For the last two days, I've been at the Berkman Center as part of a group talking about internet governance.
John Palfrey just brought some light into the room by talking about a Net Dialogue project that Stanford and Berkman are working on together. The plan is to make the layers of net “governance” visible by using wikis and other visualization/data tools — what agencies work on what layers of the protocol stack, what issues are where. Thank goodness. John says Mary Rundle is working hard on this and will be launching the site in July.
The problem is that internet governance, as a term, is useless. Developing nations are worried about connectivity; the FBI is worried about pre-approval of all IP-enabled applications; there's a group of people wandering around the world going to WSIS meetings; and ICANN (which has very little to do with internet governance) attracts enormous criticism.
I'm frustrated with the unfocused discussions about this topic. I'd like to be building things, I'd like to be talking to people one-on-one, I'd like to be learning more about the FCC's role in the world. But developments like John and Mary's suggested web site cheer me up, and I'm willing to continue as long as people like them stay involved. The Accountable Net continues to be a very strong and useful idea, and I'll keep pitching it.