Undetected by most media Richter scales, important shifts are taking place beneath the architecture of globalisation. Journalists’ silence about this story is surprising given that much of the movement has been directly about the media and their relation to other powerful pressures welling up from subterranean levels.
For those of us who scurry about on the surface, some information of what is changing down below does come to our consciousness from time to time. Two recent manifestations were the news about the tabling of the Convergence Bill and the government’s final decision about who will own the new rival to Telkom.
You may also have heard other recent snippets emanating from the out-of-sight seismic developments. Perhaps you stumbled on dispatches from the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva earlier this month.
That occasion was addressed by our Communications Minister, Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri. And much of the outcome there owed its shape to a second South African, Lyndall Shope Mafole, who oversaw the drafting of the final WSIS declaration. Some of these stories were covered by the Highway Africa news agency, of which I was part.
But even if you follow these things piecemeal as they come along, you are still unlikely to get the bigger picture that frames them all. You may therefore well have a fuzzy feeling about interconnections between the Convergence Bill, the second national operator (SNO) and what South Africans were tackling in Geneva. And yet, these happenings are part of a wider patchwork of countless ongoing initiatives. Together, they are collectively contributing to a globally integrated information and communication system, which in turn more and more underlies humanity’s economic, political and social wellbeing.
Dubbed the information society, this expanding series of interconnections of technologies, content and transactions is what underpins, defines and facilitates globalisation today. The information society label highlights the growing impact of information and related computer technologies on all walks of life: from armaments to commerce, education to farming, governance to health and manufacturing … even (of course) security, sex and terrorism. The key thing is who defines the terms of all this, and how the various applications interlink in terms of physical connections and paradigm perspectives.
The point is that beneath seemingly scattered developments in legislation, telecoms business, international summits and the likes, an underlying machinery is being constituted. It is one that will continue to shake up some structures, see the rise of others and leave very little untouched. This is why the complex phenomenon designated by ”information society” deserves your attention.
What happened at the WSIS helps to bring all this into focus. The fact that 13 000 people with power and influence converged under UN auspices to debate the issues is significant to start with. These players operate with a holistic understanding — and with an agenda. They hope to coordinate the myriad diverse processes already under way or in potential. The aim: to hasten the construction of a single, networked world. There is, of course, much debate among them about what this world should be like.
To take one example, WSIS gender caucus convener Gillian Marcelle remarked at the summit: ”Women’s perspectives can contribute to making the difference between an information economy, where gambling and pornography account for the most profitable applications, and a true information society that serves human development.”
Her comment contrasts the dystopian and utopian dimensions of these deep developments. More pessimistically, an article by analyst Cees Hamelink circulated at the WSIS describes the extant information society as an Orwelllian social order wherein free speech is routinely violated, surveillance is stepped up, corporates control intellectual property, and access to information depends on purchasing power.
Unsurprisingly, most WSIS participants stressed more optimistic possibilities. Yet, even although the summit was conceived during the glory days of dot.com and telecoms speculation, by the time of its convening in December, the old hype of yesteryear had been toned down somewhat.
Thus, even the World Bank released a study at the WSIS expressing caution about how ICTs — the jargon for information and communication technologies — could help solve global problems. And information society advocates also gave recognition to some of the all-too-evident problems linked to ICTs. One example was spam, another the widening technological and productivity divide between the connected and the disconnected. The dominance of English and threats to non-Western cultures were also identified.
In this way, the WSIS not only put the information society up for consideration, but aimed to help steer our understanding between the extremes of it being wholly good or wholly bad. In providing insight into the geology beneath us, the WSIS tackled a host of interdependent issues — free speech, access rights, intellectual property issues, capacity building, confidence and security, internet governance, culture and language diversity, ethics and investment.
What also made the summit significant was that not just governments and business were recognised as having contributions to make. Civil society organisations and the media were also officially seen as important stakeholders. Said Swiss President Pascal Couchepin at the end of the WSIS: ”This new form of international dialogue cannot be taken for granted.”
He warned: ”States are not in the habit of relinquishing their prerogatives.”
Not that the Geneva dialogue translated into complete consensus. Civil society groups finally issued their own declaration, distinct from that of the governments. They gave great attention to communication rights, community media and gender plus development matters.
Even among governments, there were major differences about:
- The media’s place, and media freedom and independence versus ”responsibility”, within the emerging global information society;
- Governance systems for the internet, and especially the legitimacy of the California-based company Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), which manages names and spaces on the internet; and
- Mechanisms to fund ICT infrastructure in Africa.
On the media, a compromise was reached whereby all governments agreed to respect the free speech rights of Article 19 of the UN Declaration on Human Rights, but qualified this with a clause that these rights could be curtailed in terms of Article 29 in the interests of ”meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society”.
Nonetheless, the WSIS declaration still said that media freedom, independence, pluralism and diversity are essential to the information society, and acknowledged that existing media (including broadcast and print) continue to have an important role.
Without the substantial lobbying that took place, things could have been much worse. A global conference on the information society could well otherwise have stuck to technological issues alone, thereby lessening pressure on regimes such as those of Robert Mugabe and King Mswati to close the human rights divide in their own countries.
Tracey Naughton, chairperson of the WSIS media caucus group that had to appeal to UN General Secretary Kofi Annan in order to keep Article 19 in the WSIS declaration, made the point: ”An information society without media would be like agriculture without farmers.”
