ABSTRACT
Craig Simon that the standards-making process for global telecommunications is moving out of the hands of traditional state authorities into the hands of people whose goals and loyalties are less national than commercial. As digital telecommunications become more pervasive around the globe, its applications are likely to intrude more and more deeply into people's lives. Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the protocols that underlie the World Wide Web, summarized his work as creating a "global information system" operating across a "seamless hypertext information space". Comments related to Internet self-governance, Global Internet Governance (GIG), and global civil society all "raise flags" that indicate directions in which their thinking is headed. Denying that substantive material factors of the environment can exert such rule, Andrew Barry sees telecommunications technology simply as an instrument that mediates communication in society, enabling self-governance rather than constraining it.
