Twittering and the world of disarmament
Chris Vallance is one of the reporters for the BBC SuperPower season during which he will look at how the internet is changing the way we interact with those in authority. Here he looks at the worlds of diplomacy and disarmament; are they embracing the web and are becoming opening up to the publict.
I am ihere to meet John Duncan, the British Ambassador for Multilateral Arms Control & Disarmament, who is an avid twitterer (https://twitter.com/jduncanMacd).
This is quite a big step in the locked-down world of arms control.
To even get into the Ambassadorial offices I had to surrender my phone, and hence any chance of tweeting anything, secret or otherwise.
I wasn't being unfairly targeted. The ambassador' is very kind and patient assistant told me she wasn't allowed to use her mobile in the building either.
I was in Geneva to attend a meeting of human rights activists.
One of the speakers was Google's Robert Boorstin. He's less of a fan of the way people use twitter than Ambassador Duncan. "No offense to the people who run Twitter or who use it but I don't want to know what you had for breakfast".
Twitter is a little like the dark, gooey, salty, brewing by-product called Marmite, which is a great British institution. You either love it or loath it - I love it, my Canadian spouse thinks it looks like hoof oil.
And the internet is rather like this. Read the papers and the web is either going to save the world or end it.
Technology has always provoked reactions like this. Tom Standage's book The Victorian Internet about the history of the telegraph shows how revolutions in communications technology have often been accompanied by exaggerated hopes and fears
Of course, advances in communication do have profound changes, it's just as futurologists point out, we are apt to overestimate change in the short run and underestimate it the long run
You don't need to be a futurologist, or a highly paid consultant, or even have finished middle school to know that the web is a technology with huge potential.
Another observation of Robert Boorstin's was to be very sceptical about anyone who claims to be able to predict the future of the web. This is a wise observation.
In the course of working on this SuperPower season I've met people who have been, to use an ugly word, empowered by the web.
Sometimes this seems to be a good thing.
At other times, as in the case of those with extreme views, we recoil and ask ourselves if something should be done about it. More often it's a grey area.
In the end, the web reflects the human beings who use it. But we shouldn't complain, it's that which makes it such a wonderful, surprising and sometimes disturbing place.
Chris Vallance is writing and broadcasting a series of five features on Digital Democracy which will be broadcast next week on World Service Radio and www.bbc.cm/news
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