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?"

Comments

ICANNot believe it's Esther!

[panda]

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.

Re:political impotence is BAD?

[mengmeng]

But in the "real world", you have to be able to "politic" if you want to get things done. Politics doesn't have to be about taking and giving bribes or the other nasty things usually associated with it. If you can't interact well with others, it doesn't matter how intelligent you are, nobody's gonna listen to you.

This is the norm for Esther

[dmuth]

From what I know of Esther, this is perfectly normal for her. She's obviously an intelligent woman, but she doesn't seem to recognize the limits of her expertise, and ends up getting into situations where she ends up doing more harm than good.

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>

Dyson bad for ICANN, Internet

[.@.]

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.

Hmm...

[Greyfox]

I wonder if that's the same Esther Dyson who used to hang with us Team OS/2 members back in the early 90's. She was cool.

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.

Are you kidding?

[Tim Behrendsen]

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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Re:Are you kidding?

[Tim Behrendsen]

But you have that luxuiry, not being a woman.

No, I have that luxury because I am a thinking human being.

You've obviously bought deeply into the victimology of women created by the self-appointed leaders of the feminist movement. I've got news for you: Their only purpose is to enhance their power at your expense.

Is it more difficult for woman to succeed? Yes, but not even CLOSE to as difficult to what it was in the 60s. The feminist movement is, for the most part, obsolete. That's why the writing get shriller and shriller every year, because they need to generate as much hatred of men as possible in order keep the power base intact.

You say this as if it were funny. It is not.

I said it because I know a lot more about the victim mindset than you think. When you realize that it really is funny, and why, you will be able to go a lot farther in life, and be a lot happier besides.

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"Redefining" politics

[Tim Behrendsen]

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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Another internet-era cliche...

[TopShelf]

"Is Dyson recklessly ignoring politics or is she maybe redefining them?"

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."

NY Times URL for non-registered users

[elliotw]

http:// partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/04/biztech/ar ticles/10dyso.html