http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=4&no=373298&rel_no=1 Netizens and WSIS: Welcome to the 21st Century Celebrating the demand for universal access to the Internet Jay Hauben In the early 1990s, Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben began to document the history and social impact of Usenet and the Internet. In 1994, they put their research online as the netizens netbook. Its title was "Netizens and the Wonderful World of the Net." Then, in 1997 there appeared a print edition, Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet,(1) A small gathering was held on July 14, 2007 in New York City to celebrate its 10th anniversary.(2) Michael Hauben opens Chapter One of the book Netizens with the greeting: Welcome to the 21st Century. You are a Netizen (a Net Citizen), and you exist as a citizen of the world thanks to the global connectivity that the Net makes possible. You consider everyone as your compatriot. You physically live in one country but you are in contact with much of the world via the global computer network. Virtually you live next door to every other single Netizen in the world. Geographical separation is replaced by existence in the same virtual space. True to this prediction, as the 21st Century began, the Internet spread far and wide. Its promise attracted attention. People on every continent wanted access. In 1998, at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Plenipotentiary Conference, Tunisia suggested the idea of a World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). In 2002, recognizing the challenge to make access to the information society and the Internet universal, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed a proposal to hold such a summit. There were to be two phases, the first in Geneva in 2003 and the second in Tunis in 2005. The WSIS events with their culminating meeting in Tunis in Nov 2005 demonstrated the grassroots desire for the promise of the Internet and of the netizen to be realized around the globe. In Geneva in December 2003, the gathered attendees from 175 countries heard a cry from the people of the world delivered especially by representatives from Africa, Asia, Latin America and island nations for inclusion in the Internet age. That was the message from the many heads of state who asked for help to include their people and economies and who feared the result if large numbers of people were left out. The session concluded with a "Declaration of Principles."(3) Besides a call for the governments of the developed countries and the corporations to help the developing world meet this goal, there was also the recognition that the Internet was an international, public resource that needed proper protection and governance(4) In November 2005, the second phase of the WSIS was held. Almost 20,000 participants from more than 175 countries gathered in Tunis. Strong statements of the public nature and need for universal access were heard from many of the heads of state who addressed the Summit. They demanded universal inclusion of all people. The debate over how the Internet would be managed continued as part of these UN sponsored events. The U.S. maintained its position that governance over domain names, domain name servers and protocol numbers should remain with the so called private sector organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) under U.S. government control. Also, there was a debate whether there should be a continuation of the work of the Summit after the Tunis phase came to a close. The forces for multinational or international governance were not able to overcome the U.S. dominance, but they did achieve the plan for an international Internet Governance Forum which met for the first time in Athens in Fall 2006 and is planning a second meeting in Rio de Janeiro for fall 2007. There were side conferences at the both Summits. One scientific side conference, the Past, Present, and Future of Research in the Information Society (PPF),(5) held in conjunction with the Tunis phase of the WSIS had a panel that connected netizens with WSIS. This panel provided a glimpse of the pioneering spirit and actions which gave birth to the Internet. The papers from this panel are gathered in the latest issue of the Amateur Computerist (PDF). At this PPF panel, Ronda Hauben gave the first presentation, "The International and Scientific Origins of the Internet and the Emergence of the Netizens." In her presentation, Hauben documented that Internet technology originated from scientific and academic work not from a military oriented project even though its funding came through the U.S. Department of Defense. She argued that the origin of the Internet was in the international collaboration which developed the TCP/IP protocol suite. Hauben described the vision inspiring the creation and development of the Internet to support collaborative scientific modeling, as a medium that "can be contributed to and experimented with by all." In the longer paper in the Amateur Computerist issue, she describes some of the controversies in Internet history, explains the nature of the scientific research, and documents the online research by Michael Hauben which led him to discover the emergence of the netizen (net.citizen) with the development of the Internet. The second presentation, "Vannevar Bush and JCR Licklider: Libraries of the Future 1945-1965" by Jay Hauben countered the myth that the Internet today is different from how it was originally envisioned by the pioneers. The vision is traced partially to the work of Vannevar Bush after WWII but mostly to the thinking and writing and experimenting of JCR Licklider in the 1960s. Bush and Licklider both asked the same question, how could the vast accumulation of knowledge be made useful and be contributed to by all? Both of them looked to the human brain as a model and to technology for the means to achieve this. The early vision is in many ways being realized. Still to be answered is the question "Will to be online' be a privilege or a right?"