On 07/03/17 07:28, Schweighofer Erich wrote:
... Some ontology work can help.
Although it referred to ontoGENY (and Häckel's oft-misquoted hypothesis remains discredited in that context), in the ICANN context ontoLOGY really does recapitulate phylogeny. Or as Santayana put it, if we do not remember the past, we shall be doomed to repeat it. Language is a tool. ICANN (and the wider tech community) has too often subscribed to the view of Humpty Dumpty to our disbenefit. (See below). To define the word "organisation" NOT to include the wider ICANN organisation (i.e. the staff and community) is to invite misunderstanding and confusion from outside agencies and outside media who will not understand that 'organisation' only means PART of the organisation. I have a long memory where ICANN is concerned. The VERY first DNSO Council meeting (today's GNSO and ccNSO together) of which I was a member, had an utterly Pythonesqye quarter-hour where the speakers of American English and British English suffered from entire and complete mutual incomprehensibility following one member;s suggestion of "tabling" a motion until ICANN Chairman, Esther Dyson, sitting on the floor under the stage intervened to translate each the other's confusion. " "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you /can/ make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master-that's all."