Bruce Sterling says: Marry the UN and the Net

An anonymous reader writes "SF writer Bruce Sterling is guest-posting on the global-eco-tech blog Worldchanging today and thinks we ought to marry the Internet and the United Nations. 'The UN has cumbersome rules, no popular participation, and can't get anything useful done about the darkly rising tide of stateless terror and military adventurism. The UN was invented to "unite nations" rather than people. The Internet unites people, but it's politically illegitimate. Vigilante lawfare outfits like RIAA and MPAA can torment users and ISPs at will. The dominant OS is a hole-riddled monopoly. Its business models collapsed in a welter of stock-kiting corruption. The Net is a lawless mess of cross-border spam and fraud. Logically, there ought to be some inventive way to cross-breed the grass-rootsy cheapness, energy and immediacy of the Net with the magisterial though cumbersome, crotchety, crooked and opaque United Nations.' It's obviously part tongue in cheek, but it does make you think."

Comments

U owe /. an apology

[Shadowlore]

For such a misinformed post. Oh wait, nevermind, it is /, after all.

Has it ocurred to anyone that the reason the UN "can't get anything useful done" is that the US owes close to $600 Million in dues? The US also routinely withholds money whenever it feels it can gain leverage on an issue.

So you believe all you hear, right? Have you ever considered which national military makes up the bulk of the UN "peacekeepers"? Did you know the US is billed for 25% of the UN's operations (over 30% for the "peacekeeping" operations), in addition to the non-dues support it provides (which has estimates ranging from 15-20+ Billion in the last 8-10 years)?

Indeed, between 1992 and 1997, the US provided "voluntary" (in truth all of it is voluntary, the UN has no rightful or legal claims to *any* national treasury) support topping 11 billion dollars --just for "peacekeeping" activities. A march 1997 report showed US troops supporting such actions numbered approximately 68,000.

Hey, maybe we can just "pay our dues" and stop making all that voluntary contributions. Whaddya say? Wanna trade that 11+ Billion for 600 Million? No? Didn't think so.

Did you know that in fact, when it comes to peacekeeping forces, more than half the member countries refuse to make payments? Indeed, the UN thinks it is owed some 5+ BILLION in USD, yet we don't see you, or other UN apologists, pushing for the rest of the member countries (about 2/3rds any given year) to pay up (BTW, France is included in the top 5 list).

And FYI, the "withholding" of US funds has been tied directly to reforming functional aspects of the UN, such as the portion the UN allocates, the funding of conferences and organizations directly opposed to the United States (something no country should have to support -- organizations that oppose it), and a proper accounting of the US' military support which has far exceeded it's "assigned share".

Add to this the fact that the US has veto power over most issues

So does Russia, so does China, France. All five of the permanent members of the UNSEC have veto powers, but that is ONLY limited to the (in)Security Council. "The council's five veto-wielding permanent members are China, France, Russia, the UK and the US."

Indeed, do you know which country has used their veto power more than the rest? Bzzzt, no it isn't the US, it is USSR/Russia.

In the early days of the United Nations, the Soviet commissar and later minister for foreign affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov, said no so many times that he was known as "Mr. Veto."

The Soviet Union was responsible for nearly half of all vetoes ever cast. Molotov regularly rejected bids for new membership because of the U.S. refusal to admit the Soviet republics. The United States has invoked its veto power 76 times, usually to ward off actions against Israel.

-- http://www.peace.ca/securitycouncilveto.htm

In the UN General Assembly, there is no veto power. Indeed, the UN GA can override the SC through UN resolution 377 which allows the General Assembly to recommend collective action "if the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security".
http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/landmark/a major.htm

And guess which country pushed for that ability? Yup, the nasty old United States, in 1950. But that action has rarely been used. Indeed, only ten times since it's inception has it been used. Why was it not used in the Iraq affair? not enough support. If the majority did indeed oppose it, they were apparently unwilling to go on record as being against it.

Given the actual layout of functions and powers in the UN, your claims fall flat on their face, as the US does not have "veto power over most issues ", that the USSR has used the veto power more than any other member of the SC, that veto is no

Griping about the internet a new fad?

[Arcturax]

Is it just me, or is griping about the internet the new fad of late?

Oh god, the internet is broken, oh god, the internet is doomed. Oh there's no control over the internet (isn't that a GOOD thing, even with some of the bad stuff?)

I keep hearing over and over from certain individuals that the internet is broken and doomed. I get on it every day and read up on topics of interest, chat with others, download files, etc and it doesn't seem very broken to me. Yes there are a lot of unsavory types and sites out there, but the same applies to the real world. The internet right now seems to work just fine as is, so why made such a radical change to who runs it if most of the problems on the internet are avoidable today? How is making the UN run things going to change the corporate corruption and 'stock kiting?' I don't see how this helps or changes anything.

Future of the Internet Hive Mind

[LionKimbro]

It makes sense to me.

We're making an Internet Hive Mind.

It's started with commited group efforts like Free Software. As communications technology develops, we start seeing things like Wikipedia.

As it develops further, we will see things like the project-space network, and local economies and sharing networks. As it develops still further, local governments will be mediated over by well organized electronic communities online.

Really, if this all seems strange to you, you have no idea the power of communications technologies.

Before "wiki," a piece of software, there could be no wikipedia. After that piece of software, it's almost impossible for there not to be a wikipedia. Details could be different, but the basic idea is almost an inevitabilitiy.

We are not done. There's still a hoard of communications software in the pipes. We're just now getting our event systems online. We'll start seeing things like "OverHear," allowing you to hear your friends' public conversations, with voice even. As we get the ability to index the world's voice conversations (with voice-to-text software), we'll be able to ask, "Who in the last 5 minutes said this world," we'll see that the online world will become one gigantic OpenSpace conference. We'll see the conferences, we'll see the group affiliations, we'll see the projects, we'll see it all.

I predict that between 2015 and 2020, the Hive Mind (by some other name) will be a recognized and powerful force. It will also recognize itself and it's own power. We could call this the day that the Hive Mind achieves "self-awareness."

It may even have a military force- I don't know what else to call a gigantic networked mess of sympathetic hackers, chemists, biologists, and lawyers. It is not unthinkable that "the Internet" may become it's own "sovereign nation," of sorts, lack of an independent land be damned.

So, connecting the idea of the UN and the Internet is not all that strange. I mean, what else? What else could it possibly be?

Our next generation "communications software" isn't so much about making it so that messages can be sent from person to person in different ways, but about organizing the existing communications, and about organizing ourselves. We're putting in individual-to-group affiliations, and affiliations amongst groups with each other.

There's no reason to believe that our communications will stop networking and developing.

People do not have their attention on our trajectory. They see half the people downtown walking around with cell phones stuck to their ears, but they don't think that anything can "come next." But it will. There's much much more on the way.

The "Hive Mind" will look less rediculous, I think.

In 5 years, VoIP will be mature, and have basically taken over. Online group VoIP conferences may be primitive, but some ordinary people will be using them. Semantic web technologies like RDF will be in mainstream understanding and use (like XML right now), and our computers will be noticably "smarter" than the information desplay we have today. Tablet's will be cheap and accessible, and we'll tighten up the "I drew something"-to-"There it is on the web" loop. In short, our conversations will be full of napkin diagrams, Visual Language will take off beyond web comics. Our user interfaces will have transcended (finally) the box-ish interfaces, because graph data-structures have taken on new-found importance, and with the new interfaces, we'll see component lan