[discuss] Academic sector appointments to the 1net steering-->Academic Games

[Norbert Bollow]

Dear all

This posting is in reaction to the attack on Michael Gurstein
personally and on the CI community as a whole by GigaNet's Chair Milton
Mueller, which is quoted below at the bottom. (I'm specifically
referring to the text starting with “Time for someone to call your
bluff. Is your CI community civil society or academic? ...”)

None of the currently existing categorizations of stakeholder groups is
perfect or even perfectly well-defined. Maybe these categorizations are
best seen as tools that can be used to help to notice and/or prevent
some kinds of one-sidedness in the composition of committees etc.

There will always be those whose perspective doesn't fit neatly into
any given system of stakeholder group categorization.

The world is already full enough of socio-economic and group dynamic
processes that lead to the marginalization of groups and individuals
and their legitimate perspectives. I'm not saying that all views are
valid and legitimate (for example any view that is based on provably
false beliefs, or that directly opposes any internationally recognized
human right, can legitimately be excluded from consideration) but there
are legitimate views and perspectives which get marginalized when their
proponents are marginalized, and quite often in fact attempts are made
to marginalize the proponents of some legitimate viewpoint precisely
because that viewpoint is inconvenient to those who benefit from the
status quo.

So please let's avoid turning multi-stakeholderism into a process of
marginalization of viewpoints that don't neatly fit into some system of
stakeholder categories.

Also, in my view, the hostility which the GigaNet Chair expresses in
relation to the demand to take the perspective of *academics with a
Community Informatics viewpoint* serious in the context of Internet
governance --e.g. in the message at the bottom below, this hostility
is expressed with the words “fairly remote from global internet
governance (unless of course, you want to perpetuate the fallacy of
calling anything and everything related to the Internet as part of
global internet governance”-- is quite sufficient justification
when academics with this perspective wish to be considered for
appointment to the /1net Steering Committee through a process that is
independent of GigaNet.

When I see what seems to be such hostility against even accepting as a
legitimate part of the Internet governance discourse any viewpoints
outside the range of topics and perspectives that “ICANN, IGF, the
RIRs, IETF or any of the other institutions directly engaged with IG”
have been significantly addressing so far, I am getting really
concerned about the need to ensure that the agenda setting process for
the São Paulo meeting will be sufficiently inclusive or all relevant
perspectives: Of course a single two-days event that aims to reach
a consensus on an outcome document cannot productively address a too big
range of topics, but I would insist that it is critically important for
the agenda setting process to carefully avoid framing the topics of
the discourse in a way that effectively already excludes some
perspectives from the outset.

Greetings,
Norbert

P.S. Disclosure of personal involvement: I have been on the “community
informatics researchers” mailing list for a long time, although mostly
as a lurker. Recently I have made a proposal (and, after it was
accepted, executed its process) on how the CI community could, in a
relatively short timeframe, set up a NomCom.
http://cirn.wikispaces.com/Proposal+for+a+Nominating+Committe+%28NomCom%29+for+the+CI+community


> From: Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu>
> Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2014 20:23:47 +0000
> Subject: RE: [discuss] Academic sector appointments to the 1net
> steering committee from multiple platforms
> 
>  
> 
> Michael, 
> 
> Time for someone to call your bluff. Is your CI community civil
> society or academic? You now claim that either one will do. That
> seems to expose this whole effort of yours as nothing more than a
> vehicle for getting yourself on a committee. 
> 
>  
> 
> CI describes itself as concerned with ICTs and their impact on
> community, especially local communities. That's an interesting and
> perfectly legitimate set of interests, but it is far more general
> than the issues we are concerned with and fairly remote from global
> internet governance (unless of course, you want to perpetuate the
> fallacy of calling anything and everything related to the Internet as
> part of global internet governance.)  
> 
>  
> 
> Thus it not surprising that no one from this CI community has
> established a significant presence in ICANN, IGF, the RIRs, IETF or
> any of the other institutions directly engaged with IG. The one
> person who seems to overlap those worlds - you - is also involved in
> and represented in IGC and IRP - and you could be involved in Giganet
> as an academic if you wanted to be. If the people involved in those
> entities didn't choose to nominate you for these positions, then
> that's your problem, not the entire 1net community's problem.  
> 
>  
> 
> So please, stop pretending that CI is some massive grassroots movement
> related to Internet governance that deserves special representation;
> and stop pretending that  your frustration with not being selected by
> CS means that their procedures were illegitimate. 
> 
>  
> 
> You are your group are free to contribute position papers to the
> process and to attend, as far as we know. Why don't you see how far
> you can get on persuasion and education, if that's really your
> mission?