Michael,
Taking Richard Sexton's quote of the IETF mantra, "Rough consensus
and running code" to heart, one then is faced with the choice of
influencing things by 2 avenues, 1) rough consensus, 2) running code. This
breaks leadership in the new paradigm of Internet order into categories:
code-hackers, or rough consensus builders.
ICANN does not fall into the coder category, so it must fall into
the rough consensus building cateogry. Recognizing that there's a
fundamental problem with ICANN's approach to gaining rough consensus (they
don't try to gain consensus, them act in a vacuum), there's a way to
influence the process of consensus building at the edges of the Net, and
that is by facilitating the flow of information to the edges.
The process of building consensus (and gaining trust from
participants) is a combination of designing, prototyping, demonstrating,
implementing small, and scaling far and wide. Recognizing this fact, I've
done some "design" work, and have provided a framework for a prototype.
With ORSC's Richard Sexton and his list management expertise,
Stef's "edge control" can be implemented so that Karl Auerbach's atomic
unit (the individual) gains a greater feeling of empowerment, gains more
knowledge, and feels like they trust a process to allow "i"nterested and
"i"nvolved "i"ndividuals a voice.
The services which I outlined yesterday in the emails sent to the
list can be provided by a combination of ICANN/IANA/ORSC whomever, working
together and cooperating. It does not have to be an "us" versus "them"
mentality, similar to Gordon Cook's observation that there IS a siege
mentality among ICANN's leadership.
Looking forward to feedback...anyone?
Steve Page
U.S. Data Highway Corp.
T: 925-454-8624
>I spoke today with Kenneth Egger, the VP in charge of Internet methodology
>at the American Arbitration Association. Here is the gist of what he told
>me:
>
>1) The A.A.A. has already assisted online voting successfully for a number
>of organizations, including a large, dispersed trade union.
>
>2) The A.A.A. does not have computer programs of its own for this, but has
>assisted the organizations which it helped to write their own.
>
>3) The function of the A.A.A. has been to supervise and authenticate the
>procedure, much as U.N. inspectors supervise voting in politically unstable
>countries (an apt parallel, don't you think?).
>
>4) The most important and difficult task, according to Mr. Egger, is the
>authentication of the identity of the voters, in particular the legal
>identity of their name with a postal address. I suggested that this might be
>replaced by digital authentication procedures; Mr. Egger remained skeptical.
>(There was not much problem in the previous cases of online voting because
>all the members were known.) Mr. Egger suggested that perhaps the postal
>service could be used for identity checking, but then why not use it for
>voting as well?
>
>5) I explained that there was a very great time constraint in the present
>situation, and that the DNSO could not possibly write its own voting program
>in so short a space of time. He said that he will query the organizations
>that have already done online voting to see if they would "lend" us their
>programs.
>
>6) I asked what A.A.A.'s fees for supervising the procedure would be, but he
>refused to commit himself.
>
>7) He should get back to me tomorrow or the next day.
>
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