Subject: Broadening the Postel Principle of "Selflessly Serving the Network"

From: [email-masked] (steve)
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 19:35:03 -0700 (PDT)

October 19, 1998

TO: EOP, Congress, ICANN Board, DNSO, ORSC, & IFWP

c/o Ira Magaziner
Senior Adviser to the President,
Policy Development
Old Executive Office Building,
Room 216
1700 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20502

CC: The Honorable Charles Pickering
Chairman, Subcommittee on Basic Research
U.S. House of Representatives
c/o [email-masked]

FROM: Stephen J. Page, Individual Respondee to [email-masked];
Participant, Open Root Server Consortium (ORSC), Independent Researcher,
Network Systems, Pleasanton, California, US, representing Internet
.a(sm)-.z(sm) Name Registry, T: 925-454-8624 email: [email-masked], and
Developer, the i(r).com(sm) network access, connectivity and content service
to the global community of i(r)ndividuals, email: [email-masked]

RE: Broadening the Postel Principle of "Selflessly Serving the Network" to
"Selflessly Serving Humanity" by Implementing Language-based Addressable
Domain-Names as a Fundamental Principle the DNS  (A Commentary on Wall
Street Journal Article Today, "Europeans Search for a Shared Identity")

To Mr. Magaziner and All Participants in the Management of Domain Names and
Numbers,

