It’s Tuesday and this is Johnny Palmetto. Despite the name, I’m no gunslinger, private eye, and I’m definitely not on an island off the coast of Beaufort, South Carolina. It’s cold and raining in Brooklyn… I’m not sure how the other ONCE-A-DAY-ERS are doing it, but I hope to use my space in the new agora to explore some things that have concerned me for a while now–and that I’m currently writing a dissertation about. I promise not to put you asleep, though.

My Tuesday topic: “communication” and, more specifically, “the human right to freely communicate.”

Is there such a thing as a “human right to freely communicate?” you ask.

But of course, and despite the fact that Bush was recently overheard telling the Chinese to reform, to clean up their human rights record, I believe human rights are still worth fighting for—they are the only legal means to pressure people and governments to allow humans to exist without fear of torture, persecution, and arbitrary arrests. My concern in this blog, though, will be on a positive right, the right to communicate, found in Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR):

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Broadly defined, Article 19 declares that human beings must be allowed the positive right to communicate freely with one another, to create their own narratives, to speak in first-person. Humans also have the right to share “information and ideas” by using all kinds of media, across and beyond all boundaries, both geographic and national.

Of course like much of The UDHR, this article sounds nice on paper but in reality it’s much more complicated. The right to communicate in this Information Age is much more complicated than pursuing free speech on behalf of all humankind—it’s also about supporting and enhancing communication networks that are above and below the radar of popular culture (like this blog…). Lastly, in order to support this right, human beings must be mindful of the structures of control that have popped up around and inside new media.

This week’s homework, find out what WSIS is all about.