EG8 Publishes Report In Noninteractive, Nonquotable Format

pbahra writes "You could not come up with a better illustration of the clash of cultures that was the eG8 than the post-forum report. Was the output of the two-day gathering in Paris published on a website so people could link to it? Or perhaps a blog so that people could comment on it? Or even a wiki, so the people who attended could contribute and correct mistakes? No it wasn't. The report is a book. Or rather it is an eBook. Except it isn't even an eBook, in the sense of something that you can read on your Kindle or other eBook reader. It's actually a Flash-based page turner, the sort of thing that was all the rage five years ago. It is a digital facsimile of a book. It is the triumph of design over access. Being Flash, you can't even cut and paste what is in the file. And being Flash it gives complete and total control to the authors. As a user all you get to do is to read it, in exactly the way the authors want you to. It looks good, but you can't do anything with it, except what the authors tell you to do. Metaphor anyone?"

Think about it

[iluvcapra]

If they had comments, they'd have to hire fifty people just to moderate the Obama Kenyan Birth Certificate posts, anti-NWO posts, anti-ZOG posts, anti-TACMAR posts, Black Helicopters posts, anti-globalization posts, anti-Bilderberger posts, anti-Zeta Reticulan reptoid posts, anti Trilateral Commission posts...

It should still be quotable, though. Then again, did this organization produce anything worthy of quotation?

WHAT IS EG8?

[gilleain]

Google tells me it is some sort of governmental meeting about the internet.

http://www.eg8forum.com/en/ [eg8forum.com]

Could the summary not have expended a sentence about this?

What is EG8? and why should I care?

[Attila Dimedici]

After reading the article linked in the summary and the article which that article linked to, the best I can come up with is that it is a meeting of executives from technology companies that want to have more say in the agenda of the meetings of the G-8 countries. Apparently, these executives do not understand technology well enough to release thier report in a readable electronic format.

Re:The metaphor is obvious..

[jc42]

Funny, I seem to be able to download the open source compiler for Flash directly from Adobe.

Hey, what are you, some sort of hacker or computer programmer or something?

Since when did they start allowing people who understand all this computer code stuff to make comments on slashdot? I'll bet you're even using the "classical" setting to read the summary (and maybe even TFA).

Re:Not a Flaw

[dreemernj]

I have worked on page turner style flash projects before. They were requested and I built them. The recipients loved them.

And the reason they loved them is very simple. They didn't get computers and they couldn't figure out how to make other people get computers. They would never trust someone with experience in the field because these were PR people that know everything they need to know about everything.

The page turner looked like a magazine or newspaper to them. That meant they could understand it. They didn't think about things like linking or accessing them from a plethora of devices because they didn't have to do that with the printed materials they will hold onto til their last breath. It fit their limited notion of how information could be presented to audiences.

I am not saying that is what happened here. But, if there was a PR firm involved, my first guess would be they are the main reason this happened.