        Europe has been undergoing a slow but accellerating process of
unification for decades, moving toward Winston Churchill's vision of the
United States of Europe, but today's Wall Street Journal illuminated some
common anxieties which are not only sweeping Europe, but apply worldwide.
These anxieties are exacerbated by the transition of power and authority
over domain names and IP numbers, formerly exercised by IANA, and
soon-to-be exercised by some other entity.
        The Journal's reporter, Robert Frank, raises the questions about
European identity, beneath which looms a deeper question of the meaning of
words used in language.
        How does one define an entity such as Europe?  Geographically?  If
so, Great Britain does not fit.  Is Europe defined by Language?  English?
(What about Australians, Americans, Canadians?) French? (What about Quebec?
Tahiti? Martinique?) Spanish? (What about Central and South Americas?)
German? (Certain parts of Central and South America speak versions of
German.) What does it mean to be European?  (Central European?  Southern
European?  Eastern European?) What does it mean to be American?  (North
American? South American? Native American?) African?  Asian?
        How do these meanings intersect with race?  Are Africans black?
Are Asians yellow?  Are Europeans white?  What is an American?
        The point is there are no clear definitions, so there is no clear
meaning in the terms, nor  are the impacts of processes which depend upon
these terms, processes which affect individual people, cultures, and
communities, worldwide,  so, there is anxiety worldwide.
        In Europe, at this critical time, there is a crisis of meaning, and
it all derives from one simple fact...that simple words, by themselves, are
incapable of capturing the truth which is well-known to be recognized when
encountered by human beings.  Much of the world's judicial is dependent
upon this premise.
        At a time when there is a strong push toward European unification,
the push is accelating due to the unifying nature of the Internet, a medium
which is unifying all people in Europe (and worldwide) into something much
broader than Europe.  The Internet's intellectual assets cross over all
formerly separate and distinct geographies which have been traditionally
viewed as being European.  The unification of the Internet is universal
because *networked systems are who we are* and the Internet is enabling us
to be who we are collectively, a unified system called Humanity.  This is
much bigger than Europe.
        To students of both humanities and sciences, the term Europe is a
vague term which once described a rough geography, a continent, but whose
meaning has been gradually morphing into a socio-politico-economic
aggregator of people and resources into a solidifying block of
socio-political policies.
        Europe, the term, represents the interests of those who are
consolidating power from the periphery to the center of what is becoming
the capital of Europe, Brussels.  It does not necessarily represent the
socio-cultural interests of those who live in the Sud-Tirol area of
Austria/Italy, nor does it necessarily represent the interests of the other
peripheries, like Scandinavia or the frontier with Asia, Turkey.
        In some ways, the homogenization of Europe is following the lead
which was begun when the English language morphed itself into existence by
building itself up, from elements of other languages.  Nation-states that
have adopted English-language systems have generally fared better than
those which have not.
        America's interests represented in the policies of IANA have both
the English language (TLDs) under the guidance of a benevolent government
which encourages the open flow of information and the input of individual
people to shape policy, are a threat to the perceived futures of countries
associated with non-English language and culture.
        As IANA has traditionally centralized power over the Domain Name
System around a limited, English-centric system of Top Level Domains, this
viewpoint provides Europeans with more reason to fear the dilution of their
European-ness into a universal network of
        From a preservation-of-culture standpoint, it is understandable
that the Europeans do not like this system, because they are faced with the
anxiety which comes from feeling like you are being swallowed up by an
invisible octopus being delivered by a real-time system of TV/satellite
broadcasting which beams American pop-culture into homes.
        Where is the domain naming system for delivering French TLDs or
German TLDs which provide them with the hope of being able to preserve
their languages and cultures through the Internet-channel?  The shifting of
world cultures from the tradition-bound cultural rituals of family, handed
down from elder to youth, to the modern universal culture, is disappearing,
and no one is happy about it.
        Mature adults mourn the loss of connection to the next generation
because they are focused on other things, computers, modern music, and
developing their careers.  Youth feel that they are being oversold by the
special interested parties selling computers and digital entertainment,
while increasingly feeling isolated.  What does it all mean?  Everyone
wants to know.
        The void which is being created inside of people who are being
pulled into isolation and loneliness is being reinforced subtly by every
information conduit and appliance and every energy element being delivered
by the integrating digital delivery systems.  Europeans feel it on a
personal as well as a collective (system) level.  So do Americans.  So does
anyone with a heart.
        The hours and hours spent receiving the delivered portions of
electromagnetic spectrum of human culture, under the unseen law of
mathematics which guide the interconnected elements (us) are a trap unless
we apply some proven principles of mathematics to our personal lives.
        On the functional level, we all, Europeans and everyone else, might
seek to balance our lives as if they were created with a geometric symmetry
at our core, applying the principles of symmetry to help us balance our
individuals lives, which will lead us to better understand our meaningful
place in the networked system which we call the universe, and its subnet,
Earth.
        On the design level, we might insure that whatever organization is
structured to manage the global allocation of digitally useful addressable
language, in the form of top level domains and secondary level domains, is
upwardly scalable enough to accommodate the cultural needs of the diverse
populations of the world, each of which has the right to organize its
language elements to be compatible with the DNS.
        If we do not insure that cultures other than American, are included
at the system (TLD) level, then there is a real possibility that the
network system will be fragmented.  Since the laws of mathematics governs
the structure of universal network systems, such a fragmentation will
require a re-unification process at some point in the future, which could
take many years to stabilize, and which would surely destabilize globally
networked "electronic commerce" economies which are only now beginning to
be broadly implemented.  Minimizing the risks to the system caused by
non-inclusive policies at all levels of the system of management of names
and numbers, requires foresight and the ability to understand multiple
human, linguistic, psychological, societal, and economic viewpoints.

(c) Copyright, 1998.  Stephen J. Page.  All Rights Reserved.

THE AUTHOR:

Stephen Page is a network systems researcher, former Regular Army Officer,
U.S. Army, a recognized business network architecture designer as a project
manager for a DARPA funded Network Architecture grant in 1994, and practicing
optometrist. He is 41 years old, resides and practices Northern California, a
graduate of University of Santa Clara (bachelor), University of California
Berkeley, (doctorate) and Boston University (masters degree in Business
Administration). He is a participant in the IFWP as a Virtual Attendee
submitting comments via
email, as well as a participant with the Open Root Server Consortium (ORSC),
representing Internet .a(sm)-.z(sm) Name Registry, a California Corporation.
He is also the developer of the i(r).com(sm) network access, connectivity
and content service to the global community of individuals, email:
[email-masked], T/F: 925-484-0448.