Zen and ICANN
Take another look at Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It's an inquiry into values, and it reminds us that the most important thing is Quality. What's Quality? Let's say it means “excellence.” Robert Pirsig's thesis is that Quality is the source of everything we know.
The book also reminds us that it's dangerous to think that rationality is the most important part of life. Thinking things through isn't necessarily the same as improving something.
This ties into the ICANN budget. It's based on a strategic plan that hasn't been made public. Its statement of constituency concerns aren't necessarily based on actual constituency statements. Whether or not ICANN is successful in promoting choice and competition will apparently be measured by how the community feels about this issue at the end of the day. It provides for an enormous effort in “compliance,” but doesn't say what that means or whether ICANN will be more receptive to new registry services. And it doesn't provide for a backup plan in case the registrars decide not to go along with the increased funding requirements imposed on them.
But that's all logical quibbling. Let's say that ICANN has answers to all of these questions and satisfies most people that it intends to do the right thing. What about Quality?
The thing about Quality is that you can tell when it's there, and you miss it when it's not. You can take Quality apart, and point to elegance, competence, coherence, and intelligence as some of its elements. But it's a holistic sort of thing. It's either there or it isn't. And it's terribly important.
When you try to explain ICANN to someone else (particularly someone who is thinking about running a new TLD) it's hard to include in your description the idea that ICANN is a quality organization. As a group, ICANN seems to be devoted to process. Yet it seems to be hard for any one of these processes to result in a finished product. (If you look at the ICANN home page, most of the listings concern processes that aren't over.) Its meetings continue to be in-person, all-over-the-world, lengthy happenings in which process is discussed – odd in a technical coordination body. It has opened up very few TLDs, and has used its de facto control over the root to mandate all kinds of things. Its organizational chart will no doubt continue to grow, but it's hard to point to particularly elegant, competent, coherent, and intelligent things it has done.
On the other hand, ICANN was formed to be a forum for discussion, and it is that. It was formed as an alternative to government control of the DNS, and it is that in a de facto sense. Maybe its quality is found in these two elements: it's better than the alternative, and it's a place to talk. If that's the case, ICANN should focus on building up these two competencies and become more of a Quality organization.
It doesn't appear to be pleasing people on the rationality front.
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