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Questions I Have About City-TLDs

by Connecting.nyc Inc.'s (CnI) founder, Thomas Lowenhaupt

  This is the story of how I came to spend several years of my life developing the concept and support for a public interest .nyc TLD. I'm presenting this information on the advice of a seemingly wise councilor who stated that many "potential supporters will need to know your story" as a prelude to engaging with the effort. So the following is basically a review of the why, with some when and how provided for context. I'll add details irregularly providing an "as of" indication here - June 13, 2010. 

For background, I was born in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens, NYC in 1947. Other than attending high school in Manhattan, my early life was spent in that 'hood. Within the then prevailing view of quality locations to raise children, it was great. However, by today's standards, it was totally lacking in diversity. What diversity I did experience was via a 1960's mashup on the subway to high school - more smashup than mashup, it was a most unpleasant experience. Many painful lessons were learned from later encounters with a variegated world, and these convinced me of the benefits settling in a more diverse community (Jackson Heights) might offer as a place to raise my family.

With my subway smashups in mind, upon completing high school I headed as far away from the city as I could get, to a now extinct college in the cornfields of northwest Missouri - Tarkio. It was a formative two years during which I learned to study hard, and that something called political science existed and could be a major.

My time in the fields ended with my enrolling in Indiana State University in Terre Haute for my junior year. I transferred after surmising that, while I still disliked New York, there were limitations in a small town that were, err, limiting. So ISU was my home for the next few semesters. During these war years I became increasingly aware that cities were where the things I was learning about happened. And I returned to New York, got involved with a political campaign, and after some delay, received a degree in government studies from Queens College (CUNY).

I've been involved with civic affairs and community activities since the mid 1970's when I became active with the Charles Street Block Association. Charles Street runs east-west from Greenwich Avenue to the Hudson River, .51 miles as per Google Earth. As president of the Association in the late '70s early 80s, I was to assure the maintenance of the trees that lined our beautiful street and the metal tree-surrounds that protected them, and to make the Association's presence felt through annual street cleanups. On one occasion I was called upon to testify on a proposed building variance at a hearing of the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals. I was terrified of public speaking at the time and as I recall, my neighbors were poking me in the back encouraging me up to the podium to present the official concerns of the Charles Street Association. 

We financed the Association's efforts through a quasi-annual block party. Block Party is a New York misnomer that refers to events that close residential streets to auto-traffic for a day and enable residents to empty their closets, buy/sell their junk/treasures, eat hot dogs, and meet neighbors. Our last party raised over $5K, used primarily to maintain our tree surrounds. My good friend, the late Mel Goodstein, a Charles Street resident whom we nominated to serve on the local community board, would regularly introduce me saying "This is Tom Lowenhaupt, he's the local block-head." An apt description and excellent reminder of my humanity. Thank you Mel.

My civic activities in the 1980's and 90’s were shared between parent-teacher associations, the school board, and community board. In 1991, shortly after being appointed to Queens Community Board 3 (I'd married and moved to Jackson Heights in 1981), I began to recognize that good governance required effective communication and that local communication in New York City was abysmal. Word of mouth, phone calls, mail, and the occasional flier posted on a street light were the board’s communication channels. I attended my first monthly board meeting in April 1991 and met the person sitting to my left. In May, the person to my right.  A few months later, upon returning from the summer recess, I knew that the Major BBS I’d placed on my shelf several months earlier had a purpose after all. (I’d used it to host QWIX Guide to the Online World, a directory, or perhaps a search engine in today's parlance, I’d published on Info-Look, an Internet wannabe operated by NYNEX - an earlier Verizon incarnation.) And I began planning a BBS for our community board and an exploration of technologies that might improve the local governance process.

I remember spending a year or so learning the basics about community board process and designing a ASCII-based menu driven system to facilitate its operation. With no traces remaining, I can safely say it was an unparalleled gem. The first two users gave the system a thumbs up. But as I trained a third board member, Steve, he looked at me and asked, “Where are the pictures?” Steve, a banker, had seen some early web pages and I had to explain that they were not available at this point. After trying to turn back the tide for a few more months, the BBS went back up on the shelf to await a museum's call. It was 1999 before we were able to start a website at the community board, and 2002 before it could match what that Major BBS could do in 1993. The Net's two steps forward, one step back was difficult medicine.

