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<DIV><SPAN class=091132403-04102004>Rik,</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=091132403-04102004></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=091132403-04102004>That IS humorous. :-)</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=091132403-04102004></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=091132403-04102004><SPAN
class=531305301-29092004>Elizabeth</SPAN><SPAN
class=531305301-29092004><BR><BR>Dr. Elizabeth Carll<BR>Focal Point</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=531305301-29092004>International Society for Traumatic Stress
Studies;<BR>Chair Media/ICT Working Group,<BR>NGO Committee on Mental Health,
New York<BR>Tel: 1-631-754-2424<BR>Fax: 1-631-754-5032<BR><A
href="mailto:ecarll@optonline.net"><FONT
color=#000000>ecarll@optonline.net</FONT></A></SPAN></DIV></SPAN></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader dir=ltr align=left><FONT face=Tahoma
size=2>-----Original Message-----<BR><B>From:</B> plenary-admin@wsis-cs.org
[mailto:plenary-admin@wsis-cs.org]<B>On Behalf Of </B>Rik
Panganiban<BR><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, October 03, 2004 11:13 PM<BR><B>To:</B>
plenary@wsis-cs.org<BR><B>Subject:</B> [WSIS CS-Plenary] Bruce Sterling Blog:
Merge the UN and the Internet<BR><BR></FONT></DIV>Some not-so-serious Monday
morning reading for you all.....<BR><BR>San Francisco writer Bruce Sterling
has posted a somewhat tongue-in-cheek blog entry on the eco-tech website
"Worldchanging" where he argues that the United Nations should "marry" the
Internet. He has some interesting things to say about the deficiencies of the
UN and the internet, the WSIS process, and the ITU. I.e.<BR><BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE>At WSIS, earnest people are trying hard to make it look like our
world's net-transformation is happening on purpose. There might be a tipping
point in there -- if enough of them can agree on a societal spirit and a set
of online rules. But their rules haven't yet been invented. Why? Because the
Web doesn't know what diplomacy is. The Net has got no such idea. The Net's
got some social software, collaborative websites and buddy lists, but the
Net still lacks any deliberative tools that any diplomat or a
parliamentarian would take seriously. There are no sound methods of
establishing transparency, inclusiveness, and accountability for online
negotiators, in all the major languages. Nobody has addressed that market,
because that isn't a market at all -- that is
governance.<BR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Check it out
here:<BR><BR>http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001314.html<BR><BR>Enjoy.<BR><BR>Rik
Panganiban
<BR><BR>==========================================================<BR><BR><B>"Bruce
Sterling Is Worldchanging"<BR></B><BR>Imagine that the United Nations married
the Internet. Any matchmaking program would consider them a dream date. After
all, they're both (a) supposedly global in scale and (b) fearsomely
crippled.<BR><BR>The UN has cumbersome rules, no popular participation, and
can't get anything useful done about the darkly rising tide of stateless
terror and military adventurism. The UN was invented to "unite nations" rather
than people. The Internet unites people, but it's politically illegitimate.
