David Souter Quotes
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It does seem to me, though, that the countries that gained most from World Summit on the Information Society are those that saw it as an opportunity to engage in more diverse discussion about the issues internally and to seek to raise the quality of debate (both in terms of information and understanding).
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It is impossible, maybe undesirable, to take partisanship out of the political process.
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It is much easier to modify an opinion if one has not already persuasively declared it.
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Summits [World Summit on the Information Society] are meant to help governments reach a global consensus on major issues which has proved elusive in established fora. They do so through the embarrassment associated with failing to sign a summit's final agreement.
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Summits are best at dealing with problems, where the need for action is urgent and the range of possible actions limited. They are less good at dealing with opportunities.
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The main drawback, of course, was cost. Participating effectively in World Summit on the Information Society was very expensive for both developing countries and (especially) civil society.
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Kofi Annan described World Summit on the Information Society as the first summit to deal primarily with an opportunity. The range of issues and potential opportunities that might be included in the Information Society is enormous. Compromise texts are very poor at addressing these in any meaningful way, and many governments see little point in trying.
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I don't think that developing countries gained from a two-stage process. A single phase summit (which is, after all, a two year process, not a three day event) would have built awareness, and would probably have led to more substantive conclusions at the end of the first summit meeting. Civil society may have gained a bit more from the networking experience, but it was less effective at networking in the second phase.
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The concept of the "information society" is both vague and all-embracing. Different participants meant different things by it. In practice, though, World Summit on the Information Society only dealt with a small number of issues: ICTs and human rights (to some extent), ICTs and development (to some extent), infrastructure finance and Internet governance. Very large aspects of what might have been included in the "information society" were not really discussed.
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The first lesson, simple as it is, is that whatever court we're in, whatever we are doing, at the end of our task some human being is going to be affected. Some human life is going to be changed by what we do. And so we had better use every power of our minds and our hearts and our beings to get those rulings right.
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David Souter
- Born: September 17, 1939
- Occupation: Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
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