­­­­My first close encounter with TLD governance, what I've come to view as The Great Diversion, came in 1998 when I submitted comments to the NTIA (the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information A­dmi­nistration) concerning their inquiry into steps that might be taken to manage the newly blossoming Internet. Over the previous few years, as the Internet’s growth quickened, ­oversight had shifted from the Department of Defense, to the National Science Foundation, and landed at the NTIA. One of the questions in the NTIA’s inquiry concerned management of the Internet's domain name system (DNS).  My NTIA comments suggested that suitable "name space" be set aside for entities not currently having access to the DNS, providing as examples Native American tribes and cultural groups. This inquiry initiated my involvement with the Internet's governance structure.

The following year discussions began at Queens Community Board 3’s Communications Committee about the prospect of acquiring a TLD for New York City. And in April 2001 Board 3 passed an Internet Empowerment Resolution calling for the .nyc TLD’s acquisition. Official support for the effort grew quickly with the local council members, our congress member, and borough president supporting the initiative. However, the events of 9/11 relegated the effort to a back burner.

2001 also saw me joining the Task Force for Community-Based Planning, a multi-stakeholder effort to improve local governance and the city’s planning process. Initiated by the environmental justice movement, with members representing community boards, city planners, academia, and community activists. The Task Force worked to support city charter changes that would empowered communities and advance community-based planning. Through my community board and task force participation I began to better comprehend the limits of civic participation in New York City and the broad opportunities a city-TLD might offer.

In 2002, with the ICANN accepting applications for an experimental round of TLD awards, I approached City Hall to suggest that it submit an application for .nyc. I saw .nyc as a natural fit for the post 9/11 rebuilding of our city and used my community board office and skills to get City Hall behind .nyc. When that filing opportunity passed (apparently City Hall thought its 2012 Olympic bid was more important), I reduced my involvement with ICANN-land and the .nyc effort. 

Three years later I was experimenting with ways to make engagement in the governance process "more fun" using SecondLife.com when Dirk Krischenowski, the initiator of the .berlin effort, contacted me to suggest that I re-ignite the effort for .nyc. Dirk indicated that much progress had been made and ICANN would be issuing TLDs to cities "soon" and that while .nyc might not be able to be in the first group of new TLDs issued, the opportunity was at hand. 

I was reluctant to reengage, having assumed my responsibilities for .nyc should have ended with the passage of CB 3's 2001 Internet Empowerment Resolution. My view of the governance process was that "we" (the grassroots) initiate, then "you" (government) follows through. (This probably reflected a weakness in applying my government studies and inadequately linking theory and practice.) And I began many months of evaluation of ICANN’s intentions, the state of the Net, my lessons from the Task Force, the impact globalization and the .com Net had had on my city, and my other responsibilities.

During my early mullings I presumed my approach would once again be to encourage City Hall to be the applicant for the .nyc TLD. But after some months of research, recalling my experiences in 2003, observing the structure of the .berlin effort, and not finding anyone inside or outside government willing to lead the effort, I discussed the options with my family and some local supporters and decided to reengage. And in September 2006, having concluded that, with the Net's ever increasing pervasiveness, the .nyc TLD could be more beneficial to the city than I'd ever imagined,and I took steps to create a not-for-profit to house the effort. And in late September I appeared before the ICANN Studenkreis in Prague on behalf of the Campaign for .nyc.

At that point I had been developing the BeyondVoting Wiki, which examined structural and operational issues to community boards and local governance that technology might enable. I did a big cut and paste to a "Campaign for .nyc" wiki and began thinking through the possibilities. That cut-and-past is now this 140 page wiki - with a few of those wiki-pages the equivalent of 15 typed pages long.

My insights into the possibilities of a city-TLD regularly evolve. In the first months of the Campaign, with the cost of good .com names steadily rising, my development efforts centered on promoting the advantages small businesses would realize from an entire new set of domain names. Soon thereafter the opportunities and advantages portals would offer to connect residents and visitors to our city's resources - both traditional and digital - became apparent. With that, the prospect of good jobs for those developing these portals became clear. And then, fluorescent-like, the impact identity and intuitive domain names would have on city life dawned.