Vigilante lawfare outfits like RIAA and MPAA can torment users and ISPs at
will. The dominant OS is a hole-riddled monopoly. Its business models
collapsed in a welter of stock-kiting corruption. The Net is a lawless mess of
cross-border spam and fraud.<BR><BR>Logically, there ought to be some
inventive way to cross-breed the grass-rootsy cheapness, energy and immediacy
of the Net with the magisterial though cumbersome, crotchety, crooked and
opaque United Nations. Then bride and groom would unite their virtues and
overcome those gloomy vices gnawing at their vitals. The global worldchanging
multitudes could beat back the darkness of the gathering New World Disorder
while swiftly improving the cramped lives of the planet's majority in a
beneficent orgy of networked interdependence! Wow!<BR><BR>That's a spectacular
vision, but I'm not the one making it up. Last year in Switzerland, world
delegates from 180 nations triumphantly proclaimed the dawn of universal
global access to information!<BR><BR>"We, the representatives of the peoples
of the world, (...) declare our common desire and commitment to build a
people-centered, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where
everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and
knowledge(...)"<BR><BR>The World Summit on the Information Society is the
weirdest global summit on the globe.<BR><BR>The sponsor of WSIS is the
International Telecommunications Union, an outfit that formally belongs to the
UN, but it is fifty years older. Today the terms "Union," "International" and
"Telecommunications" are all archaic, so the ITU needs a raison d'etre. The
ITU's idea of a summit looks nothing much like normal, formal UN summits,
except for the customary big hall and swarms of translators. In the WSIS
summit in Geneva in December 2003, diplomats abandoned their podiums to go mix
it up with hardware vendors. That behavior is unheard of. Odder yet, civil
society groups (normally kept at a nice safe distance at summits, shrieking
and sucking tear gas) were cordially brought right into the mix. At WSIS, the
NGOS were finally treated as what they are: connectors, network brokers, and
means of access.<BR><BR>If you want to crawl inside a big, scary, global
summit and see its entrails without even leaving your chair, then WSIS is the
summit for you.<BR><BR>There are many cautious distinctions formally made
between the UN per se, the WSIS Summit, the "summit organizing process," the
ITU, and the wsis-online.net website. For our purposes, wsis-online is
naturally where it's at. Here Kofi Annan offers you a personal invitation to
log right on to the dizzy apex of global policy-making.<BR><BR>Here it is.
Have a look. Don't be scared. These guys really need you to give them
something to do.<BR><BR>These WSIS attendees come from literally all over.
They can't find a boss, a coherent agenda, any carrots or sticks, or any guns
or butter. Instead they are immersed, apparently forever, in a dizzying host
of thoroughly unlikely, lateral, polyglot connections: the "All-Ukrainian
Association of Computer Clubs" rubs virtual elbows with the Egyptian "Free
Internet Initiative." The Malaysian Super Corridor tries hard to look really
Super. The Australian Agency for International Development wonders how to
improve matters in the Third World without getting car-bombed for
it.<BR><BR>At WSIS, earnest people are trying hard to make it look like our
world's net-transformation is happening on purpose. There might be a tipping
point in there -- if enough of them can agree on a societal spirit and a set
of online rules. But their rules haven't yet been invented. Why? Because the
Web doesn't know what diplomacy is. The Net has got no such idea. The Net's
got some social software, collaborative websites and buddy lists, but the Net
still lacks any deliberative tools that any diplomat or a parliamentarian
would take seriously. There are no sound methods of establishing transparency,
inclusiveness, and accountability for online negotiators, in all the major
languages. Nobody has addressed that market, because that isn't a market at
all -- that is governance.<BR><BR>Here's the secret of summits: heads of state
at summits do practically nothing. They have dinner there, basically. All the
real work gets done by legions of "sherpas." These summiteering technocrats
handle the choice of issues, drafts of documents, rules of order,
agenda-setting, prioritizing... the tangle of bureaucratic fooforaw that is
the life and death of nations and international bodies. Sherpas are a
digitally under-served group. Sherpas still do their labors face to face, in
big international hotels. Nobody's come up with a good way to do serious
sherpa-work online. A legitimate, accountable, binding, electronic, Net-based
way.<BR><BR>WSIS is a site for digital sherpas trying to imagine and invent
such a thing.<BR><BR>WSIS may not succeed -- but somebody probably could. Then
you'd truly have the worldchanging infant of the Net and the UN. The group
that pulled that off could be bigger than the self-appointed Davos Forum,
faster and smarter than the Porto Alegre contingent, less cranky than the
Soros initiatives, less creepy than Bilderberg, more potent than MoveOn, and
faster-spreading than Napster. Imagine that -- what if that actually
worked?<BR><BR>Bruce Sterling, Worldchanging Ally#1, is the author of a mess
of great books, including Holy Fire, Tomorrow Now and Zenith Angle, and the
man behind the curtain at Beyond the Beyond.<BR><BR><BR><TT><?fontfamily><?param Courier New>===============================================<BR>RIK
PANGANIBAN Communications Coordinator<BR><BR>Conference of NGOs in
Consultative Relationship <BR>with the United Nations (CONGO) <BR>web:
http://www.ngocongo.org<BR>email: rik.panganiban@ngocongo.org<BR>mobile: (+1)
917-710-5524 <?/fontfamily></TT></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>