The 'New Media and Broadcasting' workshop at the World Electronic Media Forum ground slowly to a halt. The last session -- 'The Food of the Gods' -- lacked interesting ideas and engaging presenters. But maybe it was just the end of the day, and the dispiriting experience of seeing people leave one by one. At the end the event chairs tried to draft some recommendations to forward to WSIS. At least there would be some outcome from our discussions. (Whether my recommendations will get in is another issue.) Overall the event was valuable, and I learned a lot. I was also reminded of the divergence between our experience of the Web and the experience of sound and vision. Maybe Gerhard Stoll was onto something.
In the evening I attended the ICT for Development (ICT4D) Awards, part of the Global Knowledge Partnership awards program. The awards are "aimed at promoting specific, targeted applications of ICTs in four areas: gender, media, poverty reduction and youth". The event was well organised, and a nice change of pace from long sessions of presentations. However there was little said about why people had won awards, or what they had achieved in particular.
The whole focus of the Summit, not just the ICT4D event, seems to be focused on the developing world, and dominated by its representatives. Maybe this makes sense. After all the populations of the developing world are the world majority. I have also been surprised about how much criticism of the event, and the world powers, is tolerated. The event programme even includes a listing for what are effectively counter-Summit events. While people are organising parallel events the main events of the Summit -- the plenary sessions -- plough on. I haven't attended these sessions but have listened to some via the translation headsets. They seem to consist of country representatives reading pre-prepared statements, while the time set aside for discussion is in fact reserved for more statements, from representatives of intergovernmental organisations, civil society and business sector entities. (Fortunately the 3-5 minute time limit still applies.)
My provisional conclusion is that the Summit serves the following purposes:
- minor world leaders get to be statesmen for a day, and tell their parliaments and electors that they are taking part in an important world summit
- the key world powers can appear to be consulting other countries, NGOs, 'civil society', and business about an important issue
- they can provide a forum for people to vent their frustrations (as long as they do it within a certain language framework and are not over-ambitious or militant about their demands)
- the UN can feel important and forward looking again after the Iraq fiasco
- everyone else can network and have 'corridor conversations', arrange business and other meetings, have a nice time in Geneva, and generally feel important
So, everyone is happy, I think. I appreciate that this sounds horribly cynical, but you will have to trust my reports of how staged and inconsequential this whole event feels. It is really hard to imagine this event having any significant impact on the ground in our use of information and communication technologies.
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