Internet Politics
Jay Leno used to make fun of the fact that Al Gore had allegedly claimed to have invented the internet during his election campaign against GWB. I laughed at this and thought what a fool, but I didn’t know who actually invented it, and looked around sheepishly hoping nobody would notice. I had a hunch that Billy G (Bill Gates’ gangster name, I think everyone should have a gangster name) had something to do with it but it doesn’t look like it. This morning I was browsing (scrolling) through the economist and found out that there is somebody who “invented it”, a dude called Jon Postel (apparently techies refer to him as God, those damn atheists). He apparently coordinated the network’s underlying protocols and addressing system (whatever that means) between 1968 and 1998. Talk about responsibility. And I had no clue the internet is so old! I thought it came about in the late ’80s. Anyway all this was paid for by the US dept of defence, but the US government maintained a pretty much hands off role. Since ‘98 the job has been done by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a private US firm that the US govt keeps an eye on but doesn’t do much else.
I still know sod all about the Net, I just use it, and until there’s some problem that can’t be fixed by restarting my comp I probably wouldn’t care too much. But it’s rather surprising and quite undemocratic that this whole system is coordinated by one private firm. And the fact that it is a US firm makes me go ooh you hegemonic bastards. Of late there have been some rumblings by other countries, China in particular. The fact that the majority of the world’s internet users do not claim English to be their mother tongue makes it a bit unfair that web addresses and stuff are only in English (correct me if i’m wrong). As a result countries have called for the internet to be coordinated by an international intergovernmental body with more government oversight, to make the system more internationally friendly and democratic. Two days ago China moved ahead and with three new internet-address suffixes in the Chinese language, as national variants to .cn, .com and .net. So Chinese ppl can now use Chinese characters for website and e-mail addresses. It’s likely that a bunch of others will follow suit, and this will make the internet more democratic and could reach out to more ppl. A good thing.
But, there are complications, this democracy comes at a price. Apparently the move by the Chinese (symbolic as they are) could potentially undermine the possibility of every computer to communicate directly with another computer, a bad thing. There would also be a requirement for several separate naming systems, duplication of effort, a bad thing, a clear case of natural monopoly maybe. So one naming system would be the best way to go about it, but which language should be used? English seems to be the obvious choice, but that’s easy for me to say bc I speak English. Since the current system uses English, continuing on this path is the rational, practical choice, however undemocratic it maybe.
But what of the coordination of the internet? The system, as far as i know, has worked ok so far, so why change? It’s a political thing really, it’s all about the distribution of power. Big international egos are at stake. The fears of ICANN getting a megalomaniac as a CEO are i’m sure secondary. The costs of having an international, inter-governmentally run coordinating body are simply the costs faced by any non-private body, bureaucracy, lack of innovation and increased costs. So it probably wouldn’t be worth it. Certainly not in the name of international egos. Democracy is a good thing, but sometimes practicality trumps the calls of democracy. I think the status quo should remain in place, it maybe undemocratic but it’s the most practical and efficient system, and that works well for all of us, at least that’s democratic.
