[WSIS CS-Plenary] Netizens and WSIS

[Jay Hauben]

Hi,

Wide spread knowledge of the history of the vision and technical 
development of the net can help strengthen the forces working for 
universal and quality access. Some of this history and the connection 
between netizens, the WSIS and universal access is highlighted in the 
Amateur Computerist Vol 15 No 2 just posted online.

The articles in the issue look at the scientific and technical origins 
of the Internet, the vision of the libraries of the future, how the 
internet got to Korea, how the first email connection between the 
People's Republic of China and CSnet was established, and critiques 
market economics as inappropriate for understanding the Internet. 
These articles grew out of the Netizens panel at the "Past Present and 
Future of Research on the Internet" side conference held in Tunis in 
Nov 2005.

The issue can be accessed as a pdf file as can the individual article 
at:

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/

Below is the opening article of the issue as it appeared on Ohmynews 
International.

The editors hope that the publication of these articles will 
contribute to the continuation of the search for mechanisms of 
insuring more universal access and the achievement of a more 
appropriate international governance mechanism.

Best wishes.

Jay Hauben ------------------------------------------------

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=4&no=373298&rel_no=1

Netizens and WSIS: Welcome to the 21st Century Celebrating the demand 
for universal access to the Internet

In the early 1990s, Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben began to document 
the history and social impact of Usenet and the Internet. In 1994, 
they put their research online as the netizens netbook. Its title was 
"Netizens and the Wonderful World of the Net." Then, in 1997 there 
appeared a print edition, Netizens: On the History and Impact of 
Usenet and the Internet,(1) A small gathering was held on July 14, 
2007 in New York City to celebrate its tenth anniversary.(2)

Michael Hauben opens Chapter One of the book Netizens with the 
greeting:

   Welcome to the 21st Century. You are a Netizen (a Net Citizen), and
   you exist as a citizen of the world thanks to the global
   connectivity that the Net makes possible. You consider everyone as
   your compatriot. You physically live in one country but you are in
   contact with much of the world via the global computer network.
   Virtually you live next door to every other single Netizen in the
   world. Geographical separation is replaced by existence in the same
   virtual space.

True to this prediction, as the 21st Century began, the Internet 
spread far and wide. Its promise attracted attention. People on every 
continent wanted access. In 1998, at the International 
Telecommunications Union (ITU) Plenipotentiary Conference, Tunisia 
suggested the idea of a World Summit on the Information Society 
(WSIS). In 2002, recognizing the challenge to make access to the 
information society and the Internet universal, the United Nations 
General Assembly endorsed a proposal to hold such a summit. There were 
to be two phases, the first in Geneva in 2003 and the second in Tunis 
in 2005.

The WSIS events with their culminating meeting in Tunis in Nov 2005 
demonstrated the grassroots desire for the promise of the Internet and 
of the netizen to be realized around the globe.

In Geneva in December 2003, the gathered attendees from 175 countries 
heard a cry from the people of the world delivered especially by 
representatives from Africa, Asia, Latin America and island nations 
for inclusion in the Internet age. That was the message from the many 
heads of state who asked for help to include their people and 
economies and who feared the result if large numbers of people were 
left out. The session concluded with a "Declaration of Principles."(3)

Besides a call for the governments of the developed countries and the 
corporations to help the developing world meet this goal, there was 
also the recognition that the Internet was an international, public 
resource that needed proper protection and governance(4)

In November 2005, the second phase of the WSIS was held. Almost 20,000 
participants from more than 175 countries gathered in Tunis. Strong 
statements of the public nature and need for universal access were 
heard from many of the heads of state who addressed the Summit. They 
demanded universal inclusion of all people.

The debate over how the Internet would be managed continued as part of 
these UN sponsored events. The U.S. maintained its position that 
governance over domain names, domain name servers and protocol numbers 
should remain with the so called private sector organization, the 
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) under U.S. 
government control.

Also, there was a debate whether there should be a continuation of the 
work of the Summit after the Tunis phase came to a close. The forces 
for multinational or international governance were not able to 
overcome the U.S. dominance, but they did achieve the plan for an 
international Internet Governance Forum which met for the first time 
in Athens in Fall 2006 and is planning a second meeting in Rio de 
Janeiro for fall 2007.

There were side conferences at the both Summits. One scientific side 
conference, the Past, Present, and Future of Research in the 
Information Society (PPF),(5) held in conjunction with the Tunis phase 
of the WSIS had a panel that connected netizens with WSIS. This panel 
provided a glimpse of the pioneering spirit and actions which gave 
birth to the Internet. The papers from this panel are gathered in the 
latest issue of the Amateur Computerist (PDF).

At this PPF panel, Ronda Hauben gave the first presentation, "The 
International and Scientific Origins of the Internet and the Emergence 
of the Netizens." In her presentation, Hauben documented that Internet 
technology originated from scientific and academic work not from a 
military oriented project even though its funding came through the 
U.S. Department of Defense. She argued that the origin of the Internet 
was in the international collaboration which developed the TCP/IP 
protocol suite.

Hauben described the vision inspiring the creation and development of 
the Internet to support collaborative scientific modeling, as a medium 
that "can be contributed to and experimented with by all." In the 
longer paper in the Amateur Computerist issue, she describes some of 
the controversies in Internet history, explains the nature of the 
scientific research, and documents the online research by Michael 
Hauben which led him to discover the emergence of the netizen 
(net.citizen) with the development of the Internet.

