David Weekly is among the many nerds occupying Tunis this week for the World Summit on The Information Society — he's doing an incredible job of documenting the experience. Here are links to his November 17 and November 18 wiki entries, where you'll read his account of Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia preso; the ICANN panel; the ubuiquity of dummy SSIDs, and much more. Snip:
I then headed over to the plenary room. Most of the talk was by very, very important and powerful people who clearly have no idea about what the Internet is, why it works, or how they'll benefit. They use very big and generic words to say pretty much nothing, and everyone claps. Most of the language concerns how great everything is going and how important the summit is. People are happy to feel important. Poor countries tend to talk about how they don't like being poor, and repressive regimes tend to talk about how dangerous the Internet is.
Saudi delegation says it should be "WECANN" instead of "ICANN". Out of technical considerations, I'm sure.
Libyan minister says the internet is used for plane hijacking and needs to be regulated. People laughed incredulously. What crack is he on?
Venezuala compares American control over the Internet to the Spanish control of sea routes in the 19th century. This is wildly off, since the Spanish actually got a cut of the traffic, but the US government does not profit from its oversight of ICANN.
Link to David's Tunis Wiki. Here is his photostream. Image: a government-produced sign promoting tech commerce in Tunisia, shot by David. "Wow, who thinks up these slogans?," he writes, "Clearly — people who love people."
Previously on Boing Boing:
Liveblogging WSIS in Tunisia, 11/16
Liveblogging WSIS in Tunisia, 11/14
