‘ICT wusses’, Nico Macdonald, spiked-IT, 28 January 2004
The United Nations-sponsored 2003 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) aims to set the global agenda for the future development of information and communications technology. But what kind of agenda has it promoted so far? With its low-key focus on the developing world, the World Summit on the Information Society suffered from a poverty of ideas.
ICT wusses
With its low-key focus on the developing world, the World Summit on the Information Society suffered from a poverty of ideas.
References
Conference Report: The World vs. The Web: The UN’s Politicization of the Information Society, World Summit on the Information Society, Geneva, Dec. 2003, by Audrey Selian and Kenneth Neil Cukier, Harvard Kennedy School [dead link: 31/10/2019]
Swiss fudge The Economist, Dec 11th 2003
Nations Chafe at U.S. Influence Over Internet, New York Times, December 8, 2003 and U.N. Agrees to Examine How Internet Is Governed December 15, 2003
UN takeover of Internet? Some are ‘not amused’, International Herald Tribune, December 8, 2003 [dead link: 31/10/2019]
UN summit fails to bridge digital divide, Guardian/Associated Press, December 12, 2003
Looking for ripples in the pond, Bill Thompson, BBC News, 12 December, 2003. “It is perhaps somewhat ironic that the real benefits of WSIS should come almost entirely from the fact that it has enabled thousands of people to meet face to face without email.”
Developing IT, James Woudhuysen, spiked-IT, 17 December 2003
“To [Kofi Annan] and others, IT’s main effect today is to reinforce myriad inequalities… Through all the breast-beating about divides, there is just a guilty desire to lead IT in the third world only in the direction of what I have termed therapy-to-victim (T2V) applications – those in health, education, education about health, and e-government. What is missed is the link between IT and wealth creation: how IT could bring the third world the kind of productivity benefits that it has wrought in the industrialised countries… IT could do much for the third world – if only people didn’t focus on its putative defects so much… For all the role that IT plays in the globalisation of technical advance, it is the globalisation of Western anxieties and Western therapeutic solutions that dominates international conferences on IT.”
Rift Over Global Info Control, Wired News, Dec. 09, 2003
Reports on “dispute is over who should rule the Internet”
Other articles from Wired News include Kofi Annan: Keep Media Free!, U.N. Summit Calls for Wired World, Tech Transformation Not All Good, U.N. Weighs Internet Ground Rules, and Tech Summit to Tackle Net Issues [dead links: 31/10/2019]
World Summit is wholesale triumph, Bill Thompson, The Register, 12/12/2003
“Those who expected little were not disappointed.”
World Summit on the Information Society kicks off, Silicon.com, December 10 2003 [dead link: 31/10/2019]
UN summit attacks digital divide, IT Week, 15-12-2003 [dead link: 31/10/2019]
[Notes] [Tasks]