I’m helping out at the annual NGO conference organized by the UN’s Department of Public Information every September at UN headquarters. This year is particularly important as its the five year review of the Millennium Summit and the Millennium Development Goals agreed to by governments in 2000. Right now I’m squatting in the lobby between…
Category: Information Society
SOHO Sweatshops?
Cindy and I just went to see the interesting tour at the New York Tenement Museum called “Piecing It Together: Immigrants in the Garment Industry,” which details the lives of a couple of families around the turn of the century who ran little factories in their homes. It makes me wonder how this compares with…
My thoughts on the Internet Governance report
The Working Group on Internet Governance released their final report a couple of days ago, which will be formally presented tomorrow at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. I have had a brief look at it, and in general like what it says. The fact that civil society had such a strong presence among the…
Personal Safety and Electronics in Public
I was on the subway the other evening and noticed a young man pull out of his messenger bag what looked like a small laptop. I watched him plug in a set of headphones, drop in a silver disc, and then settle in to his seat. I realized that it was a portable DVD player…
Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe
David Bearman corrects me on my reference to the principle of “Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe” (which I incorrectly called “Keep Lots of Copies of Stuff Everywhere”). The LOCKSS principle is more than 10 years old, credited to Sun Microsystems Laboratories’ David Rosenthal and Stanford University Library’s Vicky Reich. The technical details of the…
How do you translate “Multi-stakeholder Partnerships” into Russian?
At this WSIS conference in St Petersburg it seems clear to me that “multi-stakeholder partnerships” are very much a foreign notion still. Various Russian participants explained how difficult was to gain entry into the policy-making processes of their own government, whether they be businessmen, activists or ICT experts. Indeed, the Soviet legacy appears to be…
Why I Love Thee, CSI
I must admit, I am hopelessly in love with the television program “CSI” (Crime Scene Investigators) and its spin-off “CSI:Miami.” The show is just the perfect equation of nerdiness, mystery, and sex appeal that’s impossible to resist. Why do I love it so? you ask. The reasons are simple: Really Hot Nerds: The show features…
Googling the UN Document Server
The United Nations has added another search function to their two existing “simple search” and “advanced search” functions already on their Official Document System, and you get one guess where they bought it. For those who haven’t been following the news, earlier this year the UN publicly released their online archive of documents — including…
Cramming into the Kram for the WSIS
Francis Muguet of the Reseau de Connaisance et Societe de l’Information (France) sends out to other WSIS folks detailed information on the arrangements for the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis this November. He notes that “150 heads of state” are slated to attend, including President Bush. In addition, he warns that all…
The reluctant web developer
When you are known as the “techie guy” and you have little patience for complaining, you end up getting volunteered to do stuff that you really aren’t qualified for. Case-in-point, the web-based community calendar I am developing for NGOs at the United Nations. Not something I would have ever imagined coming across my desk, and…