(6) And there is still the challenge to make the whole corpus of human knowledge available for use by all with semantic in addition to syntactic searching. Kilnam Chon, in "A Brief History of the Internet in Korea" documented TCP/IP networking developments in South Korea as early as 1982. His story, little told until now, of the development of internetworking in Asia helps dispel the myth that the Internet is an unintended by-product of U.S. military research. In 1985, Korean academic researchers sponsored one of the first international Internet conferences. This was the Pacific Computer Communications Symposium (PCCS) held in Seoul with over 300 attendees from Asia, Europe and North America. The current deep penetration of the Internet into Korean society and the role played there by netizens was put, by Chon, into this long historical context. Werner Zorn told the story of the coming to the Peoples Republic of China of international email connectivity ("How China was Connected to the International Computer Networks"). German-Chinese friendship formed when the World Bank sponsored the import of West German made Siemens computers for use by Chinese students and academics. This led to collaborative work from 1983 to 1987 which made possible the sending of the first email message from China into the international CSNET email system on Sept. 20, 1987. Zorn documented this story with original email messages and photos. The story contradicted how this history had been told on many websites in China like that of the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC)(7) where the role of German scientists and of Professor Wang Yuen Fung was down played in favor of a Chinese engineer who was not involved this early work. Attending the panel in Tunis was Qiheng Hu, chairperson of the Internet Society in China. After hearing the presentation and seeing some of the documents she said she would have the question investigated. As of May 2007, a corrected version began to appear on the CNNIC website of this history agreeing with what Zorn had presented.(8) At the Tunis summit, the effort to change from a U.S. government controlled ICANN to an international governance structure for the Internet did not succeed in its main goal. But reasons for that goal were presented on the panel by Anders Ekeland in his presentation, "Netizens and Protecting the Public Interest in the Development and Management of the Internet: An Economist's Perspective." Based on the Internet's most important aspect, which Ekeland argued is the free exchange of information and opinion, the Internet is a common good and a public good. That understanding is often hidden because the prevailing economic theory, free market economics, only recognizes private goods. Free market economics is also inappropriate for the analysis of the Internet argued Ekeland because that theory assumes a "general equilibrium" while the Internet is dynamic and ever changing and growing. Ekeland explained why in market economics there is no role for government or institutions. In such a theory, regulation stems only in cases of "market failure". In the case of the Internet, which is certainly not a failure, international regulation is necessary because there are people in many countries who legitimately need the Internet but have little or no money. Ekeland concluded that a world wide democratic process is better suited than markets to create a rational system for domain name decisions. The panel was well received, leading to a lively discussion. In summing up the whole PPF conference, one of its organizers, Wiebe Bijker stressed that "science, technology and research played a crucial role in the origin of the Internet." The myth of development for military purposes was dispelled by historical research which showed the many research actors designed it for sophisticated users. Free markets were not the "save-all recipe." These were main themes of the panel described above and also of the book Netizens. The WSIS, Netizens and the PPF panel help to suggest the continuing importance of the Internet and netizens in the 21st century. 1) Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, Los Alamitos, CA, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1997 now distributed by John Wiley and Sons. (Online version at: http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/) 2) See http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article-eastasia.asp?parentid=74171 and http://www.hypercortex.net/ver2 3) Online at: http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/geneva/official/dop.html. One principle set as the goal "to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life." 4) In a section with a different purpose, the Geneva Declaration addressed who should participate in the governance of the Internet. One of the principles to guide decision making is: "Governments, as well as private sector, civil society and the United Nations and other international organizations have an important role and responsibility in the development of the Information Society and, as appropriate, in decision-making processes. Building a people-centred Information Society is a joint effort which requires cooperation and partnership among all stakeholders." 5) See the conference website online at: http://www.worldsci.net/tunis/. All the abstracts from the PPF conference have been gathered in a book, Past, Present, and Future of Research in the Information Society, edited by Wesley Shrum, Keith Benson, Wiebe Bijker and Klaus Brunnstein, Springer, New York, 2007. 6) JCR Licklider and Robert Taylor, "The Computer as a Commutation Device" on 1968, online at: http://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/DEC/SRC/publications/taylor/licklider-taylor.pdf 7) http://www.cnnic.net.cn/en/index/ 8) See for example: http://cnnic.net.cn/html/Dir/2003/12/12/2000.htm, where it now reads: "1. In September 1987, with the support from a scientific research group led by Professor Werner Zorn of Karlsruhe University in Germany, a working group led by Professor Wang Yunfeng and Doctor Li Chengjiong built up an Email node in ICA, and successfully sent out an Email to Germany on Sep 20th. The Email title was 'Across the Great Wall we can reach every corner in the world.'" This article is a slightly rewritten version of the lead article in the "Amateur Computerist" (Vol 15 No 2) posted July 2007 at: http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn15-2.pdf ------------------------------------------------------------------------