I attended an interesting briefing at the Ford Foundation yesterday that featured a couple of researchers who take a network / systems perspective to advocacy and policy change. The first was Richard Rogers, who teaches New Media at the University of Amsterdam. Richard spoke about "issue networks," which he defined as a set of actors…
UNESCO launches online consultation on WSIS implementation
UNESCO has just launched an online space for various actors to post recommendations and proposals on how to implement the various action lines of the WSIS Plan of Action. Basically it’s a discussion board, which I suppose I should be excited about. What’s interesting is see what areas of the WSIS agenda UNESCO sees itself…
Human Rights Madness: US holds up agreement on new Human Rights Council
US Ambassador John Bolton has been holding up agreement on the proposed Human Rights Council, despite the endorsement of the EU, several prominent human rights groups, and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. As a result, yesterday the the Commission on Human Rights decided to suspend their final session by a week to give the negotiators…
Off to media reform event on Thursday in DC
I’m attending a media reform activist event this Thursday March 16 at the New America Foundation in DC. They are hosting a series of discussions in the afternoon on domestic and international media policy issues, with several of the key leaders in media reform including Jonathan Lawson of Reclaim the Media, Jamie Love from the…
Signs that you are no longer cutting edge – SNL spoofs video podcasting
Saturday Night Lame, I mean, Live, did a skit spoofing video podcasting last night, hearkening back to the Dana Carvey and Mike Meyers parodies of cable access television programming. The main difference being that "Wayne’s World" was actually funny, while this barely passed as comedy. For those who didn’t suffer enough, you can view the…
My new gig: Media Reform
As I’ve been hinting over the past weeks, I am now working on media reform issues on a full-time basis. The Social Science Research Council, a distinguished non-profit that supports social science research in the public interest, has hired me as the program coordinator of their "Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Public Sphere" program. The…
NY Times Editorial on AT&T / Bell South Merger
The New York Times has an editorial in today’s edition entitled "The Call of the Wild Web" on the proposed $67 billion merger between AT&T and BellSouth. They argue that this deal has enormous potential impact on the Internet in general as an open communications platform: The health and future of the economy depend on…
APC: the Unsung Hero of the WSIS
I just finished reading a "reflection" report of the Association for Progressive Communications on the World Summit on the Information Society. It’s a nice flyover of the main issues faced by civil society and how APC navigated through a difficult international policy space. Entitled "Pushing and Prodding, Goading and Hand-holding," the report issued last month…
Kofi releases new UN management reform report
The United Nations reports that Secretary-General Kofi Annan presented to Member States his proposals for a fundamental overhaul of the United Nations Secretariat called “Investing in the UN”. He states that the organization’s rules, systems and culture need significant retooling and investment if the UN is to fulfill growing expectations and demands placed on it…
Trouble in River City: Ma Bell is Back
Reuters reports that AT&T plans on acquiring BellSouth of Atlanta, one of its only rivals in the long-distance telephone and DSL business. At a price of $67 billion, AT&T will have “residential customers stretching from Florida to California and business customers comprising more than half of the Fortune 1000.” This is an alarming trend for…