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Portrait Of ICANN Chairwoman Esther Dyson
ContinuousPark writes "The NY Times has an article on Esther Dyson's difficulties heading ICANN, some of them deriving with her inability to do politics, a much needed thing when you have individual and civil interests on one side and huge commercial ones on the other. Although the article praises her enormous intellectual capacity, it also has EFF's Mike Godwin saying: 'I think that there is a dimension of being a political being that involves going out and getting hands on and dealing with individuals. I don't think she is terribly comfortable with that. I think she is democratic in principle but not entirely democratic in practice.' Is Dyson recklessly ignoring politics or is she maybe redefining them?"
As I see it, unwillingness to kiss ass is to be applauded, not snubbed. The oh-so-wise reporter must have given the corporate lobbyists hell of a laugh by swallowing it all up and wiping their asses afterwards.
There are people who are excellent administrators because of their ability to focus on the important and leave the snivelling rats to their fight over the crumbs; their excellence isn't neccessarily appreciated by reporters like this but it is certainly regarded highly by their peers.
Oh, the hell with it. I'm being too harsh. I apologise :)
And in his rush to name drop, Russ has missed the most obvious answer: she's not particularly smart, she's just smarter than him.
Jon Postel of the IANA (until he died) was a unique leader. He did things based on what was best for the net, and the politicians and corps and special interests be damned. A true academic mind. His death has resulted in chaos at the top of the internet (i.e., where are the new TLDs? .web, etc. What is the plan for rolling out IPv6 and mandating the switchover [since it won't happen otherwise] Why are all the new registrars only located in WIPO-signatory nations?)
I'm sure Esther Dyson is a very intelligent person. But I also think she's hardly in a position to represent the interests of "the common person" in the ICANN. She's the very rich daughter of a very rich and famous physicist who went to Harvard not to get an education but to make connections, and has basically used her social status and name recognition to get where she is. Based on her writings and pronouncements, which haven't always been very impressive, I'm at a loss to understand why "the digerati" (blech) treat her as some kind of Hari Seldon of the internet.
At any rate, it doesn't surprise me that she's not a very good leader of ICANN. She's probably so used to people automatically kowtowing to her that she has no patience for anyone questioning her dictates. It's not that she's "redefining politics" or any of that babble ; she's simply not equipped to deal with people that question her marching orders. It's a classic case of a spoiled child throwing tantrums, and the only reason she's being treated otherwise is that people are still afraid to say anything negative about her.
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"Today's children need guidance. And nothing gets a bigger response out of kids than a list of rules hung on a wall."
Personally, though, I don't care if the ICANN chairwoman is a human-o-phobe (although, anyone with a knowledge of history probably should be!), an isolationist, a survivalist, or a martian. What I care about is whether ICANN works, and it's shown little sign of it, so far.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
News flash: Not serving in public office or contributing in any way to the day to day politic'ing that goes on in, say, your office is generally indicative of a normal, well-adjusted individual. It's only the wierd ones that develop a taste for politics and pursue it, hence the popular quote "Every now and then an innocent man is sent to congress".
Hell, I say we erect a statue for the lady - she resisted every attempt to become political in the face of incredible odds - a tribute to how sane this person is! =)
Steve Gilliard has a piece over at Net Slaves, called "Who watches the Guardians." It is about Esther D. and paints an unlovely portrait. I suggest you all read it before your boners get too hard for her.
I, for one, agree with Steve G. She's the last person I want running the ICANN. In fact, I want no one running it, 'cause you can't really trust anyone with that much power. Well, I might trust myself, but you probably wouldn't. :-)
Esther has too much money involved and she's too cozy with Technology CEOs to be trusted with this position. Just read her book, RELEASE 2.0, and you'll read what I'm talking about. It's just filled with all the names of all these companies and CEOs that she's involved in. She's also not a very technical person, and you get that from her book, not just 'casue Steve G. says so.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
"No, you have a democracy in the sense that it's commonly understood."
No, it's a floor wax AND a desert topping!
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
What is your basis for saying ICANN isn't working? Are you just assuming it isn't working because you've read a few headlines stating it isn't working?
