Greg Skinner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Ronda wrote:
>>The whole conception of ICANN is fundamentally flawed. It
>is embodying conflict of interest as a principle, and will
>continue to do so with its membership structure if it adopts
>>one. The fundamental problem ICANN represents is that
>>it is a privatizing (though under the actual but hidden hands
>>of the government) of what there is no authority for the
>>U.S. government to privatize.
Possibly, but what happens if either "government" or "science"
encounters problems that may not be technically unsolvable, but are
practically unsolvable because of the high level of politics and
controversy that surrounds them, so much so that it actually drains
the energy of those who attempt to solve them?
This is a very important question and one that needs to be
examined.
This is the issue that C.P. Snow addressed in a nice little
volume of a talk he gave at Harvard in 1960.
In the talk C.P. Snow raises the dilemma posed by modern society
in which science raises important problems and that government
has to deal with these problems, but that too often decisions
about these problems are made in secret and in a legal or political
form where those making the decisions are not able to comprehend the
consequences of the decisions they are making.
The volume called "Science and Government"
It describes how there is a need to have scientists more intimately
involved in these decisions, but also the issue of how to
open up the discussion so that it becomes a public discussion
is raised in a talk that C.P. Snow gave the following year at
MIT where he discussed the same problem.
Ronda
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Netizens: On the History and Impact
of Usenet and the Internet
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
in print edition ISBN 0-8186-7706-6
