Chief Internet Evangelist is a very expressive title. This is what Google calls Vint Cerf, who now works for them. He was the keynote speaker at Internetdagarna, Sweden's most important yearly Internet conference, arranged by the Foundation for Internet Infrastructure, that runs the Swedish ccTLD, country code top level domain, .SE.
Afterwards Google arranged an informal but very cozy and rewarding luncheon with Vint Cerf. Photo(s):
(At the end the names of the participants are found.)
We were asked to present ourselves and I called myself Chief Internet Freedom Acticvist. Not entirely wrong :) And it made Vint Cerf talk about the philosophy that I sometimes call the "soul of the net" (and which Rasmus Fleischer of the Pirate Bureau calls the ontology of the net).
"The democratic style was the purpose", Cerf claimed. "We wished it to be available everywhere. There would be no patents and we never asked the military permission before we sent the specifications out into the world. Nobody noticed!"
"The idea was that you should be able to build your own network and connect to the existing network without asking for permission".
"A very important effect of this openness has been to push development of new software and appliations out into the edges of the network. Everyone can develop applications without asking for permission from anyone which has resulted in enormous creativity and development. The innovation comes from users themselves."
Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister, met Vint Cerf (who was chairman of ICANN for 7 years but not anymore, even if Bildt writes that) and worried about Sweden's slide from the top of Internet countries.
I am not so sure. World Economic Forum ranks Sweden number two in the world. We are doing very well. At the lunch session I claimed that we are leading the world when it comes to affirming the new world opened up by the net: We have the first Pirate Party of the world, a cultural movement called the Pirate Bureau, the leading torrent site in the world, The Pirate Bay, a very loud opposition against state surveillance of internet traffic and so forth.
I was a little surprised that Cerf purshed Amitai Etzioni's book
Limits to Privacy as reading in the privacy area. I have not read it but from my economics period of my life I know Etzioni as the grand old man of communitarianism. It is quite different from the freedom-loving libertarianism that is normally connected to Internet values. It stresses the value of "the community" rather than the individual. Well, I love the Internet since I believe it can enhance understanding between people just by exposing the whole range of human possibilities for others. And in personal life many internet "liberatarians" are community-oriented who love sharing.
But I can see the book as quite useful. In order to win political points it may be necessary to use rhetorics that are more collectively based. Etzioni has four criteria for when a community may impose restrictions on privacy. The first two are very relevant for the current FRA debate in Sweden: General interception of all Internet traffic that cross the border by Sweden's National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA). These points have never been investigated: "First, is there a "well documented and macroscopic threat to the common good, not merely a hypothetical danger?" If so, what are the available options for dealing with that danger without first resorting to restrictions on privacy?".
I mentioned Etzioni's reasoning today at the conference Internetdagarna where I participated in a panel about FRA with paf, Daniel Westman and Fredrik von Essen, moderated by Johan Hallsenius.
For the Swedes, primarily: Around the table above we have, starting with the guy whose finger you see by the little mobile screen in the foreground. Jussi Karlgren, Christer Berg (arm and legs), Stefan Görling, Sofia Nerbrand, Rasmus Fleischer, Vinton G Cerf, Richard Gatarski (hidden), Peter Nou, Erik Starck, Fredrik Wass, Per Gudmundson. Completely invisible are Urban Lindstedt and myself.
And, yes, I write this in English since Vint Cerf commented that me and others were taking photos with mobile phones and went talking about new behaviors through new technology and also asked to have links to blogs sent. Not that I believe he will read this, information overload is the problem of the net, rather than lack of incentives to create :)
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