[Advisors] Governance, community, and complex adaptive systems

Thu May 12 01:31:54 PDT 2016

Gary writes:

"The question is then, what is missing from Internet Governance to support more promote local, not-for-profit community centric activity?"

In a word, leadership. 

Leadership that effectively promotes and represents communities as a/the key stakeholders in governance of the Internet, and that persuasively presents the benefit case and a workable model for community-centric Internet governance.

Industry will never provide such leadership, and senior governments lack the competency and legitimacy to provide it. 

It falls to communities themselves to provide such leadership, but while there has been progress in some communities, the vast majority are still failing to produce it.

Picking up on Michael’s closing question, the predominance of opinion about the changing nature of Internet governance and community therefore resides *outside* of communities themselves.

It resides in academia, which in today's Canada is (sadly) a hindrance to its migration into communities. 

To whom will our community leaders turn when seeking to educate themselves about the Internet and its relevance to the social and economic development of their communities?

Hardly any will turn to academia, out of fear of looking stupid and incompetent or because they have no idea who to talk to. 

A few will turn to the regulator, which has no mandate to provide clear and decisive guidance to communities because of the limitations of their mandate. 

Most will therefore turn to industry or government, who will respond with either self-serving bullshit and bafflegab (industry) or uncertainty, indecision and bafflegab (government). 

Telecom infrastructure and services haven't been in the wheelhouse of most municipal governments for a century or more, and the hard reality is that the vast majority of people we elect to municipal office don’t actually want it in their wheelhouse. 

Last summer, at the request of our region’s rookie CRTC Commissioner, I coordinated an engagement with half a dozen community leaders here in southwest Alberta.

None of them had a clue that there were straightforward processes in place for engaging the CRTC to seek interpretation and clarification of regulations, and for lodging complaints about industry policies and practices.

Later in the summer, our Commissioner delivered a presentation to a gathering of 80+ community leaders from across the province outlining what the CRTC can and cannot do, and detailing the processes for engaging the CRTC in relation to broadband development and markets for services. 

At the same event, these community leaders were presented with a precise and concise encapsulation of their options for responding to the issue of infrastructure and market development.

To the best of my knowledge, only one of those 80+ community leaders has since given serious consideration to taking serious responsibility for infrastructure and market development in their community. 

This is why municipal organizations like the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and their provincial counterparts have never taken up the cause, even though it fits squarely into their mandate to do so. 

And this is why, for the time being, I agree with Michael’s more pessimistic perspective on Internet governance becoming more community-centric any time soon.

Municipal leaders will not accept responsibility for something they know little or nothing about, and very few will learn what they need to learn.

It simply doesn’t matter what makes the most sense, when the people who need to make sense of it can’t or won’t even try. 

Until there has been a generational shift in municipal and community leadership, most communities will remain at the mercy of corporate self-interest and government fecklessness. 

That said, the 'complex system’ of Canadian society will struggle to adapt as long as our current generation of municipal leadership fails to mentor and make space for a new generation of leadership.

The most pragmatic question I think we can ask is, “How do we develop the community leadership we need?”.

