>    Craig Bender                    O'Dowd Research
>    Ken Biba                        Biba Associates
>    Dick Binder                     M/A-COM
>    Dave Blauvelt                   ITT
>    Len Bosack                      cisco
>    Hans-Werner Braun               University of Michigan
>    Ross W. Callon                  Bolt Beranek and Newman
>    Vinton G. Cerf                  NRI
>    Greg Chesson                    SGI
>    David Cheriton                  Stanford
>    Wesley Clark                    CRA
>    Danny Cohen                     USC-ISI
>    Chase J. Cotton                 Bellcore
>    Gary Delp                       University of Delaware
>    Deborah Estrin                  USC
>    David J. Farber                 University of Delaware
>    John G. Fletcher                LLNL
>    A.G. (Sandy) Fraser             AT&T-BTL
>    Steven N. Goldstein             NASA-HQ/MITRE
>    Ken Ingram                      AT&T-BTL
>    Richard Johnsson                DEC-SRC
>    Robert E. Kahn                  NRI
>    Steve J. Lukasik                Northrop
>    Jim Mathis                      SRI International
>    Dave Mills                      University of Delaware
>    Jeffrey C. Mogul                DEC-WRL
>    Joel Morrow                     NYNEX
>    Brendon O'Dowd                  O'Dowd Research
>    Eli Pasternak                   Telestream
>    Jon Postel                      USC-ISI
>    Larry G. Roberts                Net-Express
>    Daniel Sheinbein                AT&T-BTL
>    W. D. Sincoskie                 Bellcore
>    Dan Swinehart                   Xerox-PARC
>    Jonathan Turner                 Washington University
>    Dono Van Mierop                 Fibronics
> 
> Some of these names/organizations may be familiar, some not so much.  In the Postel archives, there is a document, signed by each of these people, representing their organizations, that they would
> respect and abide by the naming and numbering choices arbitrated by Jon.  As far as I can tell, this is the first written agreement of the consent of the governed to abide by the choices made by Jon.
> This “tasking” was folded into the Tera Node Technology award from DARPA and then migrated via NSF to oversight by NTIA.
> 
> 
> So for me,  two key elements of effective IG must include:
> 
> - an ombudsman/boswellian role as documenting the authoritative state of affairs
> and
> - consent of the governed.
> 
> Its hard to see both of these attributes in the proposals tabled to date.
> 
> 
> 
> /bill
> Neca eos omnes.  Deus suos agnoscet.
> 
> 
> 
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