This document has been published for all non-french speakers wishing to access to the vision of public good in Information Society. This vision is shared by my colleagues experts of Ynternet.org working group, and we spread this vision in the conference we give in French speaking countries (mostly Marie-Jane Berchten, Antoine Moreau, Raphael Rousseau, Guillaume Chenevière, Charles-Henri Favrod and myself). It has been edited as contribution to the participation of Ynternet.org in Europortfolio network (such as KEY-PAL, Puzzle...), in various English-speaking forums and networks (TIG, OKN, WSIS-online...), and it also answers to calls for contribution such as those from SATW ICT working group meetings, Incomunicando conference and from AICA open source working group.
Info-politics trends and needs for it's sustainability.
In this first draft of essay, the goal is to describe the roots and stakes of information society with the eyes of those who created main e-tools that we are using today : Personal Computers (PC), Internet network, the World Wide Web... and their related tools, that I further call servitude, such as digitalTV, satellites, printing systems, newspapers, movie industry... (I call these appliance servitude because, to be plainly functional, they depend of the e-tools mentionned above ).
Then, this document aims to define why and how trends are appropriate or not. The analysis is based on the common goal of sustainability for human society, defined by UN System and almost all living communities.
Finally, it shows how and why using values and terms of Freedom (instead of Open Source) is the key for equity of chances in Information Society.
INFORMATION SOCIETY HAS CHANGED TOOLS, NOT GOALS.
Since always, information has been considered as a valuable good. Since the developement of digital tools, all sectors of production and consumation have been including this new deal of « digital inclusion » in their functioning system, and therefore in their everyday life. But what finally changes is not the tool itself, but the social aspect of our relationships in society, thru use of digital tools. Decentralization, nomadism and asynchronicity are the 3 new properties which modify deeply our relationship to others.
These 3 properties are in the heart of the debates, they are the methodoligical keys in the transfer of powers currently going on and in the new policies under construction.
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE IS A PRODUCT OF NOOSPHERE
Since the 70's, the sharing of experience into various network has facilited the practice of so-called collective intelligence. This term, firstly describe by Teilhard de Chardin, in the early 20 century, is related to a spirirutal and scientific vision describing the source of all inspiration with two complementary origins :
Our own intuition, experience, feeling, and knowledge
the collective knowledge, which would be collectively stocked in some part of the biosphere, such as the stratosphere, called the noosphère, which means sphere of the knowledge.
According to Teilhard, Humans (and other forms of living) would get part of their inspiration from this noosphere.
Later, other related works such as [Morphogenetic fields (by Rupert Sheldrake) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphogenetic_field] and other would slowly confirm and enlarge this science, becoming slowly a real new philosphy for information flow, somehow joining Palo Alto school in it's conclusions and further developments.
This is why the cyberspace, result of Internet use by millions of humans, is considered as the digital side of the Noospshère, a form of materialisation of this non-material noosphere.
PARTICIPATIVE METHODS ARE REENFORCED BY THESE NEW E-TOOLS.
Multistakeholderism, cross-sectoral alliances, globla info-politics & other related issues are not new. Since alwas, philisophers and practioners have proposed definitions and concrete expriences for developement of decentralized, nomd and asynchronic flows of informations. Emerging ICT, such as Internet, create new perceptions, new projects and therefore the idea that we can communicate in some new way. What really is new is it's undertsanding by university & governemental experts. As Perry Barlow wrote and addressed in 1997 to World Economic Forum gov. delegates in Davos : [... Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions...]
WHERE ARE THE ROOTS OF NOWADAYS INFORMATION SOCIETY ?
The so called long beards, founder of open standards projects for electronic communications - such as TCP/IP, html, and other projects whom most shining example is GNU project - are persons who are not only technicians, but also socially motivated and awaken : thru scientific experience, all those who succeeded spread their creations came first somehow to the same conclusion : no matter if we want to develop new E-Tools for the common good of human being or just for private interesses of some for-profit companies: to function well, a tool has to be developped organically and with a sustainable vision, otherways it wont be widely adopted. For example french computer network named Minitel lost it's commercial strike against Internet not for financial purposes, but for structural ones (MINITEL is less respecting the criterias of sustainability in information society : decentralised, asynchron & nomad access). Therefore, we have to consider common good as a objective constraint (and not as a choice) for any e-project development, policy or rule.
