[discuss] [governance] [bestbits] Fwd: Heads up on Brazil meeting preparation

Wed Jan 29 17:46:17 UTC 2014

Sorry I just send it to John, not to the list.

On 16:56 29/01/2014, John Curran said:
>Regarding the scope of your hypothetical "supreme international 
>body" (which is apparently your
>proposed solution to the present situation) - are you advocating 
>that there be treaty body to establish
>"Law of the Internet" as opposed to recognition of the applicability 
>of existing international norms
>to actions that now take place over the Internet?
>
>i.e.  "Internet" Human Rights distinct from Human Rights, "Internet" 
>Personal Privacy distinct
>         from Personal Data Privacy rights, "Internet" Diplomatic 
> law rather than Vienna Diplomatic
>         relations, etc.?
>
>The Internet is a communications medium, and while it may have 
>unique aspects, I am trying to
>discern whether that is the limit of the scope of your hypothetical 
>supreme international body
>or whether it is something greater.

John,
I am afraid you are missing a detail. We do not want "Internet" Human 
Rights, but certainly Human Digital Rights, as opposed to Machines 
Digital Norms.

The internet is only one of the *new* communication media not because 
it would be new by itself (what works well is simplicity [RFC 3949], 
i.e. which has probably been proven over a long period before), but 
because it belongs to a human *new* environment, to the point several 
believe that we deal with a new *man* (cf. Raymond Kurzwell, chief 
scientist at Google).

This artificial environment, we often refer through its "surface" as 
the cyberspace, i.e. an easy way to compare and assimilate it with 
the other land, sea, air, space environments (and battle fields) is 
an important share of the reality we are discovering the location, 
ecosystem, set of universal rules, etc. This is the digisphere, i.e. 
our capacity to look at things in their discontinuity (atoms, quanta, 
bits, bytes, datagrams, packets, memes, semes) while up to now we 
considered them within their continuity. This puts us far deeper in 
the complexity that underlays simplicity, to a point we do not scale 
yet (hence lists like this one). This also gives us the technical 
capacity to build (and therefore in part decide of) of the very 
nature our environment). "code is law" is not at the level of State 
legislation and standards (this is the area of the 
"internationalization" competition) but of norms, i.e. something 
which belongs to reality and everyone. Not something you can vote or 
change without *everyone's* agreement.. This comes from accepted 
innovation. RFC 6852 refers to markets, the reforming CEOs to 
consumers, WSIS to people.

What is missed by most (because it is both new and big) is the 
architectonic nature of the issue. I detailed that already. And what 
is not clear to anyone is the relation between the architectonic 
priorities and the politic ones. This is this debate. However this 
debate is biaised because it is neither top-down nor bottom-up. 
Either we stat from everything that the digitalization may affect 
(i.e. the universe) or we stat from the smallest thing we can 
automate, i.e. the semantic meaning. This is why we both talk States 
and economy (not fully top enough) and DNS (the individual bottom's 
claim to the property of his/her own names).

This is also why, if we are really in MS-IG charge (as we should), 
either we should start discussing a universal referential model (an 
architectony) or more simply the way to master our own naming context 
through individual roots management. An open Libre architectony 
(complete universal model) will be necessary to support the Internet 
of thoughts (intersem) where machines will have to facilitate our 
thinking and therefore be in phase with us. However I suspect it 
would be premature on an 2014 MS-IG mailing list. This is why I 
suggest to start, in order to acquire a joint responsibility spirit, 
with a common work on personal e-empowerment through personal roots 
files (the WSIS said that the information society was to be people centered).

jfc