I'd like to hear a fully stated case supporting the statement "ICANN isn't working" including a defintion of what ICANN's goals and working procedures are.
Without supporting what I'm saying I could just as easily say that ICANN is doing a competent job considering the hostile and agressive activities of those opposed to ICANN. A fundemental lack of cooperation and active "monkey wrenching" by other parties is slowing down ICANN progress, but ICANN itself is not to blaim.
As with all things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Dyson is proof of that. Under her leadership, ICANN has achieved a great deal - without the benefit of schmoozing, back-patting, playing opponents off each other, or making campaign contributions.
Then again, I'm presuming that THIS is what you mean by 'being able to "politic"'... If you mean "politicing" to be explaining to people the facts and the consequences of choices, then I stand corrected - and Dyson is a great politician.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Case in point, back in 1997, Dyson, who has NO experience in the anti-spam community, shot her mouth off about the spam problem and proposed a "solution" to it. Had she actually spent more than two seconds thinking about her "solution", or actually posting it to one or more anti-spam forums and asking for comments, she would have found that it's something that most anti-spammers don't see as being viable. But nooo, she didn't do that, she evidentally thought she knew more than everyone else, including those of us who have been dealing with spam for years, and the media blindly quoted her as though she were some anti-spam guru, which she's not.
I apologize for sounding bitter and turning this post into a rant, but dammit, it annoys me to no end when people don't think, and their short-sighted actions set back the efforts of an entire community. Dyson is in serious need of a clue.
<gets off his soapbox>
(is the truth half way between the flat-earth crowd and the spherical-earth crowd? What sort of shape is that?)
Um, I guess its a roughly spherical object slightly flattened at the poles. Of course we all know the earth isn't really shaped like that. Right?
--Shoeboy
BTW, the author of the article is female (I know, that doesn't necessarily prove anything but still...)
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you're kidding, right? "isn't screwing anyone over".
The UDRP. The request to WIPO to come up with a list of famous marks that will be a priori excluded from the existing and future namespace. The over-regulation of IPv6space as regards address allocation. The entire constituency model. The introduction of the GAC. The repeated, blatant, and unremorseful overstepping of power and authority boundaries. Top-down rather than bottom-up governance. The "ICANN by-laws of the week" game they play, with retroactive alteration of the by-laws to suit their needs. Their refusal to relinquish power. Their refusal to allow individuals to have any say in the process. Their catering to big corporate and Intellectual Property interests.
Either your statement was meant in jest, or you're not well-informed of ICANN's actions.
.@.
Esther Dyson was one of several people hand-picked by an unknown group and handed ICANN by Becky Burr and the US Dept. of Commerce. Nobody knows by what process Dyson was chosen, or who did the choosing.
Dyson and the other initial ICANN Board of Directors have demonstrated a distinct lack of ability to work in the open, to accept input in a bottom-up fashion, and to understand the technical aspects of the entity about which they are supposed to make decisions.
Now, in Cairo, The ICANN Board of Directors, led by Esther Dyson in this matter, decided to scrap the General Assembly process by which 9 new, individual ICANN Directors would be named, and decided to eliminate 4 of them.
Their reasoning? Becuase they're afraid of handing over control to people who "don't understand the Internet". A sad comment indeed, coming from a Board with a vested financial interest in the outcome of decisions related to namespace and IP-space, who do not have even a rudimentary understanding of that which they govern, except perhaps for Vint Cerf.
The ICANN Board of Directors was supposed to be completely elected and the original people, Dyson included, removed by September of 1999. Dyson and her cohorts have repeatedly voted themselves more years as ICANN Directors, and have both refused to relinquish control to any form of elected body, and have refused to run ICANN in the grassroots, bottom-up, narrow technical matter that the contracts with the US Government require.
That ICANN continues to exist at all is miracle, and a nightmare. That Dyson was chosen as figurehead for it and continues to lend her name to it says volumes about her character.
.@.
Gee, this doesn't jibe with my experience of Estie. She's either smart, or else she knows how to fake it (unlike you).
