Bruce Sterling: Marry The UN And The Net

Bruce Sterling is guest-posting on the global-eco-tech blog Worldchanging and thinks we ought to marry the Internet and the United Nations. The UN has cumbersome rules, no popular participation, and can’t get anything useful done about the darkly rising tide of stateless terror and military adventurism. The UN was invented to unite nations rather than people. The Internet unites people, but it’s politically illegitimate. Vigilante lawfare outfits like RIAA and MPAA can torment users and ISPs at will. The dominant OS is a hole-riddled monopoly. Its business models collapsed in a welter of stock-kiting corruption. The Net is a lawless mess of cross-border spam and fraud. Logically, there ought to be some inventive way to cross-breed the grass-rootsy cheapness, energy and immediacy of the Net with the magisterial though cumbersome, crotchety, crooked and opaque United Nations. It’s obviously part tongue in cheek, but it does make you think