Last night I went to the Rabenhof Theatre to catch one of my Viennese writing mates perform as part of Maronif at the Vienna 2007 Big Brother Awards. Naively I was thinking of the “other” Big Brother and then realised how easily I’d become a victim of dumbing down. So I was pleasantly surprised to find out what the Big Brother Awards were about.
Coming from an international telecomms background I was interested to see that Peter van der Arend of KPN, Chairman of ETSI LI received the negative award in the area of Administration, a fact which strengthened my belief in the necessity of including Civil Society in international telecommunications deliberations and not just leaving matters to governments and the Private Sector. 
In amongst all the brickbats there was also a positive prize awarded to Karl Korinek, Chief Justice of the Austrian Constitutional Court who in September had warned about the risk of countries becoming “surveillance” States in their undertakings in the fight against terrorism.
Monochrom presented their short rock opera, Socializing, to bring home the power of “MyFaceSpace”. All too true, as I recently discovered when I tried to leave Facebook and found that my details would be caught there forever.
A great evening to open these wide-shut eyes.
