Velletri agreement
A few weeks ago I was preparing some introductory comments for a public talk on the theme of ‘Digital Futures’ that the OU in the North West hosted. Given the theme, and this year being the 40th anniversary of the OU, I wanted to mention some other suitable anniversaries. Among them, and rather less celebrated than say, the commissioning of ArpaNet or Berners-Lee’s proposal for what became the web, was this year being the 25th anniversary of the Velletri Agreement. As of this morning, google returned 5 hits for the term ‘Velletri Agreement’, and Bing returned 2, so perhaps it’s worth a few words here.
The Velletri agreement committed a group of ‘grassroots’ NGOs from women’s, human rights, sustainable development, labour and other movements to develop the capacity to exploit the new information and communications technologies. For a fuller account of Interdoc and the Velletri Agreement, see Brian Murphy’s (2005) First Monday article: Interdoc: the first international non-governmental computer network, which includes a copy of the agreement.
I got involved in Interdoc a little later. They were exciting times, and personally I learned a great deal. I’ve just been trying to find a photograph taken at an Interdoc technical workshop in the Netherlands around 1988 showing a bank of hotel payphones in various states of disrepair as people were trying to attach modems to get online to post…. I’ll put it here if I ever do dig it out.
Ever find that photo, Steve? I would dearly love to see it!
Paul
Paul Osborn
March 31, 2011 at 2:40 pm
Not yet…. but I know I wouldn’t have thrown it out!
Steve
April 13, 2011 at 5:21 pm