Mapping (social) reality into Internet (was: Regional ITLDS & TLD inter-fact)

[Amadeu Abril i Abril <Amadeu@bcnet.upc.es>]

Well, I think we're (as usual) messing up things.

Here in Europe we like to talk about the Information Society. Like  in
any Society in the IS many different activities are carried out, that
represetn different, compound, even antitheti interests. *Life* (social)
is reproducing itself in a different context.

Most people live in a suburb (quartier; disctrict) where they create
special relationships with neighbours; work in a different district;
goes shopping at the commercial area; visits friends and relatives in
differents suburbs; goes downtown to the theater (or sexshop) or corsses
the whole town to visit the mueseum or the Xoo Goes to the Church of his
religion, not necessarily the nearest one. Belongs to a Tennis club
thats just across the river. Spends hollidays in a differetn town.
Attends University in a different State. Relocates several times.

Work is a social activity. Business is a social activbity. Culture is a
social activity. Sex is (also) a social activity. Social relathionships
are social activities. Enterteinment is a social activity. Religion is
(also) a social activity. Very often you find districts specialized as
residential; commercial; restaurant zones, theater areas, gambling
paradises..

So in life people tend to participate in different acitivtis. They also
tend to *belong* to different (but not mutually exclusive) communities,
the most obvious being the political ones, but there are many others
(ethnic; religious; cultural; professional; or according to their tastes
as for entertainment or sports).

Now the question is: what are we mapping into the Internet, social
reality, or *just* POLITICAL and BUSINESS reality? There is the business
*community* occupying the central and bigger district (.COM, and most of
the new iTLDs). There are the sovereign States, no matter how
Internet-active their citizens are: we have the French district (.fr)
the tiny Andorran suburb (.ad) and all the ISO 3166-approved. And that's
perfectly OK.

The Internet being born under the US Military umbrella, we keep .MIL And
that's OK too. .MIL represetns a *real* community of interests on the
Net, tiny in number but strong in presence and history and homogeneous
in interests. We also keep the .EDU and .GOV, identifying their users as
belonging to the (American) academic and public-administraitons
communities.And finally we have .ORG, more or less reserved (at least it
was so) for non-profit organizations.

So for the *political-borders-or-nothing* oriented: is someone holding
an .org or .edu e-mail address necessarily a non-profit or acedemic
nationalist an a bad American? I can't see the relationship. TLDs have
nothing to do with that. States are sovereing entities ruling upon
people and territory. I don't think taht we should *necessarily* add
TLDs to that list.

We expect having such funny things as .MARCA, .PHARM or .NEWS as iTLDs.
As fas as I know neither the INTA nor any pharmaceutical industry body
nor any journalist's association owns a seat at the UN General Assembly.
But it wil not (hopefully!) prevent the births of these (or equivalent)
iTLDs. So what? It will probably be usufeul for these professional
communities (and for the INet users in general) to be identified as
belonging to or woerking for such professional communities

So a TLD means that
I-want-to-be-identified-in-internet-terms-and-only-for-this-puropose-as-belonging-to-the-xxx-community.
Nothing more and nothing less.

Please re-read the very well argued case for a .MUSEA TLD in  a recent
posting from Cary Kart: there are *other* communities around (other than
the soveriegn States and the mainstream industries) wanting a TLD. We
don't need artificial TLDs, nor we should deny them to real Inetrnet
communities, regardless of the kind of identity (cultural; profesional;
politcal) that they represent.

So if there is social demand for a given TLD (be it .PHARM, .CAT or
.LAZY) it should exist (we'll discuss later what does *socail demnad*
mean)

And remember: not personally wanting a given TLD is not reason enough
for putting it down.


(Please excuse the typos and forgive my English; historical accidents
like place of birth made it only my fifth language)

Amadeu (yes, you guessed it: I'm Catalan...and Eurpoean; and a lawyer,
and an academic. And I want a .CAT personal address, and a .EDU.EUR
academic address and a .CAT.EUR.LEX professional address...)

PS: Simon, if North Hollywood thinks they need a TLD, that they want a
TLD, and there is *enough*  social demand for it (I mean somithing more
than the Higgs family, who anyway prefer being under the .HIGGS iTLD),
well go for it. But don't deny my claim to a TLD for my contry comparing
it with claims taht only *you* put forward and that *you* (not me) find
ricidoluos. And buy some History books