ICANNWiki:"Philosophy" essay by Marc Perkel

The Philosophical Basis for ICANN

What is ICANN and how does it fit into the story of the universe?

NOTE - This is in very early development. It wasn't supposed to be discovered yet. But enjoy and pass it around. Just don't edit it yet.

Thanks - Marc Perkel - marc@perkel.com

Officially ICANN is the Internet Corporation for the Assignment of Names and Numbers. Sounds fairly simple on the surface. Someone has to run the resource index. But the simplicity ends when you consider what the Internet is and the role of the internet in the evolution of humanity. In that context the role of ICANN is likely to be part of an ongoing process that might directly impact the future of human development.

If the Internet were seen as a fetus, ICANN might be compared to the first brain cells developing. In the course of human evolution this analogy might end up being spot on. If ICANN makes the right choices humanity might turn out far different than if ICANN makes the wrong choices at this critical juncture.

In these articles we are going to look at the universe as a whole. Where it's been, where it is now, and where it's going. We'll see that ICANN is actually part of the evolution of the universe. We'll see that right and wrong decisions are not subjective but that we can derive the right course through a scientific process and that our decisions can be measured and tested against objective standards to determine if we are actually on the right course. We'll see that the multi-stakeholder model might become the blueprint for the future of human society and that we have both the opportunity and responsibility to get it right.

None of the concepts in this article are in themselves that much of a radical idea. But the way it is all connected and structured is somewhat new. Because this is a different way of thinking about our role in the universe and how the Internet is humanity's future, it might take a lot of thinking and discussing to grasp the big picture. For comparison, this is as strange as when Einstein suggested that time itself is relative. The physics community at the time had a hard time grasping it. But eventually they did, and it was a breakthrough in the way we think about reality. To that end these are the important concepts.

• ICANN might be for more important in the future than people realize.
• The Internet has put humanity in a state of hyper evolution.
• Global society is an emergent property of the Internet.
• ICANN must stay the course for the global public good.
• The multi-stakeholder model might become the basis for future society.
• The positive evolution of the Internet will define the positive evolution of humanity.
• Humanity's future has two paths, positive evolution or extinction.
• Right and wrong can be scientifically derived and decisions can be objectively checked through testable standards.

Big History and ICANN

You might be asking yourself at this point, "What the heck are you talking about? How can ICANN possibly be that important?" To answer that question I ask you to expand your perspective to view the universe from the perspective of Big History. Big History is the story of the universe from the Big Bang to the present, and possibly beyond. ICANN is actually something that the laws of the universe predicts must happen.

To explain what I mean let's look at the properties of the universe. The universe is driven by a simple formula, evolution. Evolution is randomness that selects on survivability. That which survives continues to evolve. That which doesn't survive is out of the game. Evolution creates two paths, to continue to improve and survive, which is called Positive Evolution, and extinction.

Consider this; life evolves on some planet and thrives. Over billions of years it evolves greater intelligence. As this life gets smarter the individuals develop language allowing their minds to work together and build a society. Written language allows information to be stored and replicated so that the individuals in the society get the benefit of knowledge of others. The society builds a knowledge database and social software to develop and improve society.

Eventually these aliens discover electricity. Then they develop the transistor. That leads to the invention of computers. Computers lead to computer networks, and the first thing you need for a computer network is a symbolic name to resource translator. You need DNS, and to have DNS you need someone to manage it.

Thus life on another planet at the same level we are at would need to have an ICANN. The name of the organization would be different but the function is the same. Like our Internet their Internet would be the start of a global community. ICANN is a necessary step in any evolutionary process and it is important to understand that because if ICANN is effectively prophesied by the evolution of the universe, then what is ICANN's role for the future? Where is this all heading? And what should we be doing to realize our mission and do what we are supposed to do?

What is the Internet?

What is the Internet really? Is it just a bunch of computers connected together? Is it a toy to be played with? Is it a passing fad? Because it just sort of evolved out of nowhere it seems that we don't appreciate it. It's kind of counter intuitive that something that's really big and important "just happened" without anyone realizing the magnitude of something that spontaneously occurred. We went from a system that hardly existed 20 years ago to something that is so vital to humanity that if you turned the Internet off millions of people would likely die. These days everything is controlled over the Internet. It is central to humanity. And it all formed without a plan, without anyone in charge, and without a government.

Like what is happening in computer memory and processing power the Internet is expanding exponentially. The power of computers increases allowing computers to do more things and server more people. The infrastructure expands and more fiber is laid, more satellites launched, more data centers built. The expansion of capacity and the extension of reach and the lowering of cost allow for more and more of the human population to participate in the network.

Some day soon humanity and the Internet will be as inseparable as bees are to the hive. In reality, although we are individuals humans are more socially interdependent than bees are. As the Internet expands the Internet becomes an extension of who we are. It is a common mind that we all share. When I write this article my thought are instantly in front of the whole world within milliseconds after I click on "Save Page". Once out there other minds can evaluate these ideas, test them, and improve upon them.

What is Humanity and what makes us different?

Until humans evolved a species was mostly defined by their hardware. Their DNA determined how strong they are, how smart they are, if they have claws or sharp teeth, and what firmware they were born with so they knew how to hunt food and avoid being eaten.

So what makes us different? We have adapted the ability to share information. We don't have to all start from scratch. Our knowledge is cumulative and we have evolved and adapted to be completely on the knowledge and experience of others. Our societies are really a form of software created through evolution and as true with all evolution that which works tens to survive. That which doesn't work tends to go extinct. Not the most efficient way to develop software but nonetheless it shows that software is an emergent property of human networking. Our software is cumulative, that's what makes humans different. When we learned to talk we became something different than anything that previously existed. We created a new evolutionary paradigm where our software became dominate over our hardware.

For example - today's humans are genetically identical to humans 300 years ago. But today humans can fly. Humans can communicate across the world. We can see 13 billion years almost back to the beginning of time itself. We can take the heart out of one person and put it into another. Yet we are genetically identical.

The difference is in our software. When someone invents something we all share in that. Others can improve on it and we share in those improvements. The more we develop the more humanity improves itself. And the more effectively we can store and share information the faster our development accelerates.

Language was that start. Humans could tell each other things and the information was passed on. But when language started to be written then information could be stored externally to the minds and in a stable form that didn't suffer the distortions of human memory. Written language accelerated human software evolution.

Similarly radio. television, advances in transportation increased our ability to cooperate and communicate. Slave labor has now been replaced by machines. But when we invented the transistor we crossed yet another line because soon came logic circuits and the computer. (Yes, I know early computers predated transistors)

With the computer we could offload mental processes to machines. They could calculate far faster and more accurately than humans, and had more accurate memory for data and could compare and manipulate it for us much faster. These machines made it possible to offload a lot of our thinking the way machines allowed us to offload physical labor.

But when computers started to be networked even new emergent propertied surfaced. The networked computers were far more than the sum of their CPUs, memory, and storage. It allowed computers to be optimized for special functions that they made available to the whole network and if any part of the Internet had a new ability then they whole of humanity had that ability. And those abilities combined together to form new abilities as an emergent property of the network.

For example, I used my cell phone app Fandango to look up a movie. It accessed information about the movie from publishers and then accessed where it was playing from data that came from theaters. After selecting the movie I could then buy a ticket. The ticket sale talked to a credit card clearing process and the ticket was sold to me and that sale was communicated back to the theater along with a process that divided up the money to everyong getting their cut which was electronically deposited into their respective accounts.

The app then asked me if I wanted to add it as an event to my calendar, and I touched "Yes". The calendar sent the data to Google where it knew both when and where the movie was.