Clouded Foresight

The Deputy Director General of UNESCO testified before the U.S. Congress that "The UNESCO General Conference of 1989 had decisively killed and buried th e concept of the New World Information and Communication Order." 1989 was of course the year in which the World Wide Web was created, definitively establishing a new world information order!

Of course, the DDG was referring to a dispute that had been started in the United Nations as part of the larger debate over a New World Economic Order and picked up in UNESCO. The debate on the NWIO in the UNESCO General Conference was thought by conservatives in the United States and Great Britain to be so politicized as to add to their concerns for the management and growth of UNESCO, contributing to the decision to withdraw.

Still, it is not a bad lesson. The realities of a technological revolution tend to surpass the understanding of those leading the political process, and slogans can obscure reality.