This week's class covers proposals for a technology history project, an infrastructure mini-presentation, and Quiz 1. Internet governance involves collective efforts between groups to establish rules for continuity. It has physical, code/logic, and content layers. Types of governance include unilateral, multilateral, all-scholars, and trade association models. Multistakeholder governance brings diverse stakeholders into decision making. Key organizations that oversee internet addressing, hosting, domains, and root servers include ICANN and IANA. The Internet Engineering Task Force has maintained open standards since 1986. The World Wide Web Consortium develops standards for web languages and protocols. Network operators care about network operations.

1. INST201 Intro to Information Science: Week 4
INTERNET GOVERNANCE AND (MOBILE)AFFORDANCES

2. THIS WEEK:
• PROPOSALS FOR TECH THROUGH TIME PROJECT
• BEGIN INFRASTRUCTURE MINI-PRESENTATION
• QUIZ 1

3. INTERNET GOVERNANCE: THE BASICS
• DEFINITION
• UN World Summit on the Information Society offers a definition that addresses a collective effort
between governments, businesses, individuals, and organizations to establish and maintain a set of
rules and procedures for continuity. (2005)
• THREE LAYERS:
PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE
CODE/ LOGIC (what makes the infrastructure work)
CONTENT (Benkler)
• ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS:
Law and policy
Economics
Sociocultural issues
Internet safety and protection (Kurbalija and DeNardis)

4. TYPES OF
GOVERNANCE
• UNILATERAL – a single organization or,
entity, controls governance
• MULTILATERAL – governance is limited
to ‘all’ or select governments/
government entities.
• ALL-SCHOLARS – governance is limited
to ‘all’ or select professional or
practitioner bodies
• TRADE ASSOCIATION – unilateral
governance specific to a business sector

5. “MULTISTAKEHOLDER
GOVERNANCE”
• a governance model that brings stakeholders from multiple
areas of society into dialog and decision making about
shared resources
• actors can include multinational corporations, governments,
civil society bodies, academic experts, community leaders,
religious figures, and other institutional groups.
• internet governance (through ISOC or other orgs) is
practiced through series of “consultations” held across the
globe. you could go to one!

6. ADDRESSING
•HOSTING
•MACHINE READABLE
•HUMAN READABLE
•DOMAINS
•ROOT SERVERS

7. RELAVANCE/
CONTEXT

8. WHICH ORGANIZATIONS
OVERSEE ADDRESSING?
ICANN - Internet
Corporation of
Assigned Names
and Numbers
IANA - Internet
Assigned Numbers
Authority

9. HOSTING

10. HUMAN
READABLE
i.e. WHAT WE SEE

11. HOW IS THIS TRANSLATED?

12. Root DNS Servers
12

13. TOP LEVEL DOMAINS (TLD)

14. MACHINE READABLE

16. THE INTERNET
ENGINEERING
TASK FORCE
1986-PRESENT
responsible for maintaining
the open standards that
comprise the internet
protocol suite (TCP/IP, SMTP,
etc)
no formal membership or
membership requirements,
all participants are
volunteers
has operated under the
auspices of the Internet
Society (ISOC) since 1993,
but began as federal
government-supported
activity in 1986
operates on the principle of
“rough consensus and
running code”

17. UTOPIAN OR TOTALITARIAN – ROUGH CONSENSUS?
Rough consensus is a term used in consensus decision-making to indicate the
"sense of the group" concerning a particular matter under consideration. It
has been defined as the "dominant view" of a group as determined by its
chairperson. The term was first used by the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF) in describing its procedures for working groups (WGs).
The means to establish rough consensus was described by the
IETF as follows:[1]
• Unlike government bodies, IETF is not a majority rule organization – the goal is that
all members will agree. The Chairperson determines if a consensus has been
reached whether there is support from 24%, 53% or 99% of participants. Opposing
views are respected and addressed, but the goal is efficiency and expediency. Does
it work well? Can we implement it quickly?

18. WORLD WIDE WEB
CONSORTIUM (W3C)
founded in 1994 by Tim
Berners Lee (inventor of the
world wide web)
founded at MIT with support
from the European
Commission and DARPA
still at MIT (you can go visit
it!)
responsible for developing
and maintaining technical
standards for the languages,
protocols, and systems used
to build and display web
content (like HTML, CSS, etc)

19. NORTH AMERICAN NETWORK OPERATORS
officially founded in
1994 by Merit, one
of the developers of
NSFNET
originally funded by
NSF, now member-
operated
cares about
network operations
has an influential
mailing list for ISPs.
you can subscribe!

20. takeaways
internet governance is massively complex and
multifaceted
no one authority is “in charge” of the internet
some of the most powerful organizations have
been volunteer-run for most of their existence
the US government was a very influential
steward until relatively recently
*standards* and *interoperability* are what
keep the internet functioning day to day