Actually I believe there's a larger issue at stake when you consider this
thread with the parallel thread about time/message limits. It is currently
under consideration (I believe) to put some limitations on how much people can
say at a microphone in Santiago and how much will be passed on from remote
participants.
What this does, although probably thought of with the best intentions, is skew
the participation horribly. If you have 9 questions you want to ask or 7
points you want to make, you really need multiple people to get the required
participation. I have a good two dozen questions I'd love to ask <g>. I'd need
a major contingent in Santiago for that. We are often dealing with complex
issues, and sometimes you simply cant say things in the form of a simple
question.
The bottom line is that live meetings, while they are a good idea in principle,
are really only possible for large corporations with large travel budgets and
enough people who can drop what they are doing and step on a plane. Its not
only horribly unfair to the little guy and gal (which basically means most of
the world), but terribly inefficient from an economic perspective. We would be
better off spending the money on disaster relief (Turkey would be a good place
to start) than sending everyone around the world. I understand its too late
for this time round but perhaps we can start (today) to think about doing this
a better way?
I have to disagree with Diane on this one. We are not at the Wright Bros.
stage. We already have business travel. The net works. People do business,
chat, find lovers, play games, go to school, etc. etc. on the net every day
(much of the above via e-mail). Yes we have gone way beyond the Wright bros.
But there are people who stubbornly refuse to *fly* the internet but prefer to
fly Delta (or United or BA, etc). When I hear of this, I think of people who
were yelling 'get a horse' to the adopters of the automobile. We have our
automobiles and most of us know how to drive them. It's those that refuse to
embrace change and insist on F2F that should consider a bit of modification.
Harsh words perhaps, but I've been managing change in organizations for years.
Sometimes the hard reality has to be spelled out.
This is not to knock the excellent work of the Berkman Center or the conference
organizers. They are making a valiant effort to route around damage in the
best internet tradition. I'd much rather see Berkman help this process via
electronic collaboration using their OpenLaw platform or similar mechanism.
Now that would be exciting!
Richard wrote:
> >> >I believe that many people on working committees simply do not find
e-mail
> >> >adequate to the task.
> >>
> >> If it wasn't adequate, the Internet would not exist; it's how we
> >> got this far.
> >
> >The Net is in awfully early days of its use outside of academic and largely
> >US/English language settings. You seem to be saying that what was good
enough
> >for the Wright Brothers is good enough for today's air traveller. I don't
buy
> >it, and I find e-mail far less efficient a means of communication than
> >face-to-face meetings.
>
> No. You only get participation from people at the F2F meeting - this is
> terribly constrained; money and time limits peoples participation.
>
> Email dialogue isn't perfect, but it's better than anything else.
>
> (No, I'm not going to come to Boston to discuss this with you :-)
>
>
Dan Steinberg
Synthesis: Law & Technology
(not going to Santiago, but for personal reasons: my children come
first)
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