Re: Proposal to revise ISOC's mission statement

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Good point.  My personal bugaboo is the resurgence of walled gardens.  A platform that connected us is now dividing us.

Which suggests: NO WALLED GARDENS.

-------- Original message --------
From: Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 10/28/17 7:54 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: ietf@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Proposal to revise ISOC's mission statement

On 10/26/2017 04:18 AM, Gonzalo Camarillo wrote:

>    The Internet is for everyone.

These words mean something very different to me now than they did in the
late 1990s.  In the late 1990s, I saw the Internet as entirely a force
for good - giving people access to information, the ability to freely
communicate among one another, making governments and businesses more
transparent, helping to build a global community.

Twenty years later, the reality is somewhat different.   The Internet
has become a way for the Big Brothers of the world to conduct mass
surveillance, a way to study people's interactions in minute detail, to
compile personal information about people and to exploit that
information for profit.  This is not an accident; it is the business
model of several powerful companies and the hope behind several product
lines.  Even the "Internet of Things" is mostly about spying on people.

The Internet isn't for everyone anymore, at least not in the same
sense.   It's for spying on everyone for the benefit of the few. It's
also for spreading conspiracy and for dividing people politically, in
order to give those in power more control.

So basically I think ISOC, if it really wants to continue to pursue its
original goals and ideals, needs to find a new vision.  I suggest a
simple change:

The Internet is for *empowering* everyone.

To this end, ISOC needs to explicitly make privacy, freedom of
_expression_, and authenticity of information part of its mission.

Keith

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