My Net is my Castle
Bern, 17.05.2010 - Address by Federal Councillor Moritz Leuenberger at the 13th Session of the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD), Geneva, 17 May 2010
We are all familiar with the debate about whether content defines form or whether form defines content.
"Form follows function" was the thesis put forward by the Chicago School of Architecture. It drew on observations from nature and applied them to architecture and to skyscrapers in particular.
The antithesis was that "function follows form". This served as the basis for the political architecture of today's EU with its moves towards federalist integration.
To this day, each discussion surrounding design and product, show or politics, journalism or truth is fundamentally marked by the conflicting aspects of these two theses.
- The English say "My home is my castle". Or in other words that content defines form.
- Joseph Beuys wondered: "Why are human beings so prone to violence? - Because they grow up with ugly wallpaper". Or to put it differently: form determines content.
Where does the truth lie? What is the synthesis?
- The synthesis is the internet.
The internet is form and function in one because it is both infrastructure and communication.
On the one hand it is the form or infrastructure which makes the content or communication possible. And yet the net is shaped and defined by its use, by its communicative function.
It is to this communicative symbiosis of form and function that we are dedicating today's UN event and in so doing we must first ask ourselves: what is our task?
The Net is my Castle
The net and its use represent a human need. This need is reflected in the innovative fervour of providers, technicians, sellers, and above all of users themselves.
Human beings have a primordial urge to move about, to discover, to make their mark everywhere. The internet is a castle that all want to help build and inhabit. My net is my castle, they say, and they want to use it and shape it as they see fit.
We as politicians want to allow them the freedom to satisfy this urge, as it is our task to ensure that everyone has the basic conditions to lead a satisfying life.
We must first ensure that the necessary infrastructure can be put in place.
But it's not quite as simple as building a house.
For this castle is not being built to predefined plans or on a piece of land with clearly marked boundaries. Instead, the internet has developed into a universal and limitless cosmos. It continues to grow daily, at great pace, in all conceivable and seemingly random directions with millions of people volunteering to carry on its construction. Every day countless new rooms are created and added to it. The behaviour of its users is not unlike that of a couple newly in love, who in throwing themselves into their new life are constantly discovering new nooks, new halls, new palaces and streets, breathing fresh life into them as they go. My net is my castle.
As such, the internet is now television, radio and newspaper in one. It is both book and telephone. It is a cinema, a post office and a bank. It is a place of learning, an encyclopaedia, a museum and a gallery. It is a place to meet and hold private encounters, a haunt for regulars and a village square. It is a town hall, a ballot office and a gathering ground for political mobilisation. It is a bazaar and shopping mall. It is a flea market, an antique fair and a trend lab. It is a gamer's paradise and an entertainment venue.
The success of this giant digital cosmos with its new modes of communication is altering almost every aspect of our lives. Form determines content. We realise ourselves just how much we enjoy moving through this cosmos, while we unwittingly submit to its rules.
The castle's bright and friendly halls
This leads to social changes:
- We communicate more and ever more often;
- People are using social platforms in ever greater numbers. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world.
- We can reach others anywhere, anytime and can always be reached ourselves.
This opens up economic opportunities:
- Virtually all businesses in the Western world are online, but there are also opportunities in less developed countries, too:
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- Fishermen are able to sell their catch by mobile phone before they have even come ashore and are thereby able to work more profitably.
- Using their mobile phones, farmers in poor countries are able to obtain important information more quickly and easily (e.g. weather reports, current market prices etc.).
This opens up new political opportunities:
- Many are using these new possibilities to approach and mobilise people with political messages;
- And many think that the internet and mobile phones are paving the way for global democratisation.
And that leads some to even speak of an intellectual revolution:
- There is the hope that the internet might help us along the path towards a society of solidarity and enlightenment: we share our knowledge, make it available to others and have access to other people's knowledge in no time at all.
These are the castle's bright and friendly halls, which we are keen to shape, expand and make available to all.
Ugly wallpaper and dark dungeons
But there are other rooms, too, rooms with ugly wallpaper:
- We are not only presented with economic opportunities, but also with economic risks. The divide between rich and poor, between North and South is widening.
- The net does not only promise democratisation. It is also a means of control and repression.
