Monday, November 21, 2005

Probing the information highway

Is the Internet at risk?

Last week's summit on expanding Internet access around the world ended with a firm promise to narrow the digital divide. However, that promise lacks little in government funding to make it happen.

The World Summit on the Information Society originally was conceived to raise consciousness about the divide between the haves and have-nots, and to raise money for projects to link up the global village, particularly Africa and Asia and South America.

But instead, it was overshadowed by a lingering resentment about who should oversee the domain names and technical issues that allow people from Pakistan to Peru surf Web sites for information, news and consumer goods.

Take a look at two points of view - an editorial in the Washington Post and a CNN News report.

Relevant: ICANN, Basque News and Information Channel, CNN/Reuters

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2 comments:

S A J Shirazi said...

This is the cloncluding para of my Dawn.com column:

Apart from the fact that there is a consensus on internet for every one, the World Summit on the Information Society (that was termed as a Summit of Solutions) claims of success by the United Nations, but many stakeholders refuse to wholeheartedly embrace its outcome. Success or failure is too strong to characterize the summit. Let's say the summit has been valuable. The impact is yet to be seen. And village Thatta Ghulmka Dheroka in the backwaters of Punjab has to wait more that 2015 to get connected to the Internet.

Does it give my point of view?

Deb Sistrunk Nelson said...

Shirazi, you have done a great job of staying on top of this issue. To everyone: If you'd like to see more reporting on the Internet control issue, check out Shi's post, One laptop per child. He also writes an article on the blog it is write. An op-ed piece by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan is online at Dawn.com.