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COMMUNICATIONS: Science Has the Word in WSIS Run-Up
By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Sep 24, 2003 (IPS) - Representatives from the international scientific
community finally were able to convince the United Nations to take their
contributions into account in the preparatory process for the World Summit
on the Information Society, to be held here in December.
The astonishing advances in Internet and other information and communication
technologies (ICTs) would have been impossible without science, say experts
from the sector.
The scientific perspective must be included when the WSIS defines ways to
bridge the "digital divide" between rich and poor in access to these
technologies, and when it establishes a model for an information society.
In other words, without scientific research and its advances, "we wouldn't
have the information society," says Roger Cashmore, one of the directors of
the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), the birthplace of the
Internet.
But the contribution of science to ICTs was omitted from the original agenda
drawn up by the U.N. for defining this model of society, with sights on the
first stage of the WSIS, Dec. 10-12 in Geneva. The second stage of the
summit is to take place in Tunis in 2005.
In the preparations for the world summit, "there was a big gap," according
to Cashmore, and to other institutions, including the International Council
for Science (ICSU), Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and the U.N.
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
Through the WSIS, the U.N. aims to reduce the differences separating rich
and poor countries in employing new technologies. In December, the delegates
are to adopt the principles and guidelines expressed in the summit's final
declaration and plan of action.
Participating in the preparatory process for the WSIS and drawing up these
plans are government representatives of U.N. member states, delegates from
the private sector and from civil society, including labour unions,
community media, educators, and indigenous groups. The final two-week
preparatory session ends here Friday.
But there was nobody specifically representing the scientific community in
this process.
With great perseverance, however, scientists have convinced the government
delegates to incorporate their concerns into the draft texts to be debated
at the summit in December.
For example, the documents now include the term "global public good", noted
Walther Lichem, head of international organisation affairs at Austria's
foreign ministry.
"In fact, knowledge is a classic example of a global public good," not the
Internet itself, but knowledge produced by groups like CERN, he said.
The draft texts state that there should be universal and equal access to
scientific knowledge, and equal opportunities for all in the creation,
dissemination and use of information.
The scientists, like other groups participating in the WSIS preparations,
are pressing for an open software system, in which computer programmes are
free of cost or at least are more affordable, instead of "paying Microsoft",
the software giant, said Diego Malpede, science and technology director at
TWAS.
The digital divide, which includes disparities in access to telephone
networks and the Internet, and to computers and electronics, is a symptom of
a scientific divide as well, said Malpede.
In spite of technological progress, this gap continues to grow, and is
evident, for example, in the rising prices of scientific publications, he
added.
The physics department at a provincial university in a developing country,
for example, cannot afford to pay 10,000 dollars a year for subscriptions to
scientific journals, said the TWAS expert.
According to Lichem, all development of ICTs today should include "the
element of knowledge, the element of understanding."
"We are all involved in the process of development and we all have a right
to development, in all its dimensions, including the social dimension," said
the Austrian official.
To remedy the exclusion of scientific community representatives in the
earlier preparations for the summit, the ICSU, CERN, TWAS and UNESCO are
convening a conference on "the role of science in the information society",
to take place in Geneva Dec. 8-9.
Some 500 scientists and experts involved in the WSIS debates are to
participate in the conference.
Among the presenters will be Britain's Tim Berners-Lee, inventor - in the
context of his work at CERN but as an individual - of the programmes that
gave rise to the Internet.
Berners-Lee developed Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which allows
movement from one site to another on the worldwide web, and the Hypertext
Transfer Protocol (HTTP), permitting communication among different computers
connected to the Internet.
He is also behind the Universal Resource Localizers (URL), a system for
assigning unique addresses for every web page, and the first version of the
worldwide web itself.
All of these initials are recognised by the millions of Internet users
around the world, but most do not know who Berners-Lee is. The inventor not
only renounced intellectual property rights over his creations, he has
continued to work to ensure that the Internet remains open to everyone and
owned by no one.
Giving up these rights in relation to scientific discoveries is a general
policy at CERN, said Hans Hoffman, another director of that institution.
The scientific conference to take place in the days preceding the WSIS, in
addition to discussing issues directly related to the summit, will hold
parallel sessions on education, health, economic development and
environment.
(END)
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