[WSIS CS-Plenary] Participations to the Summit by individuals (was Re: from IHT...)

[Vittorio Bertola]

Avri Doria ha scritto:
> I definitely support the view that individuals must have a voice in  the 
> process.  As a long time participant in the IETF, I consider the  
> ability to participate in something where my employer (when i have  one) 
> is somewhat proscribed from limiting my voice a blessing.
> 
> But i have trouble understanding how, as participants in this global  
> process the many voices of individuals could be included in a  
> manageable way.  To require the process to allow everyone to input  
> their opinion directly could eventually lead to thousand of  statements 
> and requests to speak - the volume would tend to make all  of our voices 
> disappear into an unmanageable mass that was easy to  ignore.  Scaling 
> in such a process seems to require that there be  ways to combine our 
> voices into the aggregate voice of affinity  groups of like minded 
> individuals.

I think caucuses would be here for that. After all, the IG caucus 
already works much like any other Internet active group, i.e. people 
subscribe and post as individuals, select a coordinator, and manage to 
get rough consensus on common statements, on the basis of "one 
subscriber one voice" (as opposed to "one organization one vote"). So if 
you had individuals able to participate in caucuses (and plenary :) ) in 
that capacity, that could be enough.

But your proposal is interesting anyway:

> somewhat like minded  individuals heard in the community. So we could 
> have structures like  the Netizen's Action Committee or the Association 
> of FOSS  Contributors set themselves up within the context of Civil 
> society  and have those groupings 'accredited' by the system 

It depends whether you talk about informal, CS-run accreditation (which 
is something we could definitely manage to do) or formal, UN-run 
accreditation. The latter requires budgets, formal incorporation etc., 
so could be too burdensome.

But also at the level of principle I think that we should seek 
independence from UN accreditation processes. You saw what happened with 
Human Rights in China! I think we should, to the extent possible, refuse 
to let other stakeholders (let alone governments) determine who can or 
cannot join us.

> am i to say they don't exist.  just because i don't really  understand 
> how they differ from the rest of us, 

Nor do I. I think that the term 'netizen' has come in use to reaffirm 
some citizens' desire to play a more active and direct role in the 
governance of the Internet environment, than the one they play in the 
offline environment. But to me it is more of a slogan than of a concept.

> i hope this makes some sort of sense.

It certainly does :-)
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...