A Response to 'Linking T&T to the World: Jacqueline Morris'

Imagine my surprise when I see Jacqueline Morris announcing her interview with the Trinidad Express. I know Jacqueline. I meet her at meetings all over the place, and until December 31st of this year, I work with her on electronic networking issues for the Gender Caucus (WSIS). She's a good person, but when it comes to policy I don't often agree.

And while what I write here probably won't make it much further than this site - hardly in aggregations of Caribbean sites and perspectives - I feel compelled to respond not to her, but the article. I've been interviewed before, and I have a fair idea that what Jacqueline said wasn't completely put in the article. But there are issues that are raised in the article that I'm going to put my two cents in on, because I have my own 'printing press'. I'm also not as politically correct as Jacqueline in quite a few regards, and I'm conscious of that - I tend to cut to the chase, and be more direct. That's not really the way Trinis do things.

The Trinidad Express article, 'Linking T&T to the World: Jacqueline Morris' by Erline Andrews, has a few interesting quotes which I will disperse below - these are where the quotes come from, so you can refer to the link in this sentence.

Keeping the Net Free

...Next time you sit at your lap- or desktop coolly surfing the Internet, you might want to think of Jacqueline Morris. She's a Trinidadian working with the international body that tries to keep the Net free, fair and smoothly functioning.

Earlier this year Morris, a web expert with multimedia company Media21, was appointed to a committee advising the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the California-based organisation that oversees the technical functioning of the Internet. It's the body that determines, for instance, who gets which domain name...

There's some dispute on this, since ICANN also gets funding from the U.S. Government - and while I am probably one of the minority on the planet that would say that ICANN is doing a fair and neutral job. Jacqueline and I have hashed this out¹ on the CIVIC list when I bothered to participate on that list, and it was mainly a matter of perspective. I don't work for ICANN, and I'm not on a board, and it's questionable that the board Jacqueline is on will have any effect other than placating people by allowing them to think that they have a say. However, the more support Jacqueline and others on the recent committee get worldwide, the more leverage they have, and I do know that Jacqueline has been making every effort to involve everyone she can - posting on computing lists throughout the region and asking for input.

Still, there are no guarantees and it must be said that without input from the region, Jacqueline will be severely handicapped in representing the region that ICANN decided (however that happened³) to have her represent.

And I still support ICANN. I'm just paying attention and being critical, which is what we are supposed to be doing. Having spoken with John Crain of ICANN in Guyana⁴, I believe he understands where I stand.

...Take away ICANN, a New York Times editorial explained last month, and the result "would be a balkanised Internet, where countries or regions set up their own webs, leading to duplicate sites, confusion and a breakdown in the effectiveness of the global network"...

This is, sadly, correct. ICANN is the glue that holds the internet together because countries don't cooperate - and it's my contention that ICANN is the whipping boy for countries because they are trying to exercise sovereignity for the sake of sovereignity - a mark of 'Cold War' era economies and policies that are outdated in a period of globalization. In fact, it could be said that the Digital Divide is a matter of upgrading countries to the new globalization period - and in that, ICANN is a wonderful tool that isn't understood by many. Of course, that's all a general perspective, and there are a few other ways to look at the same thing which would be equally correct.

..."Liberalisation of communications is a very, very important step," she says. "However it is not at the level that it needs to be all over the Caribbean yet. There needs to be a harmonisation of laws, especially the ones that we need to do e-commerce."

Most countries in the Caribbean don't manage their top level domains, which is the .tt, .ja, etc, you see in web addresses...

This is a confusing two paragraph excerpt, because some people might think that top level domains - ccTLDs - are a major part of the liberalization of communications. I don't agree; and while John and I spoke about it at the Caribbean Internet Governance Forum this year - he made compelling arguments for ccTLDs, but I still do not see ccTLDs as a really important issue in comparison to other issues related to the liberalization of telecommunications. Things like simple, reliable internet access throughout the region are still a problem - and people who live outside of the capital of Trinidad and Tobago are aware of this. If they can't get a decent connection to the internet, it's unlikely a ccTLD will make a difference to them.

But ICANN doesn't affect connectivity. It deals with ccTLDs, and this is why it is discussed in this particular interview. If technology and internet issues were better represented and even discussed in the local media, this interview could be held in context by people and understood like that - but, as one of the few articles which talk about such things, there's a need to put this into the larger context of Internet Governance (or lack of said subject thereof). Thus, I felt it necessary to point this out at least on the internet - until the media starts doing a more effective job, and while I am still here.

...Morris is also involved in Cardicis (The Information Society and Cultural Diversity at the Caribbean) and its offshoot CIVIC, organisations that are trying to bridge barriers of language, culture and borders to bring the Caribbean region together and ensure that it benefits from information technology. One of the problems in the Caribbean, says Morris, is that there is not enough networking...

Quite true. There isn't. As a 'stakeholder' in CARDICIS, I'm alarmed at how little has been done in the past year since the first meeting and based on that, am realistic on what to expect from this past one, where Jacqueline came in. Oddly enough, this article does exactly what one of my contentions about CIVIC and CARDICIS has been - informing people. However Jacqueline got set up for the interview - it works, and more people involved with policy need to get with the program.

..."One of the things we're doing in CIVIC is looking to create a register of information and communication technology personnel around the Caribbean," says Morris. "So that we can know who's who and what's what and who's doing what. So if you're doing a project you don't have to start from scratch. Go on the website see it was done in Jamaica."...

CIVIC is a waste of time, and will continue to be until it defines itself. CIVIC itself has done nothing of value, and while cases could be made for it connecting some policy makers, these policy makers and CIVIC itself have not been made open and public - or for that matter, uncensored.² I put my shoulder behind CIVIC for about 2 years, and I decided recently I didn't like that CIVIC was such an exclusive club, and that it's becoming bogged down in policy which is central to the problem of what it vaguely is trying to solve.

Conclusion

However it happened, it needs to continue happening: articles like the Trinidad Express article need to continue happening to raise awareness; input into ICANN and other agencies needs to be raised as well. But there's a problem in all of this, and it's that the actual connectivity issues need to be solved before any country in the region can effectively deal with ICANN, and more importantly, the larger internet.

¹Numerous references show that ICANN is moving toward becoming independent of the U.S. IANA contract, but it remains dependent and obliged by the contract at the time of this writing - otherwise we would have heard about it, since this is a matter of perception of many people throughout the world. I'd like to see what the financials for ICANN say when they are published in 2005.
² Keeping the net free and fair would probably mean open archives and free discussion, which CIVIC does not do. I did offer to do a web portal for CIVIC in 2004, but this offer was ignored for reasons I find easy to speculate about. Simply put, CIVIC was looking for funding and couldn't get it if it got things done at no cost. Catch-22.
³ First; I don't want the 'job', and second, how the selections were made isn't too public - which goes back to 'free and fair'.
⁴ See my entry on the Caribbean Internet Governance Forum.