[Kbi-webcivics] {Disarmed} Re: [IA - members] {Disarmed} Re: Secretary-General Appoints High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation | Meetings Coverage and Press Releases

Tue Jul 17 10:09:58 AEST 2018

Interesting stuff Tim,

I had a look at CivicUS, and their platform is what worries me about
Digital, Internet, and similar advocacy groups: they have almost unlimited
scope, delving into youth, gender, and climate change. They have many
"activities" around those focus areas. This is a clear departure from
"focus". Not only is the scope broad, but it's also politically partisan,
with no olive branch to gently coax in, and convince the ~50% of
populations who lean conservatively.

I think the benefit of the internet is the fact that all those political
issues may be freely discussed. It's the freedom of the internet that must
be a central focus, not social issues.

So Tim rightly points out a key tool for that, TOR. But where is the pinned
TOR headline on the CivicUS website. But that's something that should be
the outcome of a correctly and narrowly defined mission, and a strong
strategy for reaching goals.

So it looks like CivicUS is something very different to what is needed
globally to tackle the real problems of the world, but certainly a part of
the solution.

On Mon, 16 Jul 2018 at 15:22, Timothy Holborn via members <
members at lists.internet.org.au> wrote:

>
> (apologies if its' a bit of a rant - typing it - is helping to orientate
> me)
>
> On Mon, 16 Jul 2018 at 13:27 Narelle Clark <narellec at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> There is one Aussie, but I don't think he's been here for years (dual UK
>> based in South Africa). It would be good to touch base and get a meet up
>> should he make it here, though.
>>
>
> I think the US/China leadership thing is quite strategic.  It would be
> great to meet the Australian man noted to be involved.  I wonder how
> CivicUS is similar in any way to my works on WebCivics...   Interestingly:
> https://www.trustfactory.net/ is part of https://www.isolvtech.com/ which
> is based in SA. Which is a bit different to the local version...
>
>  they do a bunch of stuff around 'plausible deniability' which is always
> interesting ;)
>
>
>>
>> cheers
>>
>> Narelle
>>
>>
> MY LONGER RESPONSE
>
> Thoughts;
>
> [image: trust.jpg]
>
> It is most important solutions are defined rapidly. I think waiting for
> people to catch-up, isn't going to help them. I hope we can continue to
> pursue leadership in Australia but not at the cost of ensuring a
> well-formed solution is made available in a timely manner.
>
> In Vint's recent presentation in Australia (perhaps in future - an
> announcement to members might be made as to ensure the opportunity to know
> these things are on); Vint remarked,
>
> “We have a big problem – I call it the digital dark age – in that we don’t
> curate our digital content with much care until we realise its too late. So
> I’m a big fan of trying to create and preserve data, to assure ourselves
> that digital content can be moved from one medium to another – that we are
> able to preserve software. Creating a sophisticated regime for curating,
> preserving and accessing our data is just as important as preserving the
> original bits of data.”
> source:
> https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/internet-past-and-present-vint-cerf-conversation-toby-walsh
>
>
>
> Negotiating the validity of Universal Human Rights (
> http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ ); where those rights may be
> appropriated or denied by way of new medium - as to render meaningful
> service to proprietary commercial interests of a party (ie: rent-seeking
> behaviours) isn't something to be entertained lightly; One might place bets
> on the manifest characteristics through which the qualities of a mediums
> characteristics to maintain good data-hygiene in some areas; and be allowed
> to deteriorate in others, will continue to manifest, without good advocacy
> support - enabling the means to discern the intricacies of good policy vs.
> old ones, in our emergent 'knowledge economy'.
>
> Societies and their systems of government need verifiable claims - imagine
> an agenda that wilfully sought to undermine the social purpose of a
> court-room. Imagine being subjugated for seeking to protect the relevance
> of a court of law. Maybe South Africa will be more progressive in these
> areas than we are... maybe we're simply not equipped.
>
> If we're planning for a society that in a realm of dynamic data - is
> sought to rely upon a basis of hear-say, due to a decline of available
