The Internet: New principles of political right, new social contract

摘要

The Internet is now at the crossroads of the information and media spheres, at the juncture between private and public areas. Since the '90s, with the widespread use of the web and the domain name system the power to name, to identify, to search and to retrieve data on the Internet includes a deep societal and ethical dimension. Therefore one could identify multiple regimes of "governmentality" of the Internet following the track of the studies initiated by Michel Foucault. In fact, not so much the governance of the Internet but how the Internet governs the world. As a background of further analysis and researches the recent two Summits on the Information Society organised by the United Nations and held in Geneva in 2003 and in Tunis end of 2005 have agreed on a series of texts in form of Declaration of Principles, Plan of Action, Commitment and Agenda for the next five years*. In this context an impetus will be given to the bottom up "multistakeholders" approach. This will only be achieved if ethics, value and principles are put forward at the same level as any process of reflexivity. It is clear that the ambition and prospect of these texts and of the Agenda would need in order to be effective and implemented the formalization of common agreed principles and to set up adequate international instruments. In short this would imply a new social contract for the digital world.