Santa Monica and the internet meltdown
After the sultry days and nights in Kuala Lumpur, it's great to be in Southern California. I'm here for the PFIR conference tomorrow. The conference hotel is at the corner of Lincoln and Manchester, just north of the airport, and after I checked in I took the No. 3 bus up to my home town: Santa Monica.
The No.3 is a spectacular busline. It costs only .75 to go all the way from south of the airport to UCLA — fast. Along the way, you see a lot of Lincoln Boulevard (junky), ICANN's headquarters (anonymous), the high school I went to (huge), the pastel-colored stucco apartment buildings south of Montana, and a lot more — including a glimpse of the city fishing pier and momentary ocean views.
It's a great day here, and it's nice to be back, if only for 24 hours.
I'm not sure what to expect from tomorrow's meeting. I'm looking forward to seeing Neumann, Weinstein, Farber, Bradner, and whoever else is planning to come. The somewhat apocalyptic conference announcement (”A continuing and rapidly escalating series of alarming events suggest that immediate cooperative, specific planning is necessary if we are to have any chance of avoiding the meltdown“) makes me want to tell a few jokes.
Instead, I'll focus on netizenship. I'll talk about the glory of self-organizing networks (and the order that emerges from them), and I'll point out that someone is already in charge: us. “Governance” does not necessarily involve “governments.” And I'll tell a few stories about this past ICANN meeting, including what happened during my lengthy cab ride with the manager of Burundi's ccTLD, .bi.
Although I usually try to tie these posts up into a neat package, there really is no connection between the internet and the No.3 bus. Except that both work really well.