… to wirearchy as an organizing principle, manifested as the “Accountable Net” ?
From Esther Dyson writing on Edventure’s site, via JOHO. She’s pulling people together, it seems (people like David Weinberger) to explore the evolution of:
The approach we came up with is “the accountable Net” — an Internet of people, companies and services that are accountable to one another rather than to some omniscient central authority. Many of the states contemplated by the WSIS document are not completely democratic. And even if governments were all as benign as we could wish, they cannot provide the kind of flexible, responsive feedback to foster good behavior that we can provide for ourselves.
The idea is simple: People on the Internet should be accountable to one another, and they are free to decide whom to interact with. The goal is not a free-for-all, anarchic Net, but one where good behavior is fostered effectively — and locally.
In the real world, good behavior is fostered by a combination of government regulations and society standards. But the Internet is no longer the community it once was. It has become too large for people to really know one another.
The solution is not necessarily more government, but rather more visibility of the kind we used to have: People need to know one another, and they need to be able to decide whom they want to know. (The new social networking tools are one manifestation of this desire, but we also need to be able to communicate safely with people we may not consider friends or business partners, but whom we wouldn’t shy away from on the street.)
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