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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."
Without the International Criminal Court (and the cooperation of every nation in the world), this kind of system simply won't work. It'd also bring up a lot of juristiction questions, such as whether it's okay for the Internet Police to make arrests in the United States, above the authority of the FBI and such. Also, who would watch them if they even had this power? Corruption in the Internet Police would be impossible to stop.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
Cats meow and dogs bark. I know! Let's marry them and get an animal that can do both!
The Internet should be for the People, by the People, and of the People. There has to be a better solution than having the U.N. get involved.
Sterling forgot to mention that the UN is as rife with corruption as its member states are.
Why not marry the UN and the telephone? That would make about as much sense. The United Nations is a government entity, the Internet is a service.
I'm confused here. Is Sterling proposing that the Internet be regulated to carry only the lowest common denominator of traffic? No political dissent, because China vetos it on the Security Council? No pr0n because a coalition of Moslem states raise a motion forbidding it, then use their block vote and the implicit threat of terrorism to force it through? RIAA and MPAA running hog wild because the US ties humanitarian assistance to acceptance of its IP agenda?
Sterling really ought to stick to the novels, tho' having said that, apart from Difference Engine I haven't been impressed by any of his work.
Before too many people start saying "the UN is powerless", please think what the UN actually is.
The UN is a place to discuss problems between countries, to discuss world-wide problems. It is a place to organise solutions with regarding to global problems. It is an umbrella under which people can operate without having to worry from which country they are coming.
The UN consist of, included but not limited to, the Security Counsel, UNICEF (childrens fund) and the UNHCR (refugees). Don't judge the whole UN by the (in)capabilities of one section.
The UN itself doesn't have much power, they have as much power as the contributing countries give them. If the world cries "UN, help them!", but the countries don't give men and material, the UN can't help.
The UN is a place to resolve problems if everybody wants to resolve them, it is not a power which can resolve problems on its own.
bash$
Yeah, let's give the last remaining actual "freedom" we have left (the Net) over to the most corrupt and widely-policing Capitalist Authoritarian organization possible.
Too late. Your IP has been tracked and the CIA will be by shortly to assist your enrollment in a 're-education' program. You'll be wearing Nikes, bopping to Britney Spears, and taping Survivor in no time.
Don't worry, you'll still be allowed choices. Specifically "Coke or Pepsi" and "Doritos, Doritos Extreme and Lo-Carb Mega Doritos Extreme".
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.
Add to this the fact that the US has veto power over most issues (meaning it can skew any issue to suit its' purposes) and refuses to recognise the need for anything like an International Criminal Court and you have a recipe for a dysfunctional organisation.
The UN fails in its' role due to the often devisive action (or inaction) of the US. Perhaps if the US were a better global citizen the UN might have a chance of actually working?
my 2c
Did any of you RTFA? This is more about implementing a system for UN diplomatic underlings to get work done online than having the UN "take over" the internet. The concept of having a secure, government to government electronic communication system probably would be faster, cheaper and more effective than gathering in Geneva every time we want to discuss the price of cod fish.
How Idealism works:
1. Point out things you are unhappy with, no complaint is to small to be totally blown out of proportion. Make sure you compare whatever exists to a perfection that need not be possible to attain.
2. Propose solution! The solution is to always get rid of the evil conspiracy holding back progress, because the answers to how to do really complicated things on a large scale are clear to everyone and all that stands in the way is the conspiracy.
3. Leave all the details for later (and there are a lot of details). Explain that you or your favorite know-it-all organization have to be in charge of things before you'll even bother with figuring out the details.
4. Get in power, screw up far more than what was there already and blame it on the continuing legacy of the conspiracy.
5. Propose even stronger more drastic reforms. Continue from here to step 4 until people are totally sick of you and tell you to get lost or you've totally destroyed what you were trying to fix to the point that nobody cares about it anymore.
Uh. No. The moment there was more than two people together, there was politics. With the emergence of the first shamans, wise-men, tribal leaders and priests, the fight for socioeconomical control within the group just became more formalized. You're right in saying that the way how politics works has changed during our social evolution, but as one of the fundamental ways of how we organize ourselves, it will never go away.
I have no problem with spam.
