visiting the future
One the way back from my ICANN trip to Kenya, I finished reading Bruce Sterlings most recent novel, The Caryatids. As a novel, it is probably exactly the sort of novel that Sterling fans will very much enjoy, and Sterling critics will find confirms their opinions. Which is to say, while it has a narrative, and characterisation, themes and a plot, and all the things a novel should have, it still seems as if Bruce started out with a bunch of really good ranting lectures about the state of the world and jammed them together into ball full of rants, and then wrote a novel that allowed him to fit in all the best ranting parts. Arguments between characters about things like arming rap stars arming their fans with rocket launchers for homegrown urban renewal projects could easily be left out of the plot, but are easily recognisable as Chairman Bruce in full flight. And while the plot and characters etc are by no means that badly done, they are like necessary superstructure to keep everything contained in a novel shape, when you really came to read is the rants, because Chairman Bruce rants with more insight and knowledge and unexpected wonder than perhaps anyone else in the world.
This novel is really about the settings, its central characters (the eponymous Caryatids, cloned sisters each whom is, in their own manner, trying to lift up the failing world) each falling in with one of the competing forces trying to get enough control over the broken world of 2060 to heal and repair it. Only one of these forces is a government (China, the only government big and brutal and controlling enough to still maintain true relevance). One of the sisters is essentially a mad criminal, perhaps representing the forces of social entropy and unrest. It is the two others that interest me.
The two great, contending groups represented are loose global alliances, each with a core of similar ideologies and methodologies. The Dispensation is a sort of reformist capitalist network, driven by business deals and money, and a love of media and spectacle, but trying to make their money from cleaning up and fixing the world where they can. The Acquis is the global network of NGOs and civil society organisations and activists, driven by a sense of justice and community, regarding themselves as purer and cleaner than the Dispensation, but perhaps prone to bursts of excessive zeal and going just a little too far themselves in their own drive to heal the world.
It may not have been what Bruce was thinking of, but I immediately recognised ICANN. ICANN is in some ways unique, in some ways a sort of organisation we may be seeing more of in the future. I can't think of another organisation that controls important global infrastructure (in ICANNs case, the global domain name system and the assignment of IP numbers) that has so little government intervention -- certainly not any of the UN agencies. For the most part, government in ICANN sits to the side in what is formally an advisory capacity (government reps are part of the GAC, the Government Advisory Council-ICANN bylaws say that the board must 'consider' GAC advice, but need not be bound by it). ICANN itself is not a government agency or a body created by global treaty, but a non-profit corporation (incorporated in California) that just does this important global job that everyone sort of tolerates because the alternatives are worse (especially no one trusts governments to do it). The heavy lifting of policy work is done by volunteers, almost always across a broad range of groups that feel they have an interest in the process. It is a global, multi-stakeholder, cooperative process that isn't government controlled, and in theory anyone can participate in if they want to. This is in contrast to the way this sort of global organisational job would previously have been done, by a room full of bureaucrats and little public attention, a process that is, we now understand, inevitably hopelessly corrupted by corporate lobbyists, just as they have at various times corrupted WIPO, trade negotiations, and parliaments. No one trusts the old process to get it right in something as complicated as internet policy, and we have been forced to evolve a post-government process to do the job. It is a new kind of thing.
And perhaps it is the future. The way ICANN does things is certainly flawed -- we spend a lot of time worrying about the very high percentage of corporate participation, and that ICANN will inevitably be drawn into seeing things from a very commercial perspective. We worry about the staff steering the process in ways that don't reflect the process. We worry that ICANN is not really free from US control, and while it is on a long leash right now that may not last. But the way ICANN works seems less flawed than the alternatives. Ultimately, the decisions are made by the people who care, no one is shut out of the process, and nothing (well, little) is secret.
Now the Caryatids division of the world is in my head, I think ICANN to me will always feel as if I am an Acquis operative warily monitoring a Dispensation project. I certainly feel as if ICANN is a Dispensational kind of thing, where capitalism speaks loudly, but for the most part the young upstarts of capitalism (with a bit of old media and a little telco establishment), full of people trying to make money out of attention and spectacle and conversation and intellectual property, always a bit wary of the strange civil society groups in the corner (who, not being motivated by money, must clearly be working from a very different set of rules).
