The future is about the appropriate involvement of governments, not less involvement. Much though a few old timers want to look for the golden age of an Internet run by technical people, that group had to bow to the involvement of commercial players, then end users with opinions on future directions. Both were resisted. And now to that slowest of all social institutions, governments.
Government is just waking up to the fact that something important is happening in this space. It is struggling to understand it.
Make no mistake, they have the power to make an awful mess of this and some of them already are. That just stresses to me the importance of appropriate engagement and international arrangements.
No government roles around Internet are yet appropriate, either the US government engagement or the non engagement of most others. It really is important to figure this out rather than regard government as the enemy to be avoided.
