Wake up. The Internet’s new dawn is upon us

For a program that sought to throw off the hackles of a bygone era, to break from dot-com tyranny and let loose the collective spirits and imaginations of the world of Internet users on its most precious possession, the new gTLD program was never going to be an easy process.

But today, it has finally been born, years later than expected, years sooner than some wanted. It is not complete. It’s not yet fully conscious. But the Internet’s new dawn is here. No longer will we be artificially constrained within the semantic borders devised by those well-meaning but conservative custodians of the old order.

'Google' is a damn silly word. But if we see it appear at the end of our web addresses next year, we will all know that something remarkable will occur there.

We live, for better or worse, in the brand era. The Internet has always had its one big brand – dot-com – but now it is time for the virtual world of Internet engineers to merge with the real world of marketers and give those brands their own space, their own lives online.

As the world grows smaller thanks to the instant and simple communications that the Internet spreads so generously, the place where we physically stand has both greater and less relevance. You may be on the other side of the world tomorrow but what you need today has to be within walking distance. In this devolved world where distance is both irrelevant and vital, only the Internet can hope to bring us the right solutions. City TLDs will be a piece of that puzzle.

And as we find friends and like-minded souls more through a computer screen than across a table, so the Internet can now develop in ways that will seem second-nature moments after they appear extraordinary. New areas of the Internet developed for communities can provide the space, the approaches and the philosophies that make sense to each group. The Internet is coming to us, we will no longer go to visit it.

Of course, there will be problems and controversies, perhaps even the odd scandal. ICANN’s rules, as lengthy and tedious in detail as they are, will never cover all eventualities. Some people will feel hard done by; others will be unfairly rewarded. Governments will worry, speculators will cross fingers, and criminals will watch for weak spots.

Looking back over the past seven years, the small group of people that have devised this radical transformation of the most important communication device ever devised by man, have good reason to be proud of themselves.

It was a messy affair, something that is too easily coated by the contrite response that multistakeholderism is “noisy”. Big mistakes were made. And their lessons have sadly not been learnt. The power was held by too few hands - often by those who talked most loudly about how the process was devised by all. People’s fears were both dismissed too easily and taken too seriously. The enormous sway of corporate power was omnipresent. Dreams were lost and good ideas crushed by short-termism, bureaucracy and control-freakery.

It has not been ICANN’s finest hour. But the process has made it through and the end result is always what matters. Tick the boxes, meet the criteria, fill in the forms, smile sweetly; this has always been bureaucracy. But once you have made it through the process and walk out into the sweet, fresh air with something new and significant, that quickly becomes irrelevant.

Lest we ever forget – the Internet is a beautiful thing. It should not be kept in a box for too long. The new gTLD program will bring it out again for the world to admire. It’s time to feel giddy again.