E-G8: THE GIANT SUCK OF AN ELITIST INTERNET SUMMIT

It would be with great pleasure if I could report that the latest bubble has popped. But an inflationary spirit, it seems, is alive and well in the latest site for exuberant over-investment: the summit bubble. TED, Davos, Aspen Ideas Festival, TechCrunch Disrupt, and now the e-G8.

Last week’s gathering in Paris (for which attendees received a handsome invitation from Monsieur Nicholas Sarkozy) has concluded with no shortage of puzzled news stories. Below a picture of a confident Mark Zuckerberg approached by a pliant David Cameron, The New York Times reports that Facebook will move to help people share videos and music they like, perhaps taking a page from Spotify, the European music sharing site that has audiophiles in the rest of the world scrambling for proxy server workarounds. The conference was a great opportunity for tech’s leading capitalists to glad-hand with world leaders – and of course build some buzz around new products.

But a more sober note was sounded by the godfather of thinking carefully about information technology, Lawrence Lessig. In an “improvised press conference” on civil society, Lessig sits in front of a formidable display of corporate logos (Google, Thomson Reuters, Vivendi, more!) to ask a simple question: If we’re here to talk about regulation and the tech industry, why are the only people here from industry?

The money quote is at 7 minutes 3 seconds, or click here.

Of course, there were other people there. Lessig sits on a panel with others from the summit circuit: the citizen journalism cheerleader Jeff Jarvis, network society luminary Yochai Benkler, Reporters Without Borders director Jean-François Julliard, etc. Despite being outside the enterprise world, these are hardly voices unheard or representatives of the huddled masses. (Cory Doctorow made sure to be notably absent.) It is telling, however, that they had to improvise a “civil society” panel in a room full of heads of state and businesses who help form our social fabric.

Sure. TED produces great videos for the rest of us. Of course! Davos includes serious discussions about development, poverty, and justice. But the “strictly by personal invitation only” or “freaking expensive tickets” model presents obvious dilemmas of openness and representativeness, and can tend to produce cabalistic decision-making rather than anything more helpful to large numbers.

Indeed, reports indicate there was considerable disagreement among participants regarding an allegedly pre-formed “consensus” that issues like intellectual property protection are priorities for the role of governments online. No doubt, a conference full of intellectual property owners is likely to prioritize their protection. This is precisely the problem. Grand corporations already have means to influence governments.

Even before the conference, invitees anticipated the dilemma of elite hob-nobbing versus the public good. One of the invitees, Nova Spivack, on reporting his invitation wrote: “Will this event result in helping Big Corporations and Big Governments be even Bigger, or will it also provide a voice to the people, the citizens of the Web? Will the delegates be thinking about themselves and their companies, or will they try to bring larger issues to the table?” Spivack’s post-conference verdict needed less than 140 characters: “The #eg8 was political theater. There was no real forum for debate, collaboration or policymaking here. But they fed us extremely well.”

There are reasons elite conferences will remain closed off. For one, the likes of Sarkozy and Zuckerberg are unlikely to meet in an open forum of the sort that Lessig and Benkler routinely hold at Harvard Law School (a place with its own barriers to entry, but where even attendance tends to be quite open). Negotiations and debate, too, are less fraught with political backlash when undertaken behind closed doors.

The grand question is why, if serious decisions about big things are made behind closed doors and before the Parisian pomp, anyone needs the conference itself. The reason is that these fora provide an opportunity for both elites and lesser elites – the chosen few who are less established but still invited – to hobnob with the top people. Zuckerberg and friends would not likely answer my e-mail, but I might get in a pitch in a hallway somewhere.

At some point, one would hope, these big little meetings would reach the point of diminishing returns (public protest, after all, doesn’t seem to work very well), and the bubble will pop. If it does, decision-makers would have to resort to other ways of developing ideas and legitimizing their policies. That “civil society” business would not have to be snuck in by a few elite representatives. The openness of the internet could be discussed in the openness of the internet.

But when you get a letter from the French president inviting you to a palace to hang out with Very Important People, you probably just show up. You can Tweet your complaints later.