Considering the fact that « the function creates the organ », and due to the fact that the long beards created to central functions of our current « information society » system, it is somehow clear that the social motivation of common good is somehow present behind all technological product available in the market today, although it's often very alterated by commercial motivations.
E-CULTURE SHALL FIRST BE ADOPTED BY THOSE WHO WANT TO RULE IT.
It is over 30 years that this issues are being discussed, that a real E-culture is emerging.
This long period of incubation is directly related to it's complexity and to the deep changes it brings into all level of global societies. 30 years means a lot of debates, of consolidated options taken for reasonnable reasons. If scientist creating the digital tools would have been seen the reason of ruling it with usual governemantal policies, they would have done it. But they didn't, and it's not because they could not : facilitating a natural and non-doped development of digital inclusion for all was a conscient choice of them. The idea the were promoting to governement was very simple : for non-military purposes, digital information society shall be available for all, on the following terms :
1.First learn how to adopt E-culture by acting properly (profiling yourserlf, reading the fucking manual, contributions of newsgroups – which is a part of E-culture that is unfortunately declining because of junk-communication
2.Second developp your own network and get legitimity thru your numerous small contributions (small is beautiful, become beautiful, learn to shine deeply and slowly).
3. Never stop shining (otherways you'll disappear), and so you can start proposing Request For Comments (RFC), which are documents proposing new orientations, new policies, within the community of early users and of long beards (those who invested first and now know best the cyberspace and it's servitudes).
4. Share, promote and contribute to evolution of the guidelines you've adopted and criticised. Which is the purpose of a Summit such as WSIS
In fact, today, governements want to jump to step 3 & 4 without first overcoming step 1 & 2 . This is why cyberspace has declared itself independant thru the voice of barlow, and this is why most conscient netizen are recognizing modern Information Society founder as being Chardin, Turing, Engelbarts (the 3 pre-conceivers) and then Shannon & Waever, Cerf, Stallman, Barlow, Raymond & other long beards. These are the ones we should here, when speaking about development and inclusion in digital information society.
WHO CONTROLS WHAT ? WHAT IS FAIR ?
As French expert Pierre Meunier writes in his book « who controls the Internet », nowadays 3 forces are leading the cyberspace and it's servitudes :
long beards (the founder of digital information society and of it's related E-culture), mostly unknow by the users and their governements
the mediaborgs, transnational companies structurally obliged to concentrated their actions satisfying the need of beenfit for their stakeholders
the netizen, users if the cyberspace and of it's servitude, who are those from whom and to whom all motivations of information society are oriented.
What mostly counts is to remember that netizen and long beards are persons, and that mediaborg and governement are consortium of interest of many persons.
For example, being a future american citizen in 1776, would we have accepted private consortiums and other governements to be able to be part of the constitution of the United states, like it is happening for the temptation of creating a constitutionof the cyberspace thru WSIS Process in 2003 & 2005 ?
What would be fair would be that civil society representative admit that they should stop speaking as delegate of NGOs, and start to speak on their own name. Then they could be legitimate to demand that only individual persons can take part in such debates, and not persons paid by groups to defend specific interesses.
COMMUNITY OF PRACTICES GATHERED IN VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES ALL OVER THE WORLD
Currently the cyberspace stays the most open space for sharing of knowledge, multilateral exchanges of opinions, decentralised co-operations and all related issues of internal and external communication.