> options, perhaps the intended representation is that people don't really
> need courts... these sorts of facetious objects are not entirely without
> merit... When i was preparing for the TF conference, Anni was curating her
> WebScience conference (held in Canberra) around the concept of getting
> people to 'wake up'. (
> https://www.thinknpc.org/publications/represents-human-digital-age/ )
>
> I think if we're able to step it up, get the right framework of leadership
> support as required for international engagement, international leadership;
> a framework that can be engaged and relied upon in a manner that has both
> funding and momentum; we might have a chance...
>
> IMHO - It is NOT going to work is otherwise gainfully employed persons
> (including but not exclusive to academics) wait until the risk-profile
> lowers as to raise an internal project, off the back of the work done by
> unpaid volunteers...
>
> It's impossible to parse the knowledge amassed by 'thought leaders'...
> Things need to be done today, like updating the 'how to build a solid App'
> hello world documents available https://github.com/solid/ to support
> those working http://gitter.im/solid/ | whose work is spoken about (to
> some degree)
> https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/the-man-who-created-the-world-wide-web-has-some-regrets
> |
> https://www.economist.com/special-report/2018/06/28/how-to-fix-what-has-gone-wrong-with-the-internet
> | and as far as almost anyone knows,
>
> There are no Australians involved in that project. I think TimBL might be
> in AU soon? But that's hear-say... either-way, i'd prefer to see a greater
> investment made into AU leadership in this knowledge economy area. I read a
> big investment in this area was recently made:
> https://www.themandarin.com.au/95308-australian-government-and-big-blue-mint-1-billion-advanced-technologies-deal/
> To which whilst i have concerns about the sociological lock-ins, some of
> these decisions may bring about by way of how information management
> systems are designed to be mandatorily used - talking to myself ain't going
> to help... indeed, even when influences are made, without recognition for
> contributions - without good provenance systems in place - the underlying
> foundations used to build these 'knowledge economy ecosystems' are still
> broken. It changes the nature of the debate, from an Australia where
> universal income needs to be factored into their design decisions; where
> changes to health-policy to rationalise whether a royal commission into
> health (particularly mental health) services is cheaper / better than
> considering the impact to the reality of services provided as medicare
> fails to meet the needs of good doctors and patients who need clinicians
> who take an interest in them; more than the person managing the automatic
> check-out machine at the local super market.
>
> Choices are being made - i see very little conversation about it. I think
> this illustrates clearly - something is very wrong.
>
> IMHO - It is imperative for all commercial undertakings that a binding
> commitments to human rights by way of an open forum, the means to make use
> of appropriate infrastructure such as IETF (whilst it would be nice if they
> supported RDF) as to ensure a commercially agnostic & non-binding info
> sphere environment for socioeconomic support of life (and the natural
> world). It is my opinion one of the very few means to do this in a manner
> that works with government, but is not bound to the obligations of a
> government department to defend its position where the needs of government
> (inc. "rule of law", security, tax & revenue protection) are at odds to the
> needs of the people, of citizens. Sometimes the problem is about the
> behaviours of an agent, sometimes its the nuances of an actor
>
> Some help with
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xKHONGoepiq29r7NMB9T6yd6kPcfWY2JsaDzK6OqnHE/edit?usp=sharing
> would be useful. i think it needs to be broken down into a memorandum or
> introductory document; followed by the SIG TOR & perhaps a 3rd elements
> about working-group objects? not sure.
>
> It's progressed a bit from the 2013 document: *MailScanner has detected
> definite fraud in the website at "drive.google.com". Do not trust this
> website:*
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_-AWWDVv3V2SVpVR3E4T1hETlE/view?usp=sharing
> <https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_-AWWDVv3V2SVpVR3E4T1hETlE/view?usp=sharing>
>
> (which might help others with background) and is less dense than
