Re: <nettime> Is CPSR Program Promoting Internet Privatization?

[ronda@umcc.ais.org (Ronda Hauben)]

Mark Stahlman <Newmedia@aol.com> writes:

>Which "Internet" are you speaking about?

I am talking about the global internetworking of diverse networks that has
developed over the past 15 years as a result of the work on creating a
protocol that makes it possible to have communication among these diverse
networks. 

Why do you ask? 

>Much discussion in media ecology and other circles have wrestled with this 
>matter.  

I am not familiar with the discussion in media ecology *but* I wonder
whether they have made an effort to explore the development of the
Internet.

>Since the protocols upon which all this rests, TCP/IP, HTML, URL, etc. are 
>not directly useful to humans, then what *exactly* is the medium which we 
>glibbly call the "Internet."

Why do you say the protocols are *not* useful to humans? 

To the contrary, TCP/IP makes it possible to for humans on one networks to
communicate with humans on another very distant and diverse computer
network.

And TCP/IP has made it possible for this communication among people *on*
diverse networks to occur. 

I don't understand why you call URL a protocol. 

A protocol is a set of agreements that allow differnet entities to
determine how to communicate. 

Protocols are essential for communication among things or people that are
different. 

So protocols are very much something that are essential for humans and
human society, so I don't know why you say that the TCP/IP protocol is
*not directly useful to humans*. 

I have found it has fundamentally changed my life and lives of a number of
other people I am in contact with. 

It makes communication possible, where there would be no means of
communication. 

It makes the netttime mailing list possible, for example. 


>What we are talking about is, in fact, many mediums, thus, >my 1990
coinage

>"New Media" -- i.e. plural.

I'm *not* talking about many mediums, though you may be. 

I am talking about the Internet as a communications medium. 


>So, who should "govern" which "Internet"?  Which "Medium"?

I don't understand where this question comes from and why you seem to say
that the Internet is many mediums. 

The question of governing of the Internet has to do with what will it
possible for the public to have a way to continue to spread the
participatory communication that the Internet makes possible. 

I have spent several years studying and participating in the Internet and
trying to contribute to its future development. 

In the process I have found that the role of the computer scientist
research community that developed the Internet is crucial to continue that
development, and that they need a way that they function as part of a
government role in the future development of the Net. 

I have seen that through the role of the computer scientist research
community as part of government, a grassroots participatory culture was
able to develop and to provide input into and participate in the shaping
of the Internet's development. 

The current power grab by private industry (for the most part U.S. private
industry, but probably not solely)  to take over what can be a means of
controlling the Internet through ICANN, or the seizure of the Internet
nameing and numbering and protocol functions, is a swindle of the public
and not by any means a means of providing "governance"  of the Internet,
but a means of privatizing the public resources of the Internet. 



>The "Internet" which you seem to be referring to is an old medium, granted.  
>With an interesting history (but, alas, without a family-crest and some land 
>and a seat in the House of Lords, not a "noble" one).

No the Internet is *not* in any way old. It is quite new, even if it has
been developing from the early 1970's when the TCP/IP protocol was first
designed with input from an international discussion among computer
science researchers supported by their governments. 


>But, that one was long ago supplemented by other "Internets."

There are *not* "internets" as you claim.

You can't have "internets" as an internet is a means of interconnecting
diverse computer networks and thus the resulting entity is an internet. 

You have an "Internet". 

Only if you have the internet break up into things that don't interconnect
and intercommunicate, then you can have separate internets, but not
related internets. 


>Indeed, since an open-ended set of "Internets" -- or human extensions, i.e. 
>mediums -- is very likely to rest on the same collection of protocols, who 
>shall govern future "Internets"?  Future "mediums"?

You seem to be advocating the breaking up of the Internet into separate
and unconnected internets (If they were connected they wouldn't be
separate internets but one Internet). 

That is similar to what ICANN is actually doing - it is grabbing control
over the Internet and those find their control intolerable will be left to
have to form separate internets. So the global communication that the
Internet now provides and its potential to spread is in jeopardy. 


>Your advocacy for this group of net.citizens, of which you are apparently a 
>self-appointed spokesperson, is only one possibility.

You seem to miss the whole point of a "netizen" which is that one is able
to act on what one believes is important, *not* as a spokesperson of
others as you claim, but as a spokesperson for one's own sense of social
responsibility. 

The concept of Netizen is a social concept, much as the concept of citizen
is. The citizen, in the sense of those who emerged with the making of the
French revolution, were those who were to act as it was that soverignty
was theirs, rather than the King's any longer. 

In a similar way I have found that the online users participate on the
Internet and contribute because we have a social obligation and desire to
see that the global communication that the Internet makes possible will
spread and flourish. 

You are thinking in the old way, that anyone who speaks up as a netizen is
acting as a "spokeperson for others". That is like what my Congressman
asks. He says who do you represent.  And when I say I am a citizen, he
says that he can't listen. 

That is the old way, that citizens have *no* ability to speak for
themselves. 

But the Internet makes it possible for netizens to speak out on the
injustices they find and to act as citizens of the Net. 


>The E-Commerce "Internet" -- the subject of most current interest, 
>it would seem -- might truly be a matter for consumers to care about.

To the contrary, users are *not* consumers. There is the effort of some to
change the fundamental nature of the Internet, to change its participatory
nature, and the way that users can contribute and customize their
interface to the Net.

The e-commerce agenda is to take away this important quality of this new
medium, and to try to reduce it to the old notions of the citizen being
considered only as a passive consumer. 

I am *not* a consumer on the Internet. 

And the effort to change the nature of the Internet and to reduce users to
"consumers" is an agenda that many on the Internet are challenging. This
would fundamentally change the nature of the Internet. 


>Or, for IBM to care about.

Some of the problem is that IBM couldn't form an Internet, and if left to
dominate in what happens with the Internet, cannot nourish it, but only
cast it in its own image of something that functions with people as
passive "consumers". 


>Or, if you truly mean the base protocols, perhaps the machines which use 
>these protocols should govern them themselves?

What are you talking about? The wonder of the Internet is that the
protocols make it possible for machines to mediate human messages and to
make human communication possible through a new medium. 

I don't have time to go into more on this now, but the human computer -
network relationship is an important relationship that this new medium
makes possible. 

>But, without some attempt to clarify *what* you are referring to -- which 
>"medium", which "Internet" -- I fear that your advocacy will fall on deaf 
>ears.

Then I welcome any effort you make to clarify, but it seems thus far that
you are not asking me to clarify but only introducing confusion. 

>Best,

>Mark Stahlman 

Ronda

ronda@ais.org

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