Cities were networking centers for 10,000 years before the Internet was imagined. The more robust the network the greater the city.

The mid-1990′s saw an uninvited Internet reconfigure our city’s small business, government, civic, neighborhood, and family networks – sometimes for the better, other times for the worse.

In 2012 the .nyc TLD arrives – like .com and .org, but just for New York – empowering us to re-imagine the Internet on our terms. Its arrival provides the opportunity to mold the technology to our needs, to create a more responsive and potent Internet, one that addresses the full breadth of our needs. For example,

• We can organize and shape our online resources into a digital grid, much like our ancestors did when they created Manhattan’s street grid 200 years ago.
• We can configure our Internet resources so they facilitate local network formation and the creation of a trusted TLD (and city), one providing global access to our ideas, services, and products.
• We can supplement traditional civic, social, and community networks with intuitive naming structures that speed and enrich resident and organization connections.
• We can create good local jobs and keep Internet revenue in the city through the thoughtful allocation and equitable distribution of domain names and resources.

The First 10 Years

Our effort began in 2001 with a community board’s Internet Empowerment Resolution and took a big step forward in 2009 when city hall jumped on the .nyc bandwagon. But some there argue for its operation under the Standard Model, not as the public interest TLD called for in the community board’s Resolution.

• The Standard Model with name sales indicating success – the .com TLD approach.
• The Community Model which measures success in terms of community benefits.

So with the prospect of our digital diaspora coming to an end – see countdown to submission - the question as to whether New Yorkers will have long term access to names that enable them to set up a business, civic, or personal website using good .nyc names remains in question. Will our digital infrastructure be sold off in a fire sale? Will the world be able to find us? And most important, will be be empowered to find one another in the coming digital era?

Our Work Isn’t Finished

City Hall is operating behind closed doors on this, and missing the advantages that transparency and public engagement provide. Prudence requires that we presume it is leaning toward the Standard Model, so we need to convince Mayor Bloomberg that .nyc is infrastructure that best serves if developed in the public interest. And with ICANN having released its New TLD Application Guidebook without considering the special needs of cities, the responsibility falls on New Yorkers to make sure the public interest is served.

What We Need

This is a massive change. We need to set City Hall in the right direction, then we need thousands of New Yorkers to contribute their time and talent to make sure it’s done right. Build your skills while you build our city’s network. See our CARPA wiki page for the types of insight and skills needed.

Click around our wiki and blog to learn about our mission, the advantages .nyc brings, the acquisition campaign, our governance and  domain name allocation plans, and a lot more. Then email us to get started creating a greater New York.

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