At the end, the WSIS declaration encouraged governments to provide access to public official information and to develop ”domestic legislation that guarantees the independence and plurality of the media”.
The internet governance controversy was postponed to the second phase of the WSIS, which will be held in Tunis in November 2005. However, the principle was agreed in Geneva that international ”management” of the internet should be ”multilateral, transparent and democratic”, involving governments, the private sector, civil society and international organisations.
It went on to say, however, that only states have the rights and responsibilities for international internet-related public policy issues and that these need to be addressed in a coordinated manner. Other stakeholders (the private sector, civil society, international organisations) are defined as playing only supportive roles.
From business representatives at the WSIS came the view that ”internet governance” is a contradiction in terms, because this ”network of networks” depends on loose collaboration between various technical bodies that keep ”traffic on the information superhighway flowing smoothly and efficiently”.
Said a business statement: ”The fact that there is no real locus is one of the internet’s most important features.”
But the same statement was also silent on a key problem mentioned in the WSIS declaration: the need for action on spam and cyber crime. Meanwhile, for Icann, the challenge will be to open up to meaningful participation and hence legitimacy for itself — or likely face its functions being transferred to the UN’s International Telecommunications Union.
The debate on funding for Africa was multifold. The Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation argued that divides of policy, regulation, technology and capacity are being closed, and that it is the ”capital divide” that remains as the key obstacle to universal access. Other WSIS participants commented that water and power are more or as important areas for funding. Who will finally contribute to such a fund, how it will be implemented, and whether it will be for private or public purposes, were other issues under discussion.
Likewise, there were rumblings about whether a fund will leave intact the ”monopolisation” of knowledge under the World Intellectual Property Organisation and the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. Thus, although the WSIS said there should be a ”digital solidarity agenda” to help develop inclusivity by financing infrastructure, capacity building and content, the issue of ”how” will be investigated before Tunis in November 2005.
Despite the absence, against African wishes, of a mandate for a digital solidarity fund, the WSIS governments still signed up for specific responsibilities, and in particular to set targets for e-strategies by 2005. Agreed guidelines for these targets include: securing connectivity for villages, educational and health institutions, and government departments by 2015. In addition, governments were encouraged to adapt school curricula and to facilitate local content and local languages on the internet.
One approach that was agreed upon was a triumph for neo-liberal economics, with governments concurring with the mantra that states should create environments that foster not only transparency and predictability, but also ”fair competition” — all in the interest of encouraging investment flows into ICTs. In this perspective, if the digital divide is to become a digital opportunity, then it is governments’ responsibility to ensure that market forces favouring private business are able to flourish.
It was not exclusive free-marketerism prevailing, however. The WSIS declaration also acknowledged that governments should ensure universal service in areas ignored by the market, for example by means of public access points. The document further includes a reference that ”a rich public domain is an essential element for the growth of the information society”. It adds elsewhere that ”many of the building blocks of the information society are the result of scientific and technological advances made possible by the sharing of research results”.
Accordingly, the declaration says there should be open access initiatives for scientific publishing. But to the disappointment of civil society advocates, it stops there, and shies away from the same principle when it comes to support for open and free software. Nor does the declaration challenge intellectual property protection regimes. Instead, it simply repeats the rhetoric that these are important factors for encouraging innovation and creativity.
In contrast to the logic of profit incentives for building the information society, the civil society WSIS declaration describes knowledge, information and communication resources as being the common heritage of humankind. Thus, it encourages not only individual but also collective innovation.
In a bid to highlight the importance of an ”information commons” in the information society, the civil society document notes: ”The increasing privatisation of knowledge production threatens to restrict the availability of research results.”
Many civil society proponents cited the development of the Linux operating system as evidence of non-profit driven collaboration in the interests of an information society for all.
If the WSIS was about taking stock of the issues in the emerging global information society, how do we take stock of the occasion itself? Not surprisingly, United States President George Bush did not grace this UN event with his presence. But nor did key advocates of ICTs such as South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki. As such, the summit lacked some of the gravitas and mainstream legitimacy that it could otherwise have had.
Its lack of presence in much media coverage can also be deemed to be a downside. On the other hand, several achievements can be chalked up:
- Media freedom and plurality was highlighted, and governments and monopolies can be held to account where these are infringed;
- Not only governments, but civil society, business and media were recognised as stakeholders in a UN process;
- Current Internet governance systems (including actions against spam) will be reassessed; and
- The concept of ”digital solidarity” has created, and may yield some concrete mechanisms.
Governments will need to boast or back away at Tunis in 2005 in reporting what they have been doing to meet connectivity targets, create ICT competition — and build an ”information commons”. Public opinion, in a small way, may have moved somewhat as regards the policy priority placed on information society issues.
But perhaps one of the greatest, even if half-hidden gains, is that the WSIS provides an opportunity to help us understand the interrelated fundamentals of what’s happening in terms of the big picture.
It enables us to put under a single spotlight, a range of dispersed phenomena — whether media freedom, convergence legislation or South Africa’s standing in a global communications forum. By drilling down into the WSIS debates and what they all mean, we can begin to make sense of the information and communication steps that contribute to — or detract from — development and democracy on a global scale.
E-mail Guy Berger directly if you have a question about this article.
Guy Berger is head of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University and deputy chair of the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef). He was recently nominated for the World Technology Awards.