kierenmccarthy.co.uk

A continuation of my “What the hell is wrong with the US press?” but with a more global viewpoint.
Headlines today:
“US insists on controlling Web” – CNN “US insists on keeping control of Web” – BusinessWeek, ABC “US: No to UN control of Web” – Cincinnati Enquirer
Real story:
EU deal threatens [...]

My second column/rant has appeared this morning in the Guardian. It is a somewhat sanitised version of the original – no mention of skunk, broken legs and no f-words – but pretty much the same. One odd thing is that online, my asterisks (denoted emphasis) have been replaced with speech marks.
I've yet to see [...]

It's 7.30pm, the last session of the day, two days to go, and everyone at the WSIS meeting in Geneva is hoping that the heavily disputed committee text will start gelling together. Despite a good report on some parts (paras 49-51), others have failed to come to agreement.
And then – boom! – the UK/EU [...]

What the hell is wrong with the US press?
The mainstream press all over the world fundamentally fails to understand what the situation is with regard to the Internet and with Internet technology in general, but the US press and its review of the situation is so nationalistic and blinkered as to be embarrassing.
Maybe [...]

I’m at the WSIS meeting in Geneva where the future of the Internet is being decided by the world’s governments. I spoke to the US Ambassador and the Pakistan Ambassador – both of whom will be vital to the issue of who gets to run the Internet, and have done a podcast of those interviews [...]

It's an amazing building, the Palais des Nations in Geneva, but it is somewhat ironic that with the entire future of the Internet being discussed that the conference rooms are so lacking in technology.
The biggest problem is with a technology a hundred years old – electricity. The shortage of sockets would be funny if [...]

Well, it's 3.15pm Geneva time and the afternoon session of Sub-Committee A at PrepCom3 of WSIS at the UN in Geneva will start in 15 minutes.
What does all that mean? That for the next few hours a group of around 100 people in a room will start making fundamental decisions about how the Internet [...]

It's been a while since my last blog entry – not from a shortage of things to write about.
I have woken up this morning in Geneva, where the ITU is holding a meeting of world governments over what to do about this Internet thing.
It is called PrepCom3, it being the third preparatory committee [...]

Following on from my Who is this rock star?, I would like to know: Who the hell are these world leaders? Because the UN doesn't seem to know.
There was a big fuss about how the ongoing New York meeting was a big one because the leaders of over 170 of the 190 or so [...]

It was a pretty unique event – two of Britain’s most combative and eloquent figures going head-to-head and arguing about the Iraq War, its results and the philosophy and theory behind it: Christopher Hitchens and George Galloway. Shame it was in New York rather than here, but there you go.
I have been learning about audio [...]