JvL

> On May 11, 2016, at 1:29 PM, Gary W Kenward <garykenward at eastlink.ca> wrote:
> 
> On the other hand….communities have always been self-organizing. Self-organizing systems that are not intrinsically chaotic or divergent have attractors around which the system converges. Resource sharing, mutual protection, social interaction are clearly components of the attractor that defines the self-organization of communities. 
> Greed and narcissism (arguably, greed is a manifestation of narcissism) form part of the human psyche and part of the social interaction. The creation of hierarchical societies, dominated by those who are willing to invest personal time and energy as well as risk the consequences of failure to feed their narcissism have historically been a major component of the attractor around which communities have self-organized. 
> Given this assertion, the issue is not whether or not communities are self-organizing, they always have been. This is evidenced by the evolutionary emergence of the nation state from pre-historical roaming tribes, which in turn were self-organizing communities convergent around hunting, foraging and self-protection. 
> 
> The Internet ecosystem is a self-organization of self-organized communities. The Internet architecture was designed to support self-organization from its inception. While some entities have historically been slow to catch on to the nature and impact of this design principle  (e.g. telcos) , I suggest that the concept is now pretty well universally recognized. The actual disconnect lies in what constitutes acceptable properties for the attractors around which self-organization occurs. 
> 
> Which brings us back to Internet Governance. Once upon at time (back in the 1980’s commercial use of the Internet was unacceptable. Individuals and organizations distributing commercial material via the Internet could (and did) lose access privileges. The Internet ecosystem was comprised of self-organizing communities that formed around shared interests: science, engineering, math, comic books, humour, collectibles, etc. etc. (c.f. USENET).
> This situation obviously changed, primarily with the emergence of the WWW. With commercialization came the opportunity to generate profit from the Internet. Pandora’s box was open. The attractor for the self-organization of Internet communities was shifted towards capitalism which rewards narcissism.(Arguably, with the Internet’s originating from DARPA, the influence of capitalism has always been present to some degree.)
> The shift towards commercial use of the Internet wasn’t the consequence of state or corporate impositions. Non-commercial individuals and organizations either turned a blind eye towards commercialization or actively promoted it. The general population of users like these commercial services and wanted more. Internet commercialization created the gaggle of telco’s, cellco’s and cableco’s that everyone likes to beat upon. However, it also created mega-corporations like Cisco, Amazon, eBay, Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and so on. Massive oligarchies that came to exist because of the over-whelming popularity of their products and services and because the Internet ecosystem provides an attractive flow of capital from consumer to corporation. 
> Whether commercialization of the Internet should have been allowed or not is, at this point, immaterial. Arguably, commercialization has been a major factor in driving much of the Internet growth and is now an embedded component of the Internet ecosystem and the attractors around which local communities self-organize. 
> The real governance question is how to re-direct the self-organization of the Internet ecosystem towards alternative attractors. Or more realistically, how to promote local, not-for-profit community centric attractors that can co-exist with the existing commercial attractors. Much of the current Internet architecture and policy frameworks are structured to support these attractors: e.g. net neutrality, open standards, transparency, opposition to Internet censorship, end-to-end principle etc. The question is then, what is missing from Internet Governance to support more promote local, not-for-profit community centric activity?
> In my view, this promotion of alternative local, not-for-profit community centric activity is not an Internet Governance issue, but one of social policy, which falls under the purview of elected governments.
> Garth, I enjoyed reading your paper. Thank you for sharing it.
> Gary
>> On 2016.05.10, at 15:20, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:> > Interesting and important paper Garth and worthy of a much more extensive commentary (and rebuttal) than I'm currently available to provide.> > Let me just make a few points...> > I think you have made the up and down--individual to global argument extremely well and captured the necessary linkages that follow given the assumptions that you have made.  As well, I'm persuaded by (without re-reading) your critique of Quilligan in the context of Ostrom.  > > Where I disagree or rather have a quite different problematic re: my approach to these issues is that you have what I think is an extremely optimistic perspective on how the Internet and its overall relationships to governance are evolving and will evolve. The overall problem with your analysis seems to me that you completely ignore both the theory of power and the increasingly oppressive reality of power  (and concentration of power) in the Interneted society and polity -- national and global.  > > The paper seems to argue that there is some linear autonomous process of evolution in the local and the global polity which is founded on a principle of "autonomous individuals" interacting in a manner so as to realize Internet enabled communities of these autonomous individuals (or at least the elements of their autonomous being that the individuals choose to share with their (multiple?) shared communities).  This evolution is seen as necessary and benign in all aspects including its likely outcomes. Arguments concerning the possible independence of this evolution or the contribution of the likely outcome to overall human well-being are presented as so 20th century and de-legitimized as being associated with one "ism" or other. Thus we are, whether we know it (or want it) or not, moving into the best of all possible worlds.> > I disagree with Garth in several areas.  First while I agree that the autonomous individual (networked individualist) may be the modal form of identity in the networked society I see this as a problem and something to be resisted rather than something to be celebrated. As I argued in my little book "What is Community Informatics" the networked identity is a weakened identity and one which is unable to resist the overwhelming force of the State and now the even more overwhelming force of Internet enabled corporations.  I see communities as the place where individuals are able to recreate their wholeness and potentially realize their power through the strength of solidarity and through being enabled by technology. > > As well, I see that there are active forces in the world and including and particularly those in the Internet ecology which are anything but benign; and who are looking to achieve monopolies of technical, intellectual and ultimately political power which it is their intention to use in the narrowest and most damaging of selfishness and self-interest.  > > To my mind one can either adopt a best of all possible world's position of passivity in the face of what I see as multiple on-rushing catastrophes or one can attempt in whatever way one can with whatever resources one can muster to find ways to confront and defuse these trends.> > M> > -----Original Message-----> From: advisors-bounces at tc.ca [mailto:advisors-bounces at tc.ca] On Behalf Of Garth Graham> Sent: May 10, 2016 8:22 AM> To: advisors <advisors at tc.ca>> Subject: [Advisors] Governance, community, and complex adaptive systems> > Here's latest in my ongoing attempts to reframe the Internet Governance debate by reference to the changing nature of governance.  In the process of thinking my way forward, I’ve also evolved my understanding of what community networking actually means.  This article encompasses some of that shift.> > Garth Graham.  Cooperating community connections: A changing political reality.  The Journal of Community InformaticsVol 12, No 1 (2016).> http://www.ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/1295> > Abstract: Community Informatics has declared that the global is a federation of locals. James Quilligan has written an essay to the effect that applying such a definition of global requires a world institution of democratic governance. Some members of the community of community informatics researchers have come to a similar conclusion. This essay outlines an alternative interpretation based on complex adaptive systems theory, and with consequent results for a different definition of the individual, the community and their interdependence. It asks the question – where does the predominance of opinion in community informatics about the changing nature of governance and community reside?> > GG> > > _______________________________________________> Advisors mailing list> Advisors at tc.ca> http://victoria.tc.ca/mailman/listinfo/advisors> > _______________________________________________> Advisors mailing list> Advisors at tc.ca> http://victoria.tc.ca/mailman/listinfo/advisors
> _______________________________________________Advisors mailing listAdvisors at tc.cahttp://victoria.tc.ca/mailman/listinfo/advisors

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://victoria.tc.ca/pipermail/advisors/attachments/20160512/02c6e52f/attachment-0001.html>