Subject: We are Berkman Centre lab rats

From: Bob Allisat <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 11:46:06 -0500 (EST)

Craig Simon wrote:
> I welcome this as a carefully thought out experiment in public
> participation. It offers an approach to resolving the current
> "DNS Mess" and may generate insights and techniques beneficial
> to contestants in future Internet governance controversies. In
> that sense, "we" are not lab rats running through the Berkman
> Center's maze, but co-participants in a process designed to
> find ways to reconcile people who carry diverse interests and
> values.

 In all of these procedings we have been through the
 recent introduction of the Berkman Centre has been
 one of the oddest chapters in my opinion. Some obscure
 Ivy League graduate school has, inexplicably and
 magically found itself at the very heart of a world
 wide controversy with a unique opportunity to increase
 it's own prestige, to offer it's student ample live
 research opportunities and it's staff not only places
 at the front of new, eager disciples but also an
 unbleievable coup: access to thousands of breathing
 living, apparently willing adult subjects to recieve
 their academic piccadellos and form the basis of
 endless case studies, thesis, journal articles and
 (dread) dissertations! GLORY BE!

 As one of the would be guniea pigs I can only laugh
 at the transparent manner in which these deans and dons,
 their eager post-docs and lecturers have descended upon
 this academics El Dorado. Laugh and watch as stupid surveys,
 clumsy artifices, utterly unrealistic concepts are slipped
 into their helping efforts. I can just imagine all of the
 presentation, papers, conferences and books that are, as
 we deliberate, buring their way to publishers and journals
 all the Ivory Tower Worldwide. In less time than it takes
 for the professor to undress the sophomore we will discover
 ourselves immortalized in vast tomes of drollery and insight,
 theory and speculation.

 My attitude towards this kind of intervention has modified
 from it's original disgust and anger. Recently I can only
 harken back to my own, unending amusement at academic antics
 in my University career so long ago. All of the Department
 politics and struggle to be the smarties of the smarty pants,
 the "publish or perish" fever... the whole obtuse spectacle!
 Let it form an irreductable and hilarious part of the circus
 like procedings! They have formed a gloriously funny sub-
 story of the whole reeling badnwagon fiasco. As if some 
 wonderous spin-master had brought them in to further warp
 and already utterly Alice In Wonderlandesque fantasyworld!

 And when it all inevitably goes to pieces the scene will
 be truely unbelieveable... spawning even more studies that
 allow even more dissertations and papers, windy lectures
 and generous endowments. Long Live Haaaavard! Viva Centro
 Berkman! Hip hip hoorah and let the show go on!

 Bob Allisat

 Free Community Network _ [email-masked]
 http://fcn.net _ http://fcn.net/allisat = http://robin.fcn.net
 [email-masked]

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From: Bob Allisat <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 11:46:06 -0500 (EST)

Bob Allisat

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From: Craig Simon <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 13:22:25 -0500

My original message was not sent to this list, and Bob Allisat's quotation from
it was WAY out of context. But I won't spam you with the original. The DNS-mess
junkies have probably already seen it, and I presume the rest here don't want or
need to be bothered.

Craig Simon

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From: Craig Simon <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 13:22:25 -0500

Craig Simon