UN Summit Conference, Geneva--Dec 2003

ldyguique · #1 (**permalink**) 12-21-2003, 03:55 PM

At the risk of being chastised for cross-posting, I think that this topic is of incredible relevance for WPW and I'm copy-pasting most of my posting from another forum thread that I made today.

The UN Summit in Geneva was actually a fairly important conference for a number of reasons and will not really be going away as there are some fundamental issues that deeply affect the true globalization of the world -- haves vs havenots, industrialized nations vs emerging nations. The UN has become the forum for emerging African nations to at least whine and bellyache--not to minimalize some very real and pressing issues that Africa faces.

One of the strangest issues of the internet is that nations afflicted with poverty and all of its attendant companions of disease, starvation, and civil war have little or no infrastructure for being online. Yet, they perceive that they are being left out and left behind. Which they are. It does require electricity and telephone lines at the very least -- in otherwords, it requires a level of urbanization.

It also requires literacy, literacy in any language, and many of the smaller ethnic groups do not have a translated language that is part of the computer world. There is a profound issue of whether or not bringing literacy to the Third World will require that they learn English, Spanish, or Fremch as these are the primary languages of the net.

China, which not only has a huge proportion of the world's population, has over a 100 ethnic languages; however, it learned at least 2,000 years ago a method of bridging this divide -- Mandarin. It's considering starting it's own internet as much of what is relevant to the Western world isn't relevant to them; so, why bother to translate.

The internet is a dagger to the heart of many countries and cultures that didn't even have a centralized government 40 years ago, let alone a government based on any Western principles that include free exchange of information. This is not an easy topic for them to grapple with and has profound possibilities.

It's quite possible that what we'll see as the next wave for the internet in non-urbanized regions will be conducted through the cellphone. Just as some of us bypassed 8-track tapes -- went from vinyl discs to cassette tapes, in the ever-changing world of media format; they may bypass the computer as their means of interpersonal distance communication -- both voice and text. This holds possibilities and adds to the angst of their leaders as cellphone communications don't stop at the borders anymore than the internet does.

If it does include computers in the more urbanized areas, it is likely to include older-vintage computers with an open source OS platform as this is a far cheaper method of buying into the computerized world.

This entire topic will blossom and grow over the next decade. Just as the internet for all practical purposes in terms of growth is less than a decade old for the west, it's going to be a huge issue for globalization in any true sense during the next decade.

A last thought. While the UN Summit Conference was going on, I was keeping abreast of the issues and reading news articles and even read about the post-conference expose` that the conference security badges contained so-called smartchips that tracked each attendee's whereabouts. Three journalists obtained these conference badges with minimal security during the conference and then examined them closely following the conference.

I can find virtually NONE of those news articles today on GoogleNews and they are less than 10 days old.

Here are some of the very few links that I did find:

Internet summit OKs Web for world's poor
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103_2-5123709.html

Summit addresses the Internet's Western tilt
(published today)
http://www.sunspot.net/technology/ba...logy-headlines

UN INTERNET SUMMIT HELD; DISSENTERS IGNORED
http://www.2600.com/news/view/article/1833

UN: Internet Summit Exposes Digital Divisions Between Rich And Poor
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/20...2003162337.asp

Organisers under fire for poor show
http://www.thedailystar.net/2003/12/15/d31215011313.htm

mikmik · #2 (**permalink**) 12-21-2003, 10:51 PM

from the first link listed by Idyguique(Zdnet) :

Quote:

The declaration committed them to using telecommunications technologies, such as the World Wide Web and cellular telephones, to boost economic growth and meet United Nations development targets for eradicating extreme hunger and poverty by 2015.

"The declaration represents a sort of constitution for the information society which must contain a social dimension and foster development," said Swiss President Pascal Couchepin, whose country hosted the U.N.-sponsored gathering.

Around 90 percent of the world population is not connected to the Internet, depriving them of a 21st-century resource and digging a "digital divide" between rich and poor. But richer states, notably Japan and the European Union, which generally did not send top government officials to Geneva, resisted calls for a "Solidarity Fund" to close the gap. (my emphasis)

As a compromise, states agreed to study the issue further and report back before the follow-up summit in Tunis in 2005.

Yikes!

Quote:

Paulhiles wrote : Quote:
Technology can be an incredible tool to one person, and a mystery to another.. where the future lies God

only knows, let's hope we can all be wise enough to realise that not everyone may quite reap the same

benefits as ourselves.

Yes, good point Paul.
I think that technology obviously affords us more 'rights' : the right to communicate 24/7 on computers,

the right to live longer, the right to employ these powerful technologies. However, with rights come

responsibilities.
Lets remember that the greater the gap between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots', the more angry become the

neglected, and whether they are 'whiners' or have lack of character or what (I don't agree, but another

time), they become violent eventually. They rob and or destroy to 'balance' against their percieved

injustice.
The enviornment can only sustain so much exploitation before the very foundation of our ecosystem

collapses, and then no amount of technology will be able to repair the damage and the earth stops being

able to support life.
Let's not forget the responsibilities that go along with our luxuries, let's not continue our path of

easy instant gratification, because our selfishness will destroy.

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic...anity&start=25