As the months (now years) passed I began imagining ways the .nyc TLD might help overcome the historic civic communication gaps that resulted in disaster being the all too frequent first indicator of local problems. My years in Terre Haute and on the community board led me to create a table comparing communication resources in the two areas:

Yes, NYC is the "world's communications capital," and if something out of the ordinary (particularly something disastrous) happens in District 3, it will be flooded with cameras and reporters of almost unimaginable scope. But the mundane daily needs of our community are of little interest to our "capital" media - you can't call the New York Times or CBS about that pothole outside your building or the hungry fellow down the block. And the "local" media is not quite local. For example, New York City's "local" TV stations serve an audience of 17,000,000 with an average community district but 1% of the audience. Consequently, local TV coverage of community issues is abysmal. And beyond a few weekly newspapers covering portions of our district, there is no local media.

Lately I've been looking for a coherence between the lessons provided by my Task Force work, the limitations of our industrial era local communications system, and the opportunities a concerted switch-over to a city centered TLD might provide - perhaps paralleling the switch in 2009 from analog to digital TV. Sometimes I dream about a potential windfall that might arise from premium name sales (e.g., sports.nyc) and how it might be invested in digital education. Other times I wonder if neighborhood domain names, e.g., astoria.nyc, bensonhurst.nyc, might provide the organizing power to overcome the local civic communications gap and transform the Net into a more effective local medium.

Inspired by the Obama era, I wonder if quality communication can change the way our city is governed, if effective local communication can better engage residents and make the grassroots more central to the decision-making loop. Is it too late to change the Internet from a globalizing force that diminishes the proximity and neighborly role of cities to one that uses the Net's power to addresses local, people oriented needs?

My involvement with the .nyc TLD is now eight years longer than I'd anticipated with another 2 years required before .nyc names are issued and we start realizing some of the promise. I'm not sure if there will be a place for me in that enterprise. By that point I'll have been involved for a decade and perhaps ready for something new. Perhaps there will be a good .nyc name upon which I might build that endeavor.

Recent City Developments

In February 2009 the city formally announced (via Council Speaker Chris Quinn's State-of-the-City address) that New York supported the concept of acquiring .nyc. With that, a second of our three tasks was completed (the first was getting ICANN to OK city TLDs). We now need to battle the devil - making sure it is operated in the public interest. So my goals these days are threefold: to make sure .nyc is operated in the public interest (90%), that we, Connecting.nyc Inc., guide its development (9%); and finally, that I get reimbursed for my out-of-pocket expenses. 

Afterthoughts

Upon reading the above one might conclude that I reluctantly hold my current position. And while I held a "someone's got to do it" attitude toward the .nyc task early on, over the years its become clear that the role fits my experiences and inclinations perfectly - local governance and technology are my interest and my expertise.

So that's a whole lot about be. Hopefully I've fulfilled that adviser's charge and provided enough information about me to enable an informed judgment about supporting our effort.  

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Unwoven Bio… Mr. Lowenhaupt's professional career spans the hands-on and policy realms. He has been involved with information technology since the late 1970’s. As an interactive marketing consultant, he provided guidance to firms in the insurance, telecommunications, and banking industries, developed public information kiosks, operated email and listserve systems, and published an early online directory of online services. Beginning in the mid 1980s he provided an innovative Marketing by Diskette service to Fortune 50 firms in the telecommunications and banking industries. He sees "play" as a prerequisite for the public's enthusiastic participation in civic life and was a founder of Games for Change.

His civic engagements include serving as president of the Charles Street Association, co-founder of the Friends of the Renaissance School, member of Queens Community Board 3 (1992-2006), LaGuardia Community College's New Media Advisory Committee (current), participant in the U.N.'s Internet Governance Forum, and other civic positions.

He earned an advanced degree from the ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts), and a B.A. in government studies from Queens College (CUNY). Out of college, he worked as a planner for a transportation regulatory agency. He wears a size 10 shoe.

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