> explaining the theoretical (and provenance, from 2000) relationship with
> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-consciousness/#3.2
>
> So, FWIW: I think its important to get the TOR done, before starting a
> conversation with the banking sector about machine readable itemised tax
> receipts; or other potential scopes of work, that i think are all quite
> important and extremely complex.
>
> Meanwhile - i'm still of the thought that speaking about ensuring UHD
> Sport is delivered freely to 'consumers' is an easier way to get people
> thinking about the relationship between their homes and families; and data.
> This is in-turn saying - let arrogance, of operators, be considered
> immutable - 'long live consumers' (not that they really think, what that
> accolade made for a pay-packet actually means in areas beyond their field
> of expertise, like health. perhaps media people think medical people are
> happy to subjugate themselves because they are expected to live by a
> different set of moral rules - perhaps they don't understand the pressures
> put upon them...)
>
> I have stated very clearly over many years (sadly in past, to deaf ears)
> that ISOC-AU is the place to start making significant progress on these
> issues. I am pleased new energy has started to grow, but it is very
> fragile... These works don't do themselves, people need to wake-up, ISOC-AU
> needs to improve its collaboration environment pronto.  Honestly, atm, i'm
> really not sure how to fund it.  which is troubling me.   It is alot easier
> to send a series of issues / problem statements '/ high-level solutions, to
> others overseas who are funded to do the work involved in getting
> work-product done.  Indeed also, in an environment where there is a severe
> drought of appropriately supported resources - its actually better to do
> things that way...   But it distorts the market.  It makes people think,
> less energy is expended than is real; it does not proportionately
> illustrate a value-matrix around work-product; it distorts it, which leads
> to reliability / security issues.  A bunch of major websites, and the ones
> made before them had no revenue or moreover certainly - not enough.  The
> investments made led to
> https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1bHmB8_f7ASRHm97TwhZmmEQnTKU -
> noting the distinction between those developed in the floppy disk age - vs.
> those that developed as online data storage became a thing --> in this next
> envisaged shift - i'd like to see how the Australian Banking Sector remains
> a local industry.  I would like to ensure the definition of a great many
> things, remain local.  it seems others also have concerns:
> http://about.abc.net.au/speeches/an-abc-fit-for-the-future/
>
> But perhaps these works need to uplift themselves, out of the gutter.  I'm
> not entirely sure what to do next.  Am very interested in more help.
> https://doodle.com/poll/idt7tyxwcpugkdha should help - I've also created
> a new invite link for the WebCivics Slack set-up:
> https://join.slack.com/t/webcivics/shared_invite/enQtMzk5MDA2NTMyMDk4LTU0OGQzMGI1ZGIzODBiMDBjYmMzNDRkMmE1ODI0YzBiNTdmMzY2MGQ3NDNlYzhkYzU1OTU3NjMzYmU5YjY1ZTc
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Tim.
>
>
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 14, 2018 at 9:57 PM Timothy Holborn via members <
>> members at lists.internet.org.au> wrote:
>>
>>> FYI: https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sga1817.doc.htm
>>>
>>> Twitter: https://twitter.com/UNSGdigicoop
>>>
>>> (Noting implicitly therein;
>>> https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/?Text=&Goal=16&Target=16.9 )
>>>
>>> Do we know if any Aussies are involved?
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Tim.
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>> Narelle
>> narellec at gmail.com
>>
>
> --
> This message has been scanned for viruses and
> dangerous content by *MailScanner* <http://www.mailscanner.info/>, and is
> believed to be clean. _______________________________________________
> members mailing list
> members at lists.internet.org.au
> http://lists.internet.org.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/members
>

-- 
--
Todd Hubers

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.internet.org.au/pipermail/kbi-webcivics/attachments/20180717/ee7558a5/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: trust.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 35049 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.internet.org.au/pipermail/kbi-webcivics/attachments/20180717/ee7558a5/attachment-0001.jpg>