[APCPress] Articles from World Summit on the Information Society PrepCom 2

[Karen Higgs]

Please feel free to redistribute abstracts and link to articles.
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Can Open Source Technologies Transform African Information
Infra-structures? A troupe of African techies tell it how it is

By Maud Hand for APC
 
"We belong to the new school. With an active mailing list of 200
programmers all over Africa feeding in to our documents on a daily
basis, we're really focused. In fact, we're so in harmony with the UN
papers so far, that we reckon they're actually using our material to set
the strategies for the final document." - Bildad Kagai, FOSSFA. 

The launch of Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa
(FOSSFA) last Friday, 21st February, at Prepcom 2 has made its impact on
the gathering of government delegates, Civil Society activists, UN
Agencies and the Media assembled because ever since, 'Africa Open Source
Task Force' has been the buzz word!
 
http://www.apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=9965

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Keeping it real at Prepcom 2: reports from the preparatory conference
for the World Summit on the Information Society

By Maud Hand for APC

In my voluntary capacity as audio archivist for APC, I'd been assigned
the task of recording the Morning Plenary as the core activists were
otherwise engaged. After locating my spot alongside the other observers,
I had resigned myself to the drone coming from the sea of suits and
computer-toting delegates when APC's Karen Banks swept me off to
'something far more exciting' to coin her phrase.

Lighting up the Conference Center dining room was a gathering of women
from the Southern States of Africa. Their laughter and style was
instantly welcoming not to mention the fact that they were willing to be
interviewed. Leading this lively posse was Tracey Naughton, the director
of M.I.S.A. (Media Institute of Southern Africa). Through her
co-ordination, four women centrally involved in practical projects on
the ground were making their presence felt at Prep Com 2. 

http://www.apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=9953


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More poet than lawyer: An interview with Larry Lessig, the reluctant
Internet rights activist

Heather Ford, former APC Africa ICT Policy Monitor website manager,
recently met Lawrence Lessig - professor, lawyer and author of the
acclaimed "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace". She told APC about the
experience. 

In the past two weeks, I have attended two very different conferences
where Larry Lessig has spoken. One, as the key note speaker at an Oxford
University conference entitled: 'Politics of Code: Shaping the Future of
the Next Internet', the other, as one of the 'visionaries' to open the
recent World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). What I saw was a
man who is not only passionate about his quest for justice in the
Internet, but who is also gifted with the unique ability to bridge the
world of technology and politics. Because of this single quality, he may
be one of civil society's greatest allies in our attempts to translate
and explain the notion of the technological as political. Lessig uses
the phrase 'code is law' to describe how every decision that we take in
these formative years to develop the framework on which the Internet is
built, will have a critical impact on the way that power is distributed
in the Information Society of the future. 

http://www.apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=9962