All community of Practices are slowly empowering their co-operation dynamic using the Internet, mostly using email and webpages editing & syndication in Virtual Communities (vico). This is not concerning only the industrialized occidental countries. Although less developped countries have less means to buy material and access to the cyberspace, they still adopt very quickly new E-Tools. Connected computers are accessible in all almost all villages of the planet today, and it seems that using of electronic tools contribute significantly to fortifying collaborative dynamics, to increase collective intelligence and to decrease initiatives based in « reinventing the wheel » process. new ways of collaborating is the most positive impact of electronic development on modern human civilisation. Virtual communities have facilitate the emerging Civil Society, and it can still grow fabouluslyand guidelines of Information Society stay independty defined and promoted.
LET'S DEFINE WHAT IS THE GOOD QUESTION
So at this step of development of digital information society, the main question is : what role do we, as simple users, want governements to play in the ruling the cyberspace ? Shall we limit govermental power to identify and condamn abuses such as pedophiles and nigerian scammers, or shall we let governement regulate the cyberspace and decide what and how we, user, can share and not share all types of informations such as art, knowledge, opinion, calendar... ?
Again, the answer is, on my opinion, in the manifesto of independance of the cyberspace writen by Barlow. This document gives a clear message for all thos who see information society like a gadget that can create damages to human being if it is not regulated. It says clearly that wanting to create policies is counterproductive if those who contribute to it's development act as representative of anything else then themsleves. And currently, in processes like World Summit on Information Society by UN, it is exactly the contrary that is happening : organizers of these meetings, such as prepcom and summits I (2003) & II (2005) are organized for delegates of organizations, persons who mostly do not know culture of RFC (Request for Comments), RTFM (Read The Fucking Manual), ViCo (Virtual Community), NEWSGROUPS (a type of mailing list that is syndicated in thousneds of servers), netiquette and other related issues of the information society that we are using daily.
OPEN SOURCE IS NICE, ALTHOUGH IS STAYS DISCRIMINATING - FREE SOURCE IS SOLIDLY GOOD, BECAUSE IT'S NOT DISCRIMINATING
Here we speak about the issue of strategy for promoting the equity of chances in Information Society. In software domain, this issue have already been largely developped, and the conclusion for most major actors (even in businesses such as IBM) is clear : open source is an alterated form of freedom, facing information issues. Open Source is an alterated form of Freedom, which lets doors widely open for returning to proprietary models based on inequity of chances. Why ? Mostly because Freedom in E-culture is easier to understand and harder to abuse, compared to open source vision of information society. Moreover, speaking about Free Sources (instead of Open Source) is a way to promote a vision that is well defined, that provides additional value, that really offers freedom in E-culture, as much for art, user's guide then sofware contents. This is why, while wishing to promote the equity of chances in Information Society, we should use terms such as Free Software (instead of Open Source), Free Culture (instead of Open Source Culture), Free Contents (instead of Open Content), Free licence, Free movement...
IN CONCLUSION : DEVELOPING ACCOUNTABILITY & REPRESENTATIVITY BY CHANGING OURSERLVES
We, netizen who often ignore themselves, should first increase our legitimacy in the cyberspace, We shall increase what the most evoluated ViCo users call the karma, a method for classifying legitimy of contributions mostly based on the scoring features that is being implemented increasingly in webservers.
We should be more present in the emerging netizen networks such as FSF, EFF, wikimedia, slashdot, dmoz, cooperation.net, copyleft attitude and all these networks practicing freedom of E-culture in daily basis.
Then we could accompagn our colleagues from our diverse communities of practices in adopting also these new cultural practices. The so called « developing countries » would be able to share and receive a lot more from their occidental partners, if their parteners would have been first adopted the practical uses and costums of the cyberspace, if they would have developped their network using the E-culture tools for workflow management. By adopting the same cultural basis all of uss gathered in one facing this new cyberspace, we, netizen of the world, would surely contribute to a sustanaible society a lot better so then by accepting to meet with governements delegates to speak about information society issues. By our pacific and constructive action of civil society, we would prove that ICT is really a tools for strenghtening citizenship, and we would avoid it's foggy interesses by some stakeholders.
Thanks for reading this draft !
Document under GFDL, author Théo Bondolfi
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