I do and it has nothing to do with my mail-box getting clogged by spam. It hinders my work, because these days when I send critical work related information to someone by e-mail, I also have to fax it and sometimes even phone the recipient to make sure that he/she has got the information. Where do the e-mails go then? They disappear into spam filtters or simply get accidentally deleted when the recipient is purging his mailbox manually. The e-mail as a means for communication is getting more and more useless every year.
Saying that spam is not out of control or that it isn't costing the infrastructure money is just wrong. Hiding your head in the sand won't make the problem disappear.
The UN is politico organistation with aims and goals, they engage in PR. Do you think they publish every piece of information they recieve?
Of course not. Why should they? It wouldn't serve any purpose. Withholding sensitive information from people who're not entitled to it is not censorship, but common sense. Any government does it and it's a good thing. If you want direct access to such information, get yourself involved in politics - if, like me, you don't want to do that, you'll just have to trust your elected representatives.
Or are you going to tell me these services work and are worth money they cost?
Where I live, they work and I would be willing to pay even more taxes to expand them. It would be horrific to live in a society where you'd be denied medical help just because "you haven't paid the last installment as specified in your contract with MediCorp(tm)".
The question is did the goverment help or hinder the development?
The Finnish internet backbone (funet.fi) is a state sponsored infrastructure into which all the stream from private ISPs eventually flows. I'd say that the government involvement has significantly helped our access to the internet.
The owls are not what they seem
Even peace can only work if both sides want peace. After WW2 the european nations more or less decided that there were to be no more wars (on european soil between european nations, the rest of the world was still open season) and because all of them decided it it happened. Even though spain and england have a dispute over the rock of gibraltar. Even though Ireland and England are in dispute. Even though most of the nations have a long long history of war with each other there has been peace.
But even in europe there are still wars, Northern Ireland and Baskenland, because in those cases one side doesn't want peace.
Or maybe I am using the wrong word. It is not so much a case of wanting or not wanting peace. It is a case of the various sides wanting or not wanting things but not considering war to be a way of achieving those wants.
Simple example. Drugs. The Netherlands has a rather liberal policy on it, France does not. In the past the frence goverment wanted holland to change its policy but not so badly as to go to war. Unlike america wich has gone to war over drugs.
The UN can only work if all the sides involved consider war not really to be an option. It is like those pub fights were arguments flare up and things get out of hand. In some cases both the fighters can't back down but really want a third person to step in and stop the fight allowing both to save face. If however one in the fight really wants the fight to happen the third party is powerless.
Of course the world is not a pub. In a pub you got maybe 4 sides, the two fighters, those who want to watch a fight and those who don't. The world has got close to two hundred countries with each country often having conflicting intrests. The fact that the UN still exists may be considered an achievement.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Amen.
To those who believe that the distributed intelligence of the internet (the users at its ends) is insufficient to manage itself, I'd say that the evidence is to the contrary. It is not the government that has provided us with ways of dealing with spam, of effective encryption and VoIP. It is smart individuals and groups that move much faster than governments.
And if the users, who are not in fact users as the grandparent termed them, but actually comprise the internet itself, were insufficient to manage themselves, then there is an alternative to taking the control away and centralizing it, and that would be to increase the education level of these "users."
More than any other systems, democracies and anarchies, require intelligent and educated people. Right now the internet is an anarchy and long may it remain so.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
The UN was created to unite countries,
,sits at the head of the UN Human Rights Commission. And what does the General Assembly do about such a travesty? It steadfastly refuses to pass a resolution condemning antisemitism.
It was created to do no such thing. It was created in order to prevent a third world war from occurring, with the Western democracies (the '1st world') on one side and the Soviet Union and its client states (the '2nd world') on the other.
This was a laudable goal, and to the extent that this did not happen, the UN achieved its goal. Like any other bureaucratic organization rendered obsolete by the passage of time, the UN has endeavoured to reinvent itself. Unfortunately, as the simple facts of the matter are that there exist more backwards, primitive, kleptocratic, oppressive governments than there exist enlightened democracies, the voice the UN speaks with is chiefly the voice of its basest and more numerous members.
Fer Chrissakes, Sudan, a government currently undergoing an organized campaign of genocide against its own citizenry
That's pretty much the current UN in a nutshell. When it *does* manage to accomplish something, like imposing sanctions on Saddam Hussein, it ends up looting the Food for Oil program which was intended to spare the Iraqi people the worst impact of those sanctions.
