ICANN day -1
Today I'm attending the seventh meeting of Egeni, an ISOC France event. The schedule is for several round-tables on Internet Governance, and from my point of view what we're discussing is choice among several abstract models. The second round-table is futurologists competing for who can cast the widest net. The third round-table is about users.
What's missing? In round-table #1, where government and industry (in the form of the Chambers of Commerce) are present, labor is not. No one from CWA, the AFL-CIO, the ILO. It is a failing that the ILO is absent. There is a term for Capital and Government united -- Fascism. I suppose everyone just assumes that every communications worker, every coder, every keyboarder, every ... worker already has good wages and working conditions and health insurance and portable and safe retirements. There are no worker issues, and people without money simply have no use for data.
In round-table #2, where the lot of the future is cast (always a amusing diversion) there is no one from a handset vendor, or from an auto manufacturer (high end passenger cars now include 50 electronic control units, and the complexities of cable and harness integration in chassis construction is making these wireless. Oh Dog help me. Round-table #2 is rat holing into China firewall bashing and pedophilia. I could have stayed home and turned on the RNC technology show on CNN or Fox. I suppose hearing this in French is educational. The saving grace of this interminable boredom is a brief detour to post-apocalyptic Uganda by Fred Baker.
In round-table #3 where the users are the objects of discussion, but not actually present, no browser vendor is present.
We did what we called the catwalk (in honor of our starting .cat for Catalelan) to talk about new gTLD. On the "cakewalk panel" are Tijani BenJemaa for .med (the Mediterranean Union), my friend Dirk Kirchenowski for .berlin, Tom Lowenhaupt for .nyc and Werner Staub for several of our joint projects -- .bzh (Bretagne), .gal (Galacia) and .cym (Wales). I spoke about .nai.
