Going WSIS?
Public Discussion
In December of this year Geneva will host the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Behind the facades of the proven all-inclusive UN summit rituals the participants are supposed to develop 'a common vision and understanding of the information society'. The 'common vision' developed during the WSIS charade, of course, will serve to occlude the real agenda of the Northern bloc: increasing control of information and consolidating intellectual property in order to advance its interests on the global scene.
The Geneva_03 group, an affiliation of autonomous media actors, first came together during the Hub in Florence's European Social Forum in 2002. At <geneva03.org> the collective offered a live stream from the last G8 meeting, held in Evian. Since then they have been working on a framework that responds and formulates alternatives to the WSIS process. This framework will result in a parallel event to be held in Geneva concurrently with WSIS in December 2003.
This public discussion is aimed at giving this and other groups the possibility to discuss their diverging perceptions of the WSIS process and strategies of intervention with other parts of the critical media community.
While the structure of this public discussion is very much dependent on the composition of the participants and their input (Geneva_03, CRIS (Communications Rights In The Information Society and Public Netbase/openflows.org have been asked to participate) the discussion will structure itself around the following points:
1. What is at stake in the WSIS process?
2. What are the issues that WSIS fails, deliberately or otherwise, to address?
3. How can we deconstructing the myths of 'civil society' and the 'digital divide'?
4. Who's in and who is out? What is the agenda of those NGOs that participate under the 'civil society' label? What can be done with their empty political correctness?
5. A brief introduction to the alternative frameworks/approaches currently planned concurrently with WSIS.
6. How can we realise contestatory strategies that don't mirror the rhetorics of those whose practices we oppose?
(Please note: in addition to this public discussion, there will be an open preparation meeting for the counter-WSIS preparations on Thursday 11/9 in Amsterdam. Interested parties wishing to attend the meeting should send mail to prep-l@geneva03.org beforehand for details of the location and time. This public discussion is aimed at giving Geneva_03 and other groups the possibility to discuss their perceptions of the WSIS process and strategies of intervention or alternatives with other parts of the critical media community.)