It's a nest of vipers. It's not even that it's anti-American; I'm not arrogant enough to condemn such sentiment a priorily. But it's clearly anti-liberal, and I use that word in its classic Lockeian sense. The ideals that this country was founded on, that individual liberty is the highest goal for which one can struggle, are anathema to the Westphalian notions of national sovereignity that the UN was founded upon. If we do truly hold that governments derive their legitimacy from the consent of the governed, then how can we go about treating illegitimate governments to an equal seat at the table?
Nations like North Korea, Saudi Arabia, China, Singapore, and Iran make up a large part of the UN. There is no way in hell I want those countries having the merest degree of jurisdiction over what I can do, say, or read on the internet. The very suggestion is utter lunacy.
Well said, and I completely agree with you.
What I meant to highlight was that the UN is unable to solve it's own problems, and has a limited impact on most of the issues that really trouble the world, and has therefore not quite done its job.
The League of Nations failed in stopping WW2, while the UN could do absolutely nothing about the Cold War - agreed, it did not fully escalate into a war - but it was still a very genuine threat. That it did not manifest itself into a war is something we should count as a blessing, and not something I would credit to the UN.
And yeah, while you are right in saying that countries like China should have no right telling you what to read, be aware that a lot of people in the world are feeling the same way about the US, too (am not taking sides here, merely highlighting the fact) -- that's what makes it all the more trickier.
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.
-- 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
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Most peace-keeping missions have succeeded.
FSVO 'success.' The peacekeeping mission in Rwanda 'succeeded' by sitting there and let the butchers finish their work, and then claiming credit for halting the butchery. The peacekeeping mission in Somalia, didn't. The peacekeeping mission in Yugoslavia wouldn't have accomplished jack were it not for the US's willingness to spread peace, love, and understanding in 500, 1000, and 2000 lb packages.
Google on 'Srebrinica Massacre' to see what sort of security UN peacekeepers can provide.
The number of genocides that have taken place on the UN's watch is a travesty. The number that have taken place within weapons range of UN peacekeepers is an indictment.
And all those aid programs, haven't they also contributed to not just well-being, but also stability and peace in the world?
Stability and peace are often at cross-purposes with the 'well-being' of the world. UNICEF feeds kids who are starving because of their fucked-up governments, but doesn't do a thing to replace fucked-up governments that starve their own populations. The WHO works to eradicate disease in countries with fucked-up governments, but doesn't do a thing to replace the fucked-up governments that don't give a shit about the poor public health of their populace.
I'd even go as far as to say that what those organizations do every day around the world is the only way to effectively fight terrorism -- remove the causes.
And where, oh where, has the UN managed to accomplish this?
of course they'll always be in the minority
Read down a list of the UN general assembly.
They're not in the minority.
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.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
he UN is obsolote because all power rests in the hands of the Security Council, and the power there lies only in the hands of the countries that hold veto power (US, UK, France, China, Russia).
Oh, I see. The problem is that backwards-assed medievalism as embodied in nations like Sudan and Iran isn't given enough power to wield on the world stage.
That makes such sense.
Virtually every year for the past couple of decades it has almost universally condemned Israel's refusal to follow international law in its occupation of Palestine, what has that accomplished?
While Israel has killed some innocent civilians in the West Bank and Gaza, their primary intention is to pursue and proactively eliminate terrorists, with civilians who die in the crossfire an unintended consequence. The problem is that that most of the world and UN, you included, are focusing in on Israel and condemning this country while blatantly ignoring the far more indiscriminate oppression of people in Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Timor. The problem of the UN being practically castrated in its power is only compounded by its obsession to punish Israel due to a large base of antisemitic nations.
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
And I have to applaud this idea. We have all seen how good the net is at getting people to talk to each other from very far flung communities - here I am ranting against yanks yet again after all ;-) The processes and mechanisms of the UN are derived from the great committees and councils that were the best way we knew to organise nations over a hundred years ago. Now it is time to move on and utilise 21st century means of communication and organisation within the UN. Committees can now meet virtually on the web. Non-members can contribute even if not present. We can all see what is going on. Surely we netizens can appreciate the possibilities. Sure it may degenerate into flame wars again and again (much as the security council has done for the last 40 years when Israel comes up).
Perhaps the United Nations of the 21st Century will be a Bazaar not a Cathedral?
--
USA: home of the world's largest terrorist training camp.