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Clever, but not wise.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Dyson is a woman, she fails to meet the narrow standards demanded of women, therefore she cannot be treated as a human.
You're actually saying that the NYT are treating her as subhuman. Come on, that's ridiculous. I know some men are really like this, but the article doesn't support that claim. Describing what someone looks like, in the eye of a certain beholder, does not amount to treating them as subhuman.
By stark contrast, you pointedly ignore how Richard Stallman is treated. Oh, so it's just par for the course if Stallman is mocked for his looks, but if a women is mocked for her looks (and for God's sake, don't women mock each other for their looks often enough!!) - it's automatically evidence of misogyny? How blinkered and biased is that!
Much of what passes for feminism is obscurantist nonsense, in my experience. "Transcending patriarchical reason" and all that nonsense.
The trouble is, you get a rebound effect, where feminists go too far and take on the attributes of the oppressors (and even in some cases become the oppressors, ironically).
Female Prison Rape in NY
Unfortunately, people think you have to be a politician to make a change around here. It's quite a shame, because I'm sure that there are plenty of brilliant people who have brilliant ideas but can't deal with people at all... I suppose that's what separates the great leaders from the not-so-great, but maybe it isn't always fair...
But an Internet democracy? Gimme a break...
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -Douglas Adams, THHGTTG
The problem with Esther Dyson is Esther Dyson. The truth is: she's just not that smart. The emperor has no clothes. She happened to be in the right place at the right time and somehow made herself "relevant" - to whom I've never been quite sure.
Her last book was completely devoid of content. I think there as been such a push to put a woman in power someplace that they just grabbed the one who's the most adept at self-promotion and not one of the many strong women who could be in this position. Not that I think that the person's sex matters here in any way.
The sooner Dyson goes away the better.
If the female Esther Dyson were instead a male Lester Dyson, Lester would get less than 10% of the attention accorded to Esther.
Seastead this.
Politics has roots in the Greek composition of demes into a larger society. The problem with this is the classic problem with conflicting demographics. In order get people identifying with the larger society, you have to manipulate the natural social identity of their deme. People don't need to identify with other clans/kindreds/tribes to engage in fair and reciprocal trade with them. It is only when the trade centers abuse their intermediating position by promoting ideology as a substitute for reciprocation that we get politics.
Seastead this.
"Is it just me, or have I seen this phrase far too often relating to many endeavors in this internet age? Basically it translates, "so-and-so is really bad at something, but if it turns out that I'm wrong, then they're redefining it." "
Well because of Bart's test answers we have changed history again. Now America was discovered in 1941 by Some Guy...
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
If I was her, I'd say "Screw you guys, I'm going home" and take her network home, install IPv6 on it, and start my own damn network. With hookers. And gambling. But that's just me.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
When used in this manner, saying someone doesn't know politics indicates they don't know how to make people happy without actually giving them anything substantial. And when you fail to make a lot of people happy, things simply don't get done. It may be admirable to lack this particular quality, but in reality authority figures who don't know politics are often doomed to fail.
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
I posted the link because you obviously didn't know what it meant, and I figured I would save you the time of looking it up for yourself.
Dyson is a woman, she fails to meet the narrow standards demanded of women, therefore she cannot be treated as a human being. We, the New York Times, reserve the right to take one look at her and then dismiss her as "funny" because she is a woman. I think that counts as "hatred of women", don't you?
Er, I think it's time to stop reading radical feminist literature, where any criticism of a woman is seen as hatred.
Or do you think that woman are above criticism? It would seem so, based on your overreaction to this article.
By the way, the article was written by a woman. I guess she's just been corrupted by the male-dominated world, and she feels she has to attack her "sistahs" in order to break through.
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Little, if any, feminist works are man hating.
I suppose that depends on how you define "feminist". There is a difference between philosophy that happens to be written by a woman, and feminist philosophy. I define feminist literature as "glorification of women at the expense of men."
How else can it be defined? You mention "masculinist" literature, but that's nonsense. Philosophy or literature does not have gender; it's either good and thought-provoking or it's not.