It is part of the genius of SF writing in general, and Sterling in particular, that they can help you see and appreciate the future. But not just the possible future yet to come, but the little scraps of future that are already part of the world we live in today. No matter how mundane it may seem (and when it gets down to it, ICANN is several hundred people talking about policy for a week), new things in the world are parts of the future come early. ICANN, for all its flaws, is a new thing.
This novel is really about the settings, its central characters (the eponymous Caryatids, cloned sisters each whom is, in their own manner, trying to lift up the failing world) each falling in with one of the competing forces trying to get enough control over the broken world of 2060 to heal and repair it. Only one of these forces is a government (China, the only government big and brutal and controlling enough to still maintain true relevance). One of the sisters is essentially a mad criminal, perhaps representing the forces of social entropy and unrest. It is the two others that interest me.
The two great, contending groups represented are loose global alliances, each with a core of similar ideologies and methodologies. The Dispensation is a sort of reformist capitalist network, driven by business deals and money, and a love of media and spectacle, but trying to make their money from cleaning up and fixing the world where they can. The Acquis is the global network of NGOs and civil society organisations and activists, driven by a sense of justice and community, regarding themselves as purer and cleaner than the Dispensation, but perhaps prone to bursts of excessive zeal and going just a little too far themselves in their own drive to heal the world.
It may not have been what Bruce was thinking of, but I immediately recognised ICANN. ICANN is in some ways unique, in some ways a sort of organisation we may be seeing more of in the future. I can't think of another organisation that controls important global infrastructure (in ICANNs case, the global domain name system and the assignment of IP numbers) that has so little government intervention -- certainly not any of the UN agencies. For the most part, government in ICANN sits to the side in what is formally an advisory capacity (government reps are part of the GAC, the Government Advisory Council-ICANN bylaws say that the board must 'consider' GAC advice, but need not be bound by it). ICANN itself is not a government agency or a body created by global treaty, but a non-profit corporation (incorporated in California) that just does this important global job that everyone sort of tolerates because the alternatives are worse (especially no one trusts governments to do it). The heavy lifting of policy work is done by volunteers, almost always across a broad range of groups that feel they have an interest in the process. It is a global, multi-stakeholder, cooperative process that isn't government controlled, and in theory anyone can participate in if they want to. This is in contrast to the way this sort of global organisational job would previously have been done, by a room full of bureaucrats and little public attention, a process that is, we now understand, inevitably hopelessly corrupted by corporate lobbyists, just as they have at various times corrupted WIPO, trade negotiations, and parliaments. No one trusts the old process to get it right in something as complicated as internet policy, and we have been forced to evolve a post-government process to do the job. It is a new kind of thing.
And perhaps it is the future. The way ICANN does things is certainly flawed -- we spend a lot of time worrying about the very high percentage of corporate participation, and that ICANN will inevitably be drawn into seeing things from a very commercial perspective. We worry about the staff steering the process in ways that don't reflect the process. We worry that ICANN is not really free from US control, and while it is on a long leash right now that may not last. But the way ICANN works seems less flawed than the alternatives. Ultimately, the decisions are made by the people who care, no one is shut out of the process, and nothing (well, little) is secret.
Now the Caryatids division of the world is in my head, I think ICANN to me will always feel as if I am an Acquis operative warily monitoring a Dispensation project. I certainly feel as if ICANN is a Dispensational kind of thing, where capitalism speaks loudly, but for the most part the young upstarts of capitalism (with a bit of old media and a little telco establishment), full of people trying to make money out of attention and spectacle and conversation and intellectual property, always a bit wary of the strange civil society groups in the corner (who, not being motivated by money, must clearly be working from a very different set of rules).
It is part of the genius of SF writing in general, and Sterling in particular, that they can help you see and appreciate the future. But not just the possible future yet to come, but the little scraps of future that are already part of the world we live in today. No matter how mundane it may seem (and when it gets down to it, ICANN is several hundred people talking about policy for a week), new things in the world are parts of the future come early. ICANN, for all its flaws, is a new thing.