David Wood (EBU)
 | David Wood is Deputy Director, EBU Technology and Development, at the EBU Headquarters in Geneva Switzerland. David is currently Chair of the World Broadcasting Unions Technical Committee, and he has represented the world broadcasting unions in the UN World Summits on the Information Society, and in the five years of existence of the UN Internet Governance Forum. |
Abstract
| Can civilisation ever come to the Internet?
The Internet represents a very different regulatory and technical world compared to the conventional territory that broadcasters inhabit. For some this is its strength. For others it is an anarchic nightmare. One thing is sure: technology is 'never' neutral, no matter what we, or politicians, might wish. Technical policy always has a political dimension, and technology is always driven by market forces. Engineers need to try to understand the consequences and implications of what they are doing and why they are doing it. The UN Internet Governance Forum has been wrestling with the complexities of Internet Governance for the last five years. The issues come at the intersections of laws, economics, technical evolution, and public policies.
The presentation will try to paint a global picture of this landscape. After this, there will be a short 'case study' of one of the issues. One of the on-going discussions in the IGF concerns the introduction of IPv6. IPv6 has been a 'long time coming', and the arguments about who would be the winners and who would be the losers has taken place over many years. Now we finally enter the moment when hard decisions have to be made around the world. How will the dice fall? |