Why do you think that only a small minority of women in surveys identify themselves as feminists? It's because the radicals have taken over what was once a legitimate movement. Now it's all about a bunch of angry, bitter women who still think a woman choosing to raise her children full-time is shameful and a betrayal of women everywhere.
That's not to say that all reasonable women who happen to call themselves "feminists" are that way. But that's what the so-called leaders are.
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Are you so angry and bitter that you have to resort to quoting out of context? I guess it's easier for you to be a sexist that way.
Just for the record, I made a distinction between "feminist literature" and literature written by women. The standard, as I pointed out, is whether it's good literature.
Like it or not, your "leaders" have defined modern feminism exactly as I stated it. Take issue with them, not me.
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Look, you and others keep asking for "references", and I resist this for a simple reason: I can't win. If I name some resident wacko, then it'll simply get dismissed as "well, yeah, that women's a wacko, but she is not representative of feminists". This said...
I'm talking about the Susan Faludis and Patricia Ireland's of the world, whom the media holds up as leaders of the movement. Why do you think that in surveys most women don't identify themselves as feminists? It's because the definition has been conscripted by the wacko extremists. "Gay" used to be a really useful word, but it was conscripted by the homosexual population and now the definition has changed.
Again, don't blame me for the actions of the extremists who corrupted the word.
You want an example? I'll give you one. Why is abortion a feminist issue? It should not be. The issue is split almost exactly down the middle among women whether abortion should be legal, yet the feminist "leadership" thinks it's a core "obvious" issue. Where is the intellectual freedom among feminists that allow a pro-life stance? How many pro-life speakers are invited to feminist rallys? That would be a big, fat zero.
Of course, I could bring up NOW's support of Clinton's sexual predatory practices. I guess sexual harrassment is OK, as long as it's done by someone NOW likes. [Ted Kennedy, anyone?]
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Most articles comment on Stallman's disregard for personal grooming. And Torvalds gets no comment, because his dress is not unusual.
Her dress and mannerisms are commented upon because they are unusual for this political position, not unlike a lot of stories in the early days of dot-com companies about the notoriously informal dress of management. This story is specifically about her possibly being not the right candidate for the position, so of course her presentation is going to be fair-game.
Your oversensitivity is the only problem here.
And by the way, misogynistic means "Of or characterized by a hatred of women." Even if we grant that the NYT was mocking Dyson unfairly, that hardly qualifies as "hatred of women".
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What many people don't realize is that a talent for politics is not automatically a bad thing. Politics is the art/science of administration and control of a governing entity.
There is no question that the most efficient form of government is a benevolent dictatorship. However, it's also the most unstable because it has the tendency to lose the "benevolent" part.
Many "geeks" are attracted to the idea of a dictatorship when an acknowledged trusted, smart person is in charge. It feels right; "just let them get some work done, and keep the idiots out of the way!"
However, if we're interested in a long-term stable organization, then it's necessary to sacrifice efficiency for stability. The stability comes from balancing power with smart people (with honest, different views), and the idiots (with different views, but also with power), and the people in middle are what we call politicians. They strive to balance the opposite forces, find consensus, and move things forward. There is a certain personality that is required to do this, and for the most part, geeks are rarely this type.
Before everyone has a knee-jerk reaction that says, "be thankful we have a smart person in charge, and get all the other idiots out of the way," consider that this is fine in the short run, but is NOT desirable and not stable in the long run.
I will resist the urge to use the FSF as an example of an organization damaged by too much dictatorship, and too little politics. :)
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Is it just me, or have I seen this phrase far too often relating to many endeavors in this internet age? Basically it translates, "so-and-so is really bad at something, but if it turns out that I'm wrong, then they're redefining it."
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
There is a difference between feminist literature, and literature written by women.
Why do you persist in making unsubstantiated claims? You clearly have no clue but plenty of misconceptions about feminist writing. What a misogynist*.
* Note that I'm deliberately misusing the term misogynist here, just as you're misusing the term feminist.
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In other words: Yes, Joe Random Geek, you too can become a politician / talk show host / #prefered high status job involving every now and then having to talk to another person#
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before. - Dwight D. Eisenhower
http:// partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/04/biztech/ar ticles/10dyso.html