Well... the World Bank has (apparently!) come out today with a report saying that all the good people who've been hard at work at the WSIS Prepcom 2 in Geneva shouldn't worry so much, because the Digital Divide is well on the way to being closed and in fact we've already exceeded targets we set for 2015 in the WSIS Action Plan. I guess this is like those other World Bank reports where they said Argentina was a model economy just before it went into depression, and that building huge dams was great for the environment just before they flooded ancient valleys.

Yes, I admit the World Bank does have a point when it says more than half the world's population lives within mobile telephone reception. But really - when did reception equal having a phone? And when did having a phone equal 'digital divide bridged'. I mean, people had phones years before anyone even came up with the term 'digital divide'. It's this oversimplification of the debate on the digital divide which is at the heart of the WSIS problem.

Really, what the UN should be exploring is whether people have freedom to express themselves through technology or whether they get locked up in jail like those in blog-unfriendly regimes the world over. Or whether there is effective financing for content in local languages and about local issues. Or whether education systems are effectively responding to the changing expectations of their tech-savvy pupils. And whether people are literate in the first place.

WSIS- and the digital divide - was never meant to be about phones.

~

I had a great time in Geneva last Thurs-Monday working with the Youth Caucus and reconnecting with great friends. And while perhaps the crowd in Geneva was smaller this time and less focused on the policy debates under discussion in the main halls, it was really heartening to see the number of cool projects - from the World Summit Award to the Youth Radio to the National Rural Youth Campaigns for the Information Society getting off the ground. Great to see those who were there.