The second presentation, "Vannevar Bush and JCR Licklider: Libraries 
of the Future 1945-1965" by Jay Hauben countered the myth that the 
Internet today is different from how it was originally envisioned by 
the pioneers. The vision is traced partially to the work of Vannevar 
Bush after WWII but mostly to the thinking and writing and 
experimenting of JCR Licklider in the 1960s. Bush and Licklider both 
asked the same question, how could the vast accumulation of knowledge 
be made useful and be contributed to by all? Both of them looked to 
the human brain as a model and to technology for the means to achieve 
this. The early vision is in many ways being realized. Still to be 
answered is the question "Will to be online' be a privilege or a 
right?"(6) And there is still the challenge to make the whole corpus 
of human knowledge available for use by all with semantic in addition 
to syntactic searching.

Kilnam Chon, in "A Brief History of the Internet in Korea" documented 
TCP/IP networking developments in South Korea as early as 1982. His 
story, little told until now, of the development of internetworking in 
Asia helps dispel the myth that the Internet is an unintended 
by-product of U.S. military research. In 1985, Korean academic 
researchers sponsored one of the first international Internet 
conferences. This was the Pacific Computer Communications Symposium 
(PCCS) held in Seoul with over 300 attendees from Asia, Europe and 
North America. The current deep penetration of the Internet into 
Korean society and the role played there by netizens was put, by Chon, 
into this long historical context.

Werner Zorn told the story of the coming to the Peoples Republic of 
China of international email connectivity ("How China was Connected to 
the International Computer Networks"). German-Chinese friendship 
formed when the World Bank sponsored the import of West German made 
Siemens computers for use by Chinese students and academics. This led 
to collaborative work from 1983 to 1987 which made possible the 
sending of the first email message from China into the international 
CSNET email system on Sept. 20, 1987.

Zorn documented this story with original email messages and photos. 
The story contradicted how this history had been told on many websites 
in China like that of the China Internet Network Information Center 
(CNNIC)(7) where the role of German scientists and of Professor Wang 
Yuen Fung was down played in favor of a Chinese engineer who was not 
involved this early work.

Attending the panel in Tunis was Qiheng Hu, chairperson of the 
Internet Society in China. After hearing the presentation and seeing 
some of the documents she said she would have the question 
investigated. As of May 2007, a corrected version began to appear on 
the CNNIC website of this history agreeing with what Zorn had 
presented.(8)

At the Tunis summit, the effort to change from a U.S. government 
controlled ICANN to an international governance structure for the 
Internet did not succeed in its main goal. But reasons for that goal 
were presented on the panel by Anders Ekeland in his presentation, 
"Netizens and Protecting the Public Interest in the Development and 
Management of the Internet: An Economist's Perspective."

Based on the Internet's most important aspect, which Ekeland argued is 
the free exchange of information and opinion, the Internet is a common 
good and a public good. That understanding is often hidden because the 
prevailing economic theory, free market economics, only recognizes 
private goods. Free market economics is also inappropriate for the 
analysis of the Internet argued Ekeland because that theory assumes a 
"general equilibrium" while the Internet is dynamic and ever changing 
and growing.

Ekeland explained why in market economics there is no role for 
government or institutions. In such a theory, regulation stems only in 
cases of "market failure". In the case of the Internet, which is 
certainly not a failure, international regulation is necessary because 
there are people in many countries who legitimately need the Internet 
but have little or no money. Ekeland concluded that a world wide 
democratic process is better suited than markets to create a rational 
system for domain name decisions.

The panel was well received, leading to a lively discussion. In 
summing up the whole PPF conference, one of its organizers, Wiebe 
Bijker stressed that "science, technology and research played a 
crucial role in the origin of the Internet." The myth of development 
for military purposes was dispelled by historical research which 
showed the many research actors designed it for sophisticated users. 
Free markets were not the "save-all recipe." These were main themes of 
the panel described above and also of the book Netizens. The WSIS, 
Netizens and the PPF panel help to suggest the continuing importance 
of the Internet and netizens in the 21st century.


1) Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, Los 
Alamitos, CA, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1997 now distributed by 
John Wiley and Sons. (Online version at: 
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/)

2) See 
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article-eastasia.asp?parentid=74171 and 
http://www.hypercortex.net/ver2

3) Online at: http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/geneva/official/dop.html. 
One principle set as the goal "to build a people-centred, inclusive 
and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can 
create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling 
individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential 
in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality 
of life."

4) In a section with a different purpose, the Geneva Declaration 
addressed who should participate in the governance of the Internet. 
One of the principles to guide decision making is: "Governments, as 
well as private sector, civil society and the United Nations and other 
international organizations have an important role and responsibility 
in the development of the Information Society and, as appropriate, in 
decision-making processes. Building a people-centred Information 
Society is a joint effort which requires cooperation and partnership 
among all stakeholders."

5) See the conference website online at: 
http://www.worldsci.net/tunis/. All the abstracts from the PPF 
conference have been gathered in a book, Past, Present, and Future of 
Research in the Information Society, edited by Wesley Shrum, Keith 
Benson, Wiebe Bijker and Klaus Brunnstein, Springer, New York, 2007.

6) JCR Licklider and Robert Taylor, "The Computer as a Commutation 
Device" on 1968, online at: 
http://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/DEC/SRC/publications/taylor/licklider-taylor.pdf

7) http://www.cnnic.net.cn/en/index/

8) See for example: http://cnnic.net.cn/html/Dir/2003/12/12/2000.htm, 
where it now reads: "1. In September 1987, with the support from a 
scientific research group led by Professor Werner Zorn of Karlsruhe 
University in Germany, a working group led by Professor Wang Yunfeng 
and Doctor Li Chengjiong built up an Email node in ICA, and 
successfully sent out an Email to Germany on Sep 20th. The Email title 
was 'Across the Great Wall we can reach every corner in the world.'"


This article is a slightly rewritten version of the lead article in 
the "Amateur Computerist" Vol 15 No 2.