Today's the big Summit in Geneva where all the United Nations bureaucrats and their pals have the opportunity to flap their gums about the Internet, panhandle some spare change, and do some quality Christmas shopping. Jeff Jarvis is all over it:
So it's not a matter of the big, bad U.S. and the West again trying to keep anybody from anything. It's not a matter of the U.N. being able to improve a damned thing. It's a matter of local governments and institutions joining the future. And if the U.N. really wants to be helpful, why doesn't it shame Iran and China and Cuba and North Korea and Libya (and the list goes on) into opening up the Internet to its citizens.Jeff, it's because at the top of the UN list is bureaucratic self-aggrandizement and it's much more lucrative to chastise the First World.
Jeff also reveals that there is a Summit blog complete with a virtual Jeff Jarvis!
And while we're on the subject of accoutrements, the UN really knows how to get into the useless frill aspect of things, probably because they are a useless frill. How about the Summit kid's poster contest? Aside from the kids that drank the whole pitcher of Kool-Aid (and have trouble spelling "Technology"):
there are some that didn't read the UN script:
Bwahaha!