There are worse rooms still, dark basements, dangerous dungeons, forbidden cells: our internet-house is also a lure, a debt trap. It is a red light district with weak youth protection. It is a gambling den and an addictive substance. It is a public pillory and a place that threatens our privacy, a house with rooms used for spying and cheating, in which political control and repression are practised.
What are the house rules?
What are the rules for using the castle? What house rules should we establish?
While it is easy to say that we should "make the most of the opportunities and minimise the risks", it is easier said than done when it comes to the internet.
- Its form is ever changing. The internet is still in its infancy, rather than being at the end of its development.
- The nation state is not sufficient as a regulator. The internet embodies globalisation and the transcending of boundaries, political boundaries included.
- We have to take account of the most varied interests:
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- those of users, those of individual countries, and those of the economy;
- at the same time, interests are sometimes widely divergent even within these stakeholder groups.
Free and secure access to the castle for all
A number of broad guidelines were drafted seven years ago here in Geneva at the World Summit on the Information Society: their vision was that of an information society centred on the human being rather than on technology. In the process we created terms such as "people-centred, development-oriented and inclusive". These are meant to convey that:
- the internet should focus on people and not on technology (on content, not on form),
- that we place particular emphasis on ICT development in the world's poorest countries,
- that the internet has an integrating rather than exclusionary function.
These are the guidelines we wish to follow.
Access for all
In the same way that a country enables its peripheral areas to benefit from public transport or postal services in the interest of national unity, so the world community wants to allow people of all continents to benefit from ICTs.
- People in poorer countries must have access, too. We need new financing mechanisms and attractive conditions for investors. Corruption and monopolies must be combated;
- but the industrialised countries must also ensure comprehensive access (in Switzerland, for example, by providing basic broadband services to our mountain valleys);
- the internet must be a castle in which all languages can be spoken, not just English, French or Spanish;
- the number of women with internet access must be further increased;
- the same goes for the elderly,
- the less educated sections of society and the illiterate;
- and the same goes for people with disabilities.
Use of the internet should be safe
- We must all work together to combat internet crime, especially the abuse of children, young people and women, as well as the misuse of identities and profiles for criminal purposes.
- We should also aim to establish a framework geared towards human dignity and human rights. If we fail to do this, we are accepting the fact that the internet is abused for the suppression of free will.
Use of the internet should be free
ICTs are meant to make communication easier. They should not, however, make it easier for people to be monitored, whether on the part of governments or the economy. A citizen's privacy must also be safeguarded in the internet. That falls under the protection of human rights and human dignity, too.
At the WSIS here in Geneva in 2003, we jointly emphasised, that these goals could only be reached by working together.
Let us reflect a moment on the deeper meaning of the word communication. Communication means communality. And so it is together that we want to ensure that the net is available as an infrastructure. And together we want to let its content work for the benefit of all. A rather ugly term has been coined for this: a "multi-stakeholder-approach". It seems to have established itself and is a term under which we can all gather, as governments, members of the UN or private actors, in the service of the community.
For the most part, this approach works for the internet: the internet having itself been conceived and developed on a voluntary basis and through the consensus of developers and users. "Running code" and "rough consensus" are the magic words here. Increasing numbers of bloggers are even agreeing on common rules.
The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was created at the WSIS in Tunis in 2005. It is intended as an openly accessible forum for discussions, as a meeting place and as a space for communication and the free exchange on the form and function of the internet. We believe it is essential that the IGF continues beyond 2010. We need this forum as a place for all stakeholders to be able to discuss on equal terms what the house rules of the internet-castle should be.
Governments exist to provide people with the chance of happiness. They cannot, nor should they, prescribe it to them; they cannot force citizens to find happiness but they must facilitate it. It is for the citizens to define their own happiness and governments must make sure that this does not infringe on the happiness of others. This also applies to the internet, which is why the world's governments must increasingly work together - but always in a transparent manner.
We share a common goal:
Every human being on this earth has the right to access the internet castle. Everyone should be allowed to say: "My net is my castle".
And everyone should be protected from the ugly wallpaper and dark dungeons that are hidden within.
And for that we all share responsibility.
Address for enquiries
Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC), Press and Information service, Bundeshaus Nord, 3003 Bern, +41.31.322.55.11
Publisher
General Secretariat of the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications; General Secretariat DETEC
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