[Advisors] An Internet for the Common Good: Engagement, Empowerment and Justice for All: A Community Informatics Declaration

[Garth Graham]

After the discussion on this list, I signed this on TC's behalf on Dec 21st.  The lists of signers, including TC on the organization list, are at :
http://cirn.wikispaces.com/An+Internet+for+the+Common+Good+-+Engagement%2C+Empowerment%2C+and+Justice+for+All

I'm assuming Michael is circulating this for forwarding to other organizations and to encourage individuals to sign.

I also signed it as an individual for a very particular reason, emphasis on the local, on community, and on the definition of the global as a "federation of locals."  To me, that's what was missing from WSIS and has remained missing in the Internet governance debates ever since.  It's the point that makes the Community Informatics community's claim of being exceptional valid. It's also the claim that TC has consistently made in all Canadian national debates on ICT use strategies, without effect, since the beginning.  I recently made a summary of this case on the community informatics list (See below):

GG

On 2014-01-13, at 5:52 AM, michael gurstein wrote:

> An Internet for the Common Good: Engagement, Empowerment and Justice for All
> ……..

> [We are very much looking for sign-on's on the Declaration (see below) as we want to take this statement to the Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance that the President of Brazil is convening in April on principles for Internet governance post-Snowden. We think that there will be very strong pressure to maintain the status quo with some minor technical changes and we are hoping to generate some significant momentum for a broader initiative towards an Internet for the Common Good.]

………..


From: 	Garth Graham <garth.graham at telus.net>
	Subject: 	Re: [ciresearchers] An Edited Version of the Declaration
	Date: 	31 December, 2013 3:31:01 PM PST
	To: 	ciresearchers at vancouvercommunity.net

> This is an omnibus response to December 24th emails by Parminder, Larry Stillman, and Richard Hill.   Paraphrasing and summarizing their words, all three would appear to believe:
> 
> -       Government intervention may be required to ensure that markets actually are competitive.  But not all sectors of the economy can become competitive markets.
> -       Some portions of "the Internet" are natural monopolies and/or public goods.  We should treat Internet infrastructure (conduits, fibre, etc) as a public good, same as roads, railroads, airports and air traffic control services, etc., made available to all who wish to offer services using it.
> -       The Internet’s future would be best served by a social-democratic approach, where the 'carriage' is owned through a mix of public interest and community well-being, and where there would be a greater role of the collective in ownership of the Internet as a social and cultural resource, while still not a socialist solution of public ownership of means of production
> -       Corporate lobbying and crony capitalism prevents social democracy from working, and governments from acting in the public interest.
> 
> First, I’d note those beliefs create a classic Catch 22  - the Internet depends on effective government regulation of markets in the public interest, but governments no longer regulate in the public interest.  There’s no way out of that loop.  And when you expand the loop to include the global, global markets, global public interest, and global regulatory instruments like multistakeholderism, it becomes no less absurd.
> 
> I don’t think it surprises anybody that an academic discipline focused on the impact of ICT use on community would have a predilection for social democracy.  But a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing.  When everybody perceives a story the same way, it becomes impossible for different ways of framing the issues to break through.
> 
> Parminder’s, Stillman’s, and Hill’s beliefs are examples of the context that conventionally frames the debates on Internet governance, one where civil society serves to balance the failures of governments and corporations to address social democracy and the public interest.  But civil society is also one of those black box terms with very elastic definitions.  The attempt to shape an asymmetrical triangle “governing” social action into an equilateral is based on assumptions that can and should be examined.  The further we push that set of assumptions into the digital age, the more we are likely to question its utility.
> 
> What does the Internet’s existence tell us about where we are now and where we’re going?  It seems to me that a reframed perception of community can change the context in which the social contracts of a digital age are framed, more than preserving the equilateral triangle of government, business, and civil society.
> 
> I, for one, have never understood civil society’s role as being self appointed.   I see a social contract in being, where governments and corporations delegate the defense of equity and social justice to civil society in the first place, and where civil society does not self-organize but exists as a off-loading construct of businesses and governments to serve those ends by another means than their own direct action.  I see that those identifying themselves as civil society have acquiesced to that contract.  To continue acting without examining the framework of that agreement is to seek to preserve it.
> 
> For community informatics (and for community networking) the critical driver of debate on Internet governance should not be just social democracy, or even equity and social justice.  We should be and are about community and what happens to community and community development when it goes online.
> 
> If we come to the negotiating table with a description of how community in a digital age is different from community in the industrial age then we are acting to change the context of debate, not to preserve it.  The paragraph in the preamble that describes the Internet as a community owned and controlled utility, and section 8, which defines the global as a “federation of locals,” i.e. (as a community of communities), can serve to initiate just such context-changing action.  Without that core of community redefined in the Declaration, Community Informatics brings nothing new, nothing exceptional, to the table.