Complexity and Linked
I've had the benefit of two long plane flights and an enormous layover (16 hours) recently, so I have been having visions of internet governance. What else is there to think about when you're completely unconnected from the world and the stranger next to you keeps unconsciously elbowing you throughout the long night?
Two books have made the journey with me: Waldrop's 'Complexity' and Barabasi's 'Linked.' Waldrop writes about the founding of the Sante Fe Institute, and the enormous interdisciplinary excitement of its early days. One by one, the PhDs tell their stories — they were alone, tootling along with their research, until they were brought together in Sante Fe and realized that other people had been working on the same problems.
Linked is aimed at getting us all to recognize the common characteristics of complex networks: scale-free, subject to power laws, rich-get-richer growth patterns.
So, add the two together: what's the best way to govern a complex network that is self-organizing, emergent, subject to power laws, and living on its own? The Santa Fe founders would say, “Watch it with care, but don't pretend that you can predict its course or channel its development.”
I also have the ICANN Strategic Plan with me. On the next flight (one more to go), I'll add it to the first two and see what results. I wonder whether the authors of the Plan have read the other two books. Even if they haven't, ICANN Board members say the right things. They're not governing; they're watching and facilitating.