Roberto,
> > The inital need was the statement of
> > principles and procedures. By the Dept of Commerce forgetting
> > that it only manages affairs *on behalf of the public*, it created a
> > travesty.
...
> You seem to assume that in the beginning, there was the White
> Paper (or at least the first intervention of DOC, i.e. the Green
> Paper). This is not true. This story started well before that,
> originated by the pure and simple market need for new gTLDs.
>
Should I have said the *interim need? ;-) Indeed, the story began
earlier, but I think my point remains: the IAHC and gTLD/MoU
efforts likewise failed to appreciate that they were not dealing with
a simple 'technical' matter, and thus to put any effort towards the
public interface. As the NTIA synopsis says,
IAHC issued a draft plan in December 1996 ... [which] was
criticized for its aggressive technology development and
implementation schedule, for being dominated by the Internet
engineering community, and for [*]lacking participation by and
input from business interests and others in the Internet
community[*]."
> And this is, again, the risk we are facing: to push the legitimate criticism
> on some specific points to the extent that we want to stop the process
> completely, and to start anew.
I dont believe there is, in recorded history, a time that any process
was "stopped completely" much less started anew. But bringing
public participation to the forefront and explicating the ways and
means to do that will reveal that there are many ways to go on from
here.
> > The more *practical student slips his first (perfect) solution into the
> > desk. Then, after offering the teacher several 'improvements' and
> > 'experiments,' when the time comes due for final submissions, the
> > original is presented -- to great acclaim.
> >
> What movie is this? ;>)
That's how one architecture student I know got through, and he had
the esquisses to prove it. It's all in the mind, you see: one teacher
*is a teacher because s/he knows what she's doing, another is just
doing a job which requires that students submit 3 drafts or spends
6 weeks at the drafting table before anything can be 'approved' for
final rendering.
The point of relevance is: whence do these teachers arise? If you
design a system that makes no assumptions of competence, you
get incompetent products. (If you insist on rules and regulations to
'prevent capture,' you will *inevitably have functionaries who
specialize in evading rules.) Alternatively, if you suppose that
people are able to make good decisions regardless of their 'roles,'
and put together a structure which supports them in those
decisions, then you discover people really do make, and recognize
and support good decisions - and produce good students who
themselves may become good teachers.
It's not a matter of trust versus no-trust; rather, its what you put
your trust in. The closer you get to trusting the process (instead of
the 'infrastructure' or specific 'starting points') the more satisfying
the results will be.
kerry
