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<div>_______________________________________</div>
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<div>Definite thanks to IGP for the wrapup on consultations.</div>
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<div>Below, comment on one element:</div>
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<div>At 10:48 AM -0500 2/21/06, Milton Mueller wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Internet Governance Forum Takes Shape
After Geneva Consultations</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>...</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>... business and Western governments
urged the IGF to avoid anything controversial or anything that
intersected with the activities of existing international
organizations. They tended to favor spam and cybercrime as focal
topics. ... It became apparent that efforts by the EU and Australia to
keep the IGF away from those topics was motivated by their attempt to
resolve the unfinished WSIS business by means of private, bilateral,
government-to- government negotiations with the United States. ... if
the truly important and controversial issues were removed from the
Forum ...</blockquote>
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<div>On one side - Steps to prosecute the 'unfinished WSIS business'
through bilateral negotiations and not via IGF, if not surprising, are
important to be brought out into the public air.</div>
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<div>On the other - Some, if not a lot, of the search for less
incendiary lead-off topics/themes appeared to follow a different
motivation, to wit: Since the whole process has been born
fraught, so that prospects depend on some care in design, let's start
where there may be at least a little possibility for commonalities.
Then, with any success and some practice with new protocols, perhaps
we can progress to the dicier stuff.</div>
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<div>That strikes me anyway as having some merit. But - It seems
that any theme/s selected will prove, like it or not, a vehicle to
bring the root conflict back into play. Indeed, comments even in
the consultation time and again put the same old struggle on the table
- it was business as usual. (Nor, likely, was anyone much
surprised.)</div>
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<div>In a frame, posted in my contribution at <a
href="http://intgovforum.org/contributions.htm">IntGovForum</a>, there
is reason to see how most of the themes we might suggest - regardless
of whether benign - will indeed carry on the 'unfinished WSIS
business.'</div>
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<div>Only one example is Multilingualism, at least if that is defined
as ML.ML in the browser address bar. A particularly hot potato
at the moment, ICANN is most belatedly headed in one direction, while
several significant language groups with non-Roman scripts are firmly
underway with alternate roots and a quite large swath of users,
already. The mooted balkanization. Here is a topic (really
most pressing - 5 billion users at stake) seemingly without the
fireworks attached - but actually it is the old, unfinished
business.</div>
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<div>And actually, isn't that just what we want? A topic with
bite and global impact, where so far there have been few pyrotechnics
- but where we can indeed carry on the unfinished work. Why else
go to all the trouble, unless we can actually get on with what has
lain unresolved for at least (a lot more than) five years ... ?</div>
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<div>But - To do so surely means getting at the underlying differences
in approach; let's call them underlying frameworks, almost always
unstated but also utterly determinative. That is what, so far,
by and large, has not happened. Now is our chance.</div>
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<div>In this regard, Bill Drake suggested cross-cutting topics as one
good bet. I for one would benefit from learning more of what
Bill sees to define 'cross-cutting.' Of course my hope is
that such might be opportunity to bring unstated assumptions to the
surface, the ones that keep us apart. That is where we must
concentrate our work, if we have a hope actually to see results.</div>
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<div>Only when we are brave enough to get at the deep assumptions that
separate us, then will we have the chance to cobble together more
explicit, practical bridges. IMHO.</div>
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<div>David</div>
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