IP: "We are the most public secret cabal in the history of the world."

[David Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

>From: "Dave Wilson" <dave@wilson.net>
>To: <farber@cis.upenn.edu>
>Subject: Re: Re:  ICANN and what it is
>Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 14:05:42 -0400
>
>
>As background, I'm the senior technology reporter for the San Jose Mercury
>News, and work in the Washington bureau. ICANN has a reasonably responsive
>and informative media operation, in my experience.
>
>I think the real problem for the media is a lack of education about the
>technology (and its history) among journalists, a dearth of analogies --
>there really isn't anything else like this system that I know of -- that can
>be used as a kind of shorthand to tell people what's going on, combined with
>a longstanding suspicion among some -- you know who you are -- that a
>"secret cabal" is running the show. As Dr. Postel said to me shortly before
>he died, "We are the most public secret cabal in the history of the world."
>
>A more accurate concern would be a lack of oversight in Internet operations.
>I would argue that it is this issue that ICANN has come to symbolize, and
>the concerns being raised have existed since the development of democratic
>society: Who guards the guardians? It's been a couple of thousand years, and
>we still don't have a great solution to that problem; I don't expect things
>to change any time soon. But my point -- and I do have one -- is that ICANN
>could do a much better job of explaining the competing balances of power
>that its participants hope will keep the institution from running amok, not
>unlike the Federalist Papers explained to a largely uneducated colonial
>population the system of checks and balances that would govern the United
>States of America.
>
>-dave wilson