Michael Gurstein on Wed, 14 Jan 2004 21:16:42 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> I Guess You Had to Have Been There: A Reflection on Not Going to WSIS |
A Reflection on Not Going to WSIS I've been following the discussions around WSIS now for more than two years. Reading and occasionally contributing to the e-lists, following the documents as they tumble one after the other into the electronic spaces, saving trees (one assumes) but overloading bandwidths. I never had the opportunity (obligation) to attend any of the formal/semi-formal (PrepCon) events leading up to the Summit nor the Summit itself. So I have been in a rather singular position (although I'm assuming that there are many many others in a similar situation), of being informed, knowledgeable, having something to contribute, perhaps wanting to take something away, but in the end being presented with an event where apart from the occasional creaky attempts at "sharing the experience" through one or another streaming media event, WSIS might just as well for me, sitting a half a world away, have been the World Summit on the Incunablia Society, with aged and bent scholars discussing learned texts in hushed and darkened rooms cloistered from the hurly burly (the hoi poloi... Where, in the midst of the all the to-ing and fro-ing of the WSIS, was there (apart from fairly heroic efforts on the part of the CRIS and Civil Society folks) any attempt to actually use Information Technology in a way that would include/engage "the world" (it was a "World Summit" after all) in the discussions/deliberations. And now of course, the sum ups are saying that nothing much was accomplished and from this side of the telescope, that seems correct. Certainly, the fact that the WSIS process was not thrown open to the digital on-line ICT enabled world is what could have been expected from the ITU and the countries looking to maintain their prerogatives. But I think that Civil Society lost a major major opportunity, perhaps a once for all opportunity, to insist, to use all of their efforts and influence to force open the process. To get those organizing and implementing the Summit to use some of the technologies that those many folks assembled to pontificate about, to actually engage the people who are living/working/evolving with it day by day and to develop processes for enabling broader ICT-enabled participation including among those without direct access. Surely if Quake can handle several hundred thousand people simultaneously building imaginary worlds, the UN, the Swiss Government and Uncle Tom Cobbly and all could have done something equally interesting and useful in giving similar or even greater numbers of people the opportunity to contribute to building a real world. Had "Civil Society" lead the charge around this at WSIS then they could have begun the process of once for all answering the rather uncomfortable but not illegitimate questions about their representativeness and accountability. By not doing so, and by allowing themselves to be dragged into the unending and spirit destroying process of arguing over square brackets and misplaced commas, "Civil Society" unfortunately seemed ever more the representative of Christmas's past, than Christmas's yet come. Yes Marshall, the Medium is